WARTIME CARGOES

Waikato Independent, Volume XLII, Issue 4002, 15 May 1942, Page 3

WARTIME CARGOES

BRITAIN’S BUSY WHARVES WOMEN’S . DANGEROUS WORK (By, Jack McLaren, author of “ My Crowded Solitude.”) LONDON, May 12. At a north-western British port I watched dockers stoWing ship so as to make a level surface whereon they finally ran tanks, Bren gun carriers, and other military vehicles. In another hold they were stowing such dissimilar objects as depth charges, rollers for steel mills, and boom defence nets.

To get such a difficult cargo stowed in time and prevent tae ship Jiolding up her convoy, the dockers were working 24-hour shifts. At some ports the dockers have speeded up cargo-handling by 11 tons an hour; they have moved as much as v 7OOO tons of mixed cargo in six days and 2000 tons in 24 hours. .

They have learnt to work efficiently in the black-out. To me it seemed it was as much by instinct as by anything else that in the darkness cargoes were handled at all. Amid the clatter of winches, one man found a moment to tell me of a name he had invented for the Australians and Americans fighting in the Pacific as one army under General Macarthur. “I call ’em,” he said, “ Macaussies.”

Women play a part in the dock work, notably as mobile crane drivers. Cranes often work in couples, one to each end of the load. Among the loads bandied by these women are such dangerous things as torpedo heads. Some women have children that they must wash and feed before starting for work. “ Granny minds the kids for me during the day,’ ’ one told me. Many : men, replacing younger ones, who have been called up for the forces, are middle-aged. Most are sturdy types. I spoke with a crane driver, William Ruist, who. worked all night through a blizzard loading a ship. Besides the ordinary black-out difficulties, the storm prevented his hearing the whistle or voice of the man who ordered descents and ascents of cargo slings. The temperature was away below freezing point. One man had a hand frozen to the sling wire. But William Buist and His- mates accomplished what they had set out to do. They got the ship away on time.