WORKERS IN THE ROYAL DOCKYARDS
“Artisanal skilled, literate, dissenting, democratised and independent minded’. This is a description given of Royal Dockyard workers in Deptford in the 17th and 18th centuries in a report on Deptford High Street housing.[1] In addition to the description of the High Street houses, there is an introductory essay which says some important things about Deptford, including a great deal about [2]the dockyard and its workers.
These articles in the Report say that Deptford was an ‘exceptional place’ which expanded around the Royal Dockyard ‘as an early industrial facility at the heart of the rise of British sea power’. It’s obviously important that in Deptford the main employer is the State, as it is in Woolwich with its Royal Dockyard and military establishments, - and also Greenwich with the Palace and Royal Hospital. Although Deptford was near London it was not a suburb but an independent town with its own local economy-. It had a population of shipwrights who' walked to work from the town to the Dockyard' and were paid wages and were ‘independent minded’.
In the early days of Greenwich Industrial History Society we had as a speaker, Rodney Dobson, who had written and researched industrial action before 1800. I had done ‘Labour History’ as an undergraduate at Thames Poly and then it was being said that trade union history before around the late 19th century was all about craft associations for skilled workers. ‘Real’ militant trade unions were later.
The shipwrights who worked at the Royal Dockyards were skilled workers but I also find the word ‘shipwrights’ quite difficult because it seems to cover many grades of workers from the top man in charge of the while dockyard right down to barely skilled labourers. Some other dockyard workers were named after their trades - for example carpenters and caulkers. Also of course many other shipyard workers who lived in Deptford could have worked in one of the numerous local private shipyards.
Looking for information about ‘shipwrights’ I found a newspaper report of 1730 about a Mr Holt ‘a shipwright belonging to his majesty’s yard of Deptford who was robbed in a field by two foot pads who knocked him down. They took from him a silver watch half a Guinea and three shillings[3]. That was hard luck on Mr Holt and I don’t want to sound like him supporting the foot pads but somebody who goes around with a silver watch and that much money is not hard up.
Dockyard wages were frequently paid in arrears with long delays between payments. Men must have supported their families during this time without regular wages and clearly had means of doing so - which says a lot about their relative prosperity. With some irony it appears in 1679 that men who were found smoking were fined 6 days pay but this could not be enforced because their wages were in arrears. [4]
Much has been written about dockyard workers and the issue of the ‘chips’ and I I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here because several people seem to have written entire books about the chips issue – and I have space for one paragraph only!. Over two centuries the dockyard authorities, and indeed the government, tried to find a way of controlling the ‘chips’ issue and as fast as new regulations were made so workers found ways round them. ‘Chips’ had nothing to do with fried potatoes – they were scraps of waste wood which workers had originally been allowed to take home for firewood. They were to do with what you might have on your shoulder and they were the reason why many dockyard workers were not allowed to wear trousers to work. [5]
‘You are to suffer no person to pass out of the dock gates
with great coats, large trousers, or any other dress that can conceal stores of
any kind. No person is to be suffered to work in Great Coats at any time yeah
None over any account. No trousers are to be used by the labourers employed in
the Storehouse and if any persist in such a custom he will be discharged the
yard.[6]
On the whole press stories about the shipwrights at Deptford
are positive and they come over as hard working and honest patriots. In 1768 a spokesman
said.’ there is no man amongst us who
would not freely die for King and Country but we will not suffer ourselves to
be slaves ... for we are free born subjects’.
We learn of urgent work undertaken by the dockyards over the centuries. For instance in 1755 because of ‘Rumour of War’ ‘Orders were received from the Lords Commissioners to get ready the following Ships, which lay in Ordinary up the Harbour, viz: Mary and Tilbury, each of 60 Guns, Oxford and Isis, each of 50 Guns, Chesterfield and Lynne, each of 40 Guns, Ferret Sloop-of 12 Guns and Deptford Storeship. The “Shipwrights, Caulkers, Rope-makers, Joiners, &c. belonging to the Dock, worked last Sunday, which they did not for two Sundays ; the King’s Bakers likewise worked. [7]
But for many shipwrights if conditions in England didn’t suit them they could always work abroad. In 1779 it was reported that “more than two thirds of the Spanish navy have been built by English workers ‘. [8] Which was ok as long as it wasn’t the enemy’s yards they were working in.
Sometimes things were more leisurely. In 1782 it was
reported that ‘The manner that men were
employed in the yards was absolutely scandalous. they were bound to work till 12 and yet
they left off at 11:30 and though the
bell rang for them to begin again at 1:00 not a stroke of work ever was begun
before 3:00’. [9]
They will also not averse to striking. For instance in 1802 ‘the shipwrights and caulkers of Deptford
Dockyard have struck for an advance of wages’[10].
Also less peaceably “On Friday afternoon
mutiny of a very alarming nature took place at Deptford amongst the
shipwrights. As we are given understand it arose about the perquisites of chips.
About four o'clock, they were got to such pitch, desperation that the whole
town was in the utmost, consternation imaginable, Peace was restored by a body
of Guards’.[11]
I seem to remember reading somewhere that dockyard workers were so highly organised that in case of industrial action all Dockyards could be got ‘out’ in 24 hours - that’s not just Deptford and Woolwich but also Chatham, Sheerness, Portsmouth and Milford Haven.
Things could be very difficult but shipwrights could find a way round it. On another occasion when the master joiner decided to abolish chips without wage increases, carpenters and joiners stopped work, ‘occupied the yard and placed pickets armed with axes at the gates.... A battalion of the First Regiment of Guards was sent but at six the next morning none of the workmen came in’. [12] When that happened war with Spain had just been declared putting the workers in a very strong bargaining position. There was nothing like a good way to get increased advantages for dockyard workers.
One aspect of the ideas among them was the setting up of the earliest recorded co-ops. Something I would like to write about in future.
So – as I said above this has been a very quick look at the shipwrights of the Deptford dockyards. who were “Artisanal skilled, literate, dissenting, democratised and independent minded’.
And there were always surprises: There is now living at Deptford a Woman, who served as a Shipwright in our
different Dock-Yards fourteen Years without Suspicion or Discovery; at the
Expiration of this Time had a Pension granted, when the has married and had
several Children.
THE BIRTH OF
CO-OPERATION
In Woolwich
we had the earliest co-ops recorded.
Labour relations in the Royal Dockyards in the 18th and 19th centuries were not good, to put it mildly, but historians have found what they describe as ‘indications of mutual activity’. After a long strike in 1745 there is a report of groups of shipwrights getting together and making offers to various contractors to deal with them rather than with their employers. The Survey of Woolwich describes how ‘enterprising mutualists’ developed in the Thameside 18th naval dockyards. Shipbuilding was, they say, ‘an unusually co-operative trade and dockyard employment fostered strong collective values’.
Dockyard shipwrights came together in the 1750s to form a
retail society, and hoped to gain some control over the supply and price of
basic food. ‘Open to all who were employed within the yards, this was, it has
been claimed, the first co-operative society in England. This Society of Shipwrights came into existence as
a retail co-operative society’. It opened a bakery in Chatham, a corn mill in
Woolwich and a butcher shop in Church Street, Deptford.
I Physical In Deptford a report of 1758 describes a new Butcher Shop, ‘set up by subscription of
the Artificers in his Majesty's Yard at Deptford ...opened in Church Street, to
the great benefit of the poor in the Town -the Meat being sold at the lowest prices
... which immediately occasioned a great fall in the value of meat’[13]. I can’t imagine that went down well with the
local butchers either but I have found no report of their reaction.
Happily we
know more about the Woolwich corn mill.
Mill Lane in Woolwich is a turning off Woolwich New Road. It is on land once known as Mill Hill because several windmills were sited there. probably from the 15th century. Among them was the ‘shipwrights mill’ built on the high ground in 1758 by the Shipwrights’ Society along with a bake house. In the 17th century the Board of Ordnance had owned land here and built a conduit to supply water to what became the Arsenal down at the Warren. The Shipwrights Society got permission to build on this area for the annual rent of a shilling, so long as they allowed artillery officers and Ordnance Board employees to subscribe and that they supplied bread to the barracks if necessary.[14] It was said later that “some time ago the Artificers in his Majesty's Yard at Woolwich had agreed to build a Corn Mill, and make their own Bread, in imitation of their Brethren at Chatham.’[15]
A public house just across Woolwich New Road was known as the Jolly Shipwrights.
However in March 1760 ‘the mill built by the Shipwrights belonging
to His Majesty’s Dockyard at Woolwich was on Sunday, the 16th of this
instant, consumed by fire - and the said
Mill had worked for about six Weeks, but did not work on Sunday. nor was there any Body in it from Twelve that
Day, yet that Night it was entirely consumed, by what Means, is variously
suspected”. Naturally it was other local
bakers who were suspected.[16]
It was said ‘scandalously and maliciously’ that Woolwich bakers
‘were concerned in setting the same on fire’. Six Woolwich bakers swore before
the, Lord Mayor of London on March 24th 1760 that they ‘do severally
make oath and say that they neither knew nor heard of the same in flames, and
that they, nor any of them, did not set the same on fire or were in any matter
whatever accessory to the said accident; .[17]
The rebuilt mill appears to have settled into productivity
–although in 1782, when trade was slack, the shipwrights approached the Board
Ordnance offering to supply the newly built Royal Artillery Barracks with
bread. However the shipwrights carried on trade with the mill for over eighty
years. It was drawn in 1845 by an
artist, W Clifton, who shows an octagonal timber smock-mill.. Later the mill
was let to a private company was empty and disused by the 1840s. The property was finally ‘acquired’ by the
War Office and it was demolished by the 1850s, when housing began to be built
in the area.[18]
The Dockyard itself closed in the 1860s when the mill was long
gone, but there are hints of suggestions of mutual organisations in its final
years. However as the Dockyard closed so the first hints of a different sort of
Co-op began among workers in the Arsenal – and the start of what was to become
the vast Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society .It would be interesting to
discover if ideas of mutual trading organisations spread almost as a legacy
from the Dockyard to those able to take forward these values to Arsenal worker.
[1] Royal Commission for Historical Monuments. Survey of Deptford High Street. 1993
[2] Dobson. Masters and Journeymen
[3] Kentish Weekly Post 7th December 1730
[4] Dobson
[5] Dobson
[6] See https://carolineld.blogspot.com/2011/07/from-archives-deptford-dockyard-chips.html
[7] Aberdeen Press 17 June 1755.
[8] Hampshire Chronicle 1ST November 1779.
[9] Quoted by Dobson
[10] Norfolk Chronicle 28th August 1802.
[11] Quoted by Dobson
[12] Quoted by Dobson
[13] Sussex Advertiser 5th June 1758.
[14] Survey
[15] Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 24 March 1760
[16] Survey
[17] Vincent
[18] Survey
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