The Apprenticed Lighterman - Documentary (1963)
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- Опубліковано 12 кві 2020
- Filmed onboard the General VI in 1962/3 with General Lighterage - we see Keith Bullock , Kenneth Bullock, Edwin Hunt and various other lightermen at work in this great 1963 documentary showing life on the River Thames
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So happy to see this. Keith was my grandfather but I never got to meet him, he died before I was born but I remember my dad showing me a tape of this but we lost the tape so I’m so happy to see it here!
Thats lovely Jasmine so glad you found it 😊 do you know when keith passed away?
1970 so not very long after this was filmed
@@jasminehollybullock6100 Thats very sad to hear at such a young age
I used to work for General Lighterage in the 60's and I remember being like that boy, leaving school at 15. I worked through the 1963 severe winter with inadequate clothing and obviously no lifejacket I have hated snow ever since. I probably met those lightermen but can't remember them. I had quite a large family on the River, the Crawley's were fairly well known my Grandfather had the Company called Crawley Water Barges from Gravesend and Woolwich supplying fresh water to ships coming from all over the World. When they were short of water they would run a bucket up the flagmast. Good times in the Summer and a fair amount of beer.
Great to hear Daniel. Of course i know crawleys. A page about them here thameshighway.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/c-crawley-ltd-fleet-history/
What a fabulous experience it must have been for you, and what a family history to have, such essential workers on one of the world's most important rivers in the world's most important city!
It sounds like a good life
Thanks for the information about hoisting the bucket to call for fresh water. Did it as a deck cadet , wasn't sure if I had rembered it correctly.
Respect, but for working through the winter of 63, I have heard stories about that winter and how long it lasted
Absolutely fantastic!!! As modern seaman it is wonderful to learn how seamen and watermen worked before. Many thanks for this clip.
Two good friends spring to mind , John Hamilton and Ted Williams , good old days !
Great film, very nostalgic for some, I'm sure. The narration was by Christopher Trace of BBC's 'Blue Peter' fame.
My Grandad was a Lightermen, all my Dads Family worked on the Thames. Baker Family, the history goes back so many generations. My Grandad worked for Cory, General and many other companies. Thank you for posting this, its wonderful for a young man to be able to see exactly what life was like back then.My Grandad is in the other Documentary you posted, Lightermen Documentary 1984, which again is brilliant viewing.
The captain is my grandad Vic Window. He’s not with us anymore. What a fella 👌🏻
Had he ever seen the film:
@@liquidhighway yes he did he used to tell me about it as a boy. His son (my uncle) Colin Window also did a documentary with the BBC about being a lighter man. The Window family have been lighter men for many years even to this day. Great video Thankyou for the upload.
I know Colin but always wondered who the skipper was in the video. Do you know the name of the other film colin was in?
@@liquidhighway toughest place to be a lighter man was on bbc iPlayer don’t think it is on there now.
That was great! Thanks for sharing this material. I learned quite a bit.
Just think, a few years later the container ship would sweep all that heritage away
Grrrrrrrreat, I really loved this movie! I was 6 when this came out and we used to live in South Kensington SW7 at that time. Thank you so much for sharing this with us! 👍🏻
My mum's family were Bullocks... lightermen further back than 1666.
Happy lot. Imagine wearing a tie doing that sort of stuff today.....
First things first - put a cuppa on!
My father was a lighterman all his life he worked of a tug called the General.
What isn't explained in the video is what does lighterman mean?
Obviously it is a man who works on a lighter. But that leads to asking what is a lighter?
A lighter is a small vessel that takes some of the cargo off of a deep-draft ocean going ship in order to lighten the ship enough that it may enter the shallower water of the port in order to reach the docks.
In those days of shipping, and in some places in the world today, it was (is) common for small ships and barges to take the loads from large vessels and disburse them to the various ports and docks in the area of the larger port or anchorage facility.
There was even a class of ships built in the 60s and 70s where the lighters were carried by the ocean going ship. These are called LASH (Lighter Aboard SHip) vessels.
Today's cargo is containerized, and discharged at massive docks especially built with giant gantry cranes, and the containers are hauled to their destination by semi-tractor trailers.
was nice to see that, my Grandfather , his brothers and , my Grt Grandfather were lightermen, I was told they also had a tug or boat , their name was Margetts, i dont know what happened to them as i never really knew my Grandfather he died when i was only 2 yrs old, 1954, i think the family had their differences, and, they went their separate ways, thank you for showing that was nice to see what they did
How very British, my first job when I was an apprentice merchant navy deck officer was to make tea and coffee for the Captain and the river pilot when we sailed from Tilbury.
Oh dear, what we have lost.
I moved fro west london to the Isle of dogs in 1963. The river was alive with activity, and as a 12 year old used to collect Tug numbers ie Sun X!V etc. I wanted to be a lighterman, beacuse all you had to do, was stand on the back of a Barge, and sail along the Thames, with your shirt off catching the Sun. Unfortunatly it was a closed shop. You could not becoe a lighterman or Docker, unless you came from a family of dock workers. I wonder where that Lad is today, as only four years later they became redundant A guy I knew got a £7,000 pound pay off after years of working. I dare say the young lad got far less?
Good to see the old London tradition of nepotism was alive and well back then
In my first year of secondary school in 1960 at the end of term our headmaster wished the leavers farewell. One was going to be a "tea boy on a tug", and I thought, having enjoyed river trips on the Thames, and "cruises" on the Woolwich Ferry, "what a great job". I still think it must have been a great job, though demanding both in terms of watermanship, and endurance, out on the River in all weathers. Sadly with the demise of the London Docks over the following decade, I wonder what happened to him as the demand for tugboats on the River decreased. I worked for the last years until retirement in Docklands, and from my building, I had a panorama of the River from the Isle of Dogs upstream, traffic was almost non-existent, compared with what I remember from those trips in the heyday of the Docks, mostly pleasure craft and the "Clipper" ferries, with the occasional tug hauling rubbish barges downriver.
Great film from days gone by👍
Hard to believe they're all wearing shirts and ties and Civvy Street clobber instead of marine waterproofs and buoyancy aids. Next time I go sailing I think I'll wear my tux...!
'And I'm telling you .. I don't care if you're a Teddy Boy, Mod, Rocker, or Twist And Shouter .. no one's leaving this house - alive - not to be filmed for all the neighbours to see you without a clean shirt and tie on.'
@@TheLeonhamm My father was apprentice in the late forties for Blackfriars a lighterage firm where all the freeman( you become a freeman of the river when you passed your apprenticeship) came to work in a suit shirt and tie.
Very interesting this :-)
This is a great little documentary or whatever they were called then. Far too many people employed for the work in hand!
Great...times..
Many in my family were lightermen before the days of engines and tugs, when the lighters were moved by sweep and tide. Would be interesting to see a film produced about those days.
Moved by tide, okay. But what on earth is moved by sweep? Did you English build a warp drive by bending spacetime in front of ships? Is that sweep? You dazzle me all the time.
@@voornaam3191 row or scull with oar
@@voornaam3191 A sweep is just a very long oar, suitable for controlling the orientation of a barge or lighter or small sailing ship being carried along by the tide, and occasionally giving it a very small amount of way sufficient to keep it lined up with approaching bridge holes [about thirty bridges from Teddington to the Tower, and a rise and fall of up to about 25 feet giving tides of 7 or 8 knots at times] or to bring it close to mooring buoys or quays or other anchored vessels at its destination.
@@robwilde855 .....sounds easy to do.....not.
@@darioburatovich2240 Indeed! One reason they had long apprenticeships. From my limited experience using sweeps to manoevre largish hulls, up to about fifteen tons merely, I should think it would have depended a lot on getting into position in VERY good time, taking from a vast store of knowledge, from experience, forming accurate estimates of current flow, speed and direction, and wind effect, and God knows what else!
Very different times.
Still foggy and smoggy, in the early morning chill; but just a year or two before the Detergent Wave swamped the Thames with filthy foam.
What was that all about? The detergent wave I mean…
@@TheBushfish The Thames was - like some other large rivers in the UK (and the US) - filled with filthy soap foam .. poured out with the sewage from homes, launderettes, factories, etc. Seeing foam-bergs accumulate even on largely unpolluted streams in the 1950s-60s was common enough, the scum became grimier the closer it came to cities - yet it was the unseen concomitant chemical pollutants that left much of these rivers .. worse than dead (alive, but hostile to life).
ua-cam.com/video/8CuY4AyvqNQ/v-deo.html
Oh! But of course, nothing like that could ever happen today ... Hmmmmm?
Your services are no longer required.
When i was a cadet in the British MN i attended Gravesend Sea School in 88 and the old MN Officers had many stories about these Lightermen and such, they also spoke about the huge stone Pillars that we discovered after we walked along the Thames embankment and it all seemed a bit like some long forgotten Masonic lodge society if that makes any sense....i'm sorry but that's about the best as i can put it .
Top film, what are the 3-legged stanchions, either side, at the aft end of the engine room casing? Thanks. Looks like they are just to keep lines off the skylights etc?
Yes thats right - they are called stopper posts , although you can use them for tieing a rope to and mooring up, they are basically designed to stop the tow rope coming round and catching on the casing top and things.
Thank you!
No Life jackets, well well well !!!
Great film! Greetings from Norway! Is this still the same today or did the Iron Maiden break this up too?
Iron maiden?
@@liquidhighway I think he means Iron Lady i.e Mrs Thatcher
@@TheAngryNeighbour Ah yes! Sadly the industry in the film is mostly gone, there are still a few companies that operate lighterage with tugs today but not so many
Containers and boxships were the main cause of the decline of the trade.
Lighters transhipping to docks and onto the canals is long since obsolete.
The brexiteers would love this , not a foreigner in sight .
?? Your comment says a lot about you
@@Mute040404 Indeed according to these moron's every country deserves it's own unique culture except god forbid England
Yeah great isn't it .
WHEN MY BELOVED ENGLAND WAS WHITE RIP ENGLAND
Yeah l know what you mean, l can say the same what’s happening here in Australia