What a stevedore was
The word stevedore is generally traced to Spanish and Portuguese terms for a person who stows cargo, and it entered English through the ports of the early modern period. In the strict sense a stevedore was the specialist who stowed cargo in a ship’s hold so that it travelled safely and the vessel stayed balanced. Over time the word came to cover the broader body of waterfront workers, and in Britain they were more often called dockers, while in North America longshoremen was common.
The distinction between loading a ship and stowing it matters. Anyone strong enough could carry a sack up a gangway. Deciding where each item should go, how heavy goods should sit low and central, and how to prevent a shift in a rolling sea was a skill that took years to learn. A badly stowed ship could handle poorly, and a badly packed cargo could arrive damaged.
Muscle, rope and tackle
Before powered cranes, the basic equipment was simple. Porters carried sacks, bales and barrels on their backs or shoulders, or rolled casks along the quay. Planks and gangways ran from quay to deck. Ropes, pulley blocks and tackle allowed heavier loads to be lifted, often using the ship’s own yards and booms as lifting points. Capstans and winches, turned by hand, by horse or later by steam, supplied extra force.
Sailing ships were frequently loaded and unloaded using their own gear, and the same sailors who worked the ship sometimes helped with cargo. As ships grew larger and turnaround time became more important, specialist gangs took over the work. Cargoes were packed in whatever form the trade required: sacks of grain, bales of cotton and wool, barrels of wine and tar, bundles of hides, loose coal, and timber. This mixed, or break-bulk, cargo meant each item was handled individually many times, from warehouse to quay, from quay to sling, from sling to hold and then into position.
Spaces between larger items were filled with smaller goods, and loose timber known as dunnage was used to protect cargo and keep it from moving. The arrangement of a hold was planned partly in the order in which ports of call would be reached, so that the first cargo to be discharged was not buried beneath the last to be loaded.
Casual labour and the call-on
In many large ports, work was irregular because it depended on the arrival of ships, which in turn depended on weather and tides. Employers generally preferred to hire labour only when a ship was in port. The result in Britain and elsewhere was a system of casual hiring. Men gathered at set places at the start of the day, and foremen chose the number needed, sometimes in a manner that favoured acquaintances or those who could pay a favour. Those not chosen went home without wages.
This system produced both deep insecurity and a strong sense of community. Families lived near the docks, jobs were often handed from father to son, and neighbourhoods developed around the trade. It also produced a strong labour tradition, since a body of men with common hardships lived close together.
Different tasks carried different status. Skilled stowers, tally clerks who counted and recorded goods, riggers and winchmen were distinct from general labourers, and some groups defended their own work by custom. Dangerous or heavy cargoes, such as bulk grain or coal, brought particular risks of injury, and accidents from falling loads, slipping slings and unstable stacks were an ordinary hazard of the trade.
The 1889 London dock strike
The best-known British dispute is the London dock strike of August and September 1889. Dockers demanded a basic hourly rate that came to be known as the dockers’ tanner, meaning sixpence an hour, along with better terms of engagement. The strike gained wide public sympathy and financial support, including from supporters abroad, and the dockers largely won their central demands. It is often treated as a landmark in the history of unions for unskilled workers, because it showed that casual labourers could organise effectively.
Casual hiring did not disappear overnight, and later decades saw further disputes, schemes to register dock workers and, in Britain, national arrangements intended to give steadier employment. The details varied by port and country, and the picture of one harbour should not be applied automatically to another.
Steam, steel and new machinery
From the nineteenth century, hydraulic and then electric cranes, steam winches and powered conveyors began to take over the heaviest lifting. Steamers with their own steam winches could discharge faster than sailing ships, and specialised cargoes brought specialised equipment: grain elevators, coal tips, and later pumped systems for liquids. Even so, general cargo still needed many people. The tramp steamers that carried mixed cargoes between ports continued to rely on gangs of men in the hold and on the quay well into the twentieth century, and break-bulk handling remained labour-intensive.
Port work also reflected the larger trading system. Cargoes of tea, sugar, wool or spices had arrived in the great ships of the trading companies, and the East Indiaman era required large warehouses and many labourers to handle valuable goods under close supervision.
Containers and the end of an era
The decisive change came with container shipping. Once goods were packed into standard boxes that could be lifted whole by a crane, the number of workers needed to handle a ship fell sharply, and ships could be turned around in a fraction of the time previously required. Terminals required less labour but more capital, and the skills of hand stowage became largely redundant. In many cities this contributed to the closure of old riverside docks and to the decline of dockside communities.
What the container replaced was not simply a method but an entire working culture: the hiring stands, the gangs, the tally clerks and the vocabulary of the quayside. Much of the surviving evidence comes from photographs, union records and the memories of those who worked there, and historians continue to use these sources to understand a world of work that has largely vanished.