John Walsh
Early Career
'The first 6 years I was from ship to ship with every different companies in the Deep Sea Section... in 1969 I went to work with – permanently work with Dublin Maritime – who took over the Dutch trade – nearly all the cargo that came out of Rotterdam and... I worked with them until DCH took over the stevedoring that was a fully owned company... owned by Dublin Port.And when they liquidated I came back after 9 months and worked for the remaining 16 and 18 years with Marine Terminals that’s where I finished up.'
Training
'Little or no training as such, it was all onsite training. If-if you got a job in the hold of the ship the men you worked with trained you... you had to learn how to lift properly without hurting yourself... and a lot of it was hard work but it was very rewarding they were – the men themselves were very easy to work with – they were all characters, every single one of them had a- had a history you – you could say that was…shady to a degree.But it made life very interesting.'
Work Satisfaction
'It was a case of – I know for my first 5-6 years I was kind of hugging myself going to work I loved it that much because – they were the most interesting group of people I’ve ever come across in my life...I hadn’t know people like that before. I suppose I had... I had a sheltered lifestyle at home before I went down there it really opened my eyes up. Every day, every ship was different its like walking - somebody walking out of a candle factory and the next day they go into a bakery and following day they go into a hotel. It’s different every single day was different.'
Cargo
'Everything!You might go to a ship one day and it would have a –a cargo of onions, maybe two thousand tonnes of onions and they would be distributed all over the country. The onions were in – a lot of them were in sacks, others were in boxes. At the time – bananas, a whole cargo of bananas would come in on stalks not like you see them in cartons now and just – they’d be stalks, big stalks and they would have to be slung by rope. They’d be timber, you could have ten days work at a timber ship... in particular they came from Russia – the Russian timber boats – and it was all loose stuff at the time, each board was loose and you had to make up a hoist into a strap, weighing approximately a tonne , a tonne and a half... and because of the... the – the – I suppose the – because of the... war those ships in Russia were... they were loaded by women... 100% by women, a lot of the men were killed, there was wholesale slaughter in Russia at the time...if you saw the ship – the way it was loaded by – you’d – you’d swear women couldn’t have done this. It was too hard, absolutely packed in tight, aside from the climate change coming from Russia to here, you know, but the stuff was packed that tight, you could hardly get it out. We used... cargo hooks - It was an – it was like an extensions of your arm and you’d have to dig it into the timber to prize it out, each floor boards, you know, it was packed that tight it was unbelievable to think that women had done that and again that was back breaking stuff.'
Dock Workers
'...they would wind anyone up and that- the whole day was a windup, em, even thought you were working, it was a brilliant way of getting through heavy hard work just keep laughing all the time. I have to say now they were terrific guys... starting off again I'd do the same again.'
The Reads
'the foreman was up on a stand - stood up on like a little stage - platform, so that he could see out in front of - there would be a whole sea of men in front of him and he would pick out, calling the names... when he got to a stage where he didn't know anymore... buttonmen existed out there that's exactly what he'd call 'Anymore Buttonmen?' so as a buttonman you walked out, you handed the company your cards, they had a clerk or something they used to take the...cards and... after that, all his buttonmen are - they're gone, they're all employed then he reverts to non-buttonmen who he knew, he began to call - so that's the way I would have been... it probably in some case there wouldn't be enough work... if...there’d be two different reads in the day... sorry three! There was eight o clock in the morning and when they employed all the men for those...nearly all the buttonmen would be gone. At ten o clock there would be another read and then eleven o clock would be a read for say a two o clock start or an early start the next morning and a lot of them would be non-buttonmen waiting just picking up the last little bits. But depending on the job some of the buttonmen used to hang back and they wouldn't stand in the read at eight o clock because they’d know there's a better job at ten o clock or eleven o clock and in that case if they are not in the read the foreman can't employ them so he may pick up a few of the non-buttonmen. '