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Chapter Five ARTIFICERS AND LABOURERS If we know how the lash enforced authority afloat, how was control over workers maintained by the navy in its yards ashore? The interaction between officers, artificers, and "the people of the yard" will be central as we examine working conditions, recruitment, kinship, apprenticeship, efficiency, embezzlement, wages, superannuation, and discipline. Some of the ideas found here derive from two studies of Portsmouth dockyard workers which analysed administration as well as the social ties created by kinship, apprenticeship, and long-term employment.1 For yard workers, of the principal officers the most important was the master shipwright. As we have seen in chapter 4, he was responsible for the repair of ships and the maintenance of the physical site of the yard. He oversaw 85 per cent of those employed in the yard, through several foremen. He had to work closely with the master attendant who directed the riggers and sailmakers and had much to do with masting. To receive all necessary materials and tools for this work, the master shipwright had to liaise closely with the naval storekeeper and his staff of clerks and store porters. Finally, he had to keep the commissioner abreast of his labour needs, when a shortage of yard artificers made the help of both ships' artificers and working parties crucial to the repairs needed by the squadron. The repair ofwarships was the yard's principal task. Refitting, as it was termed, involved careening, caulking, rebuilding, painting, and rigging. From 1781 onwards ships' bottoms were also coppered in the Halifax yard, a process introduced a few years earlier in England. Routine work included: fashioning out of the so-called sticks all the masts, topmasts, yards, and spars, and of sawing boards, plank, and deals; 102 Part Two: Work Force smiths' work; and the sailmaking needed in the repair of ships, small yard vessels, and ships' boats. Those who undertook this work, "the people of the yard," included skilled artificers and their apprentices on the one hand, and common labourers with working parties of seamen on the other. Of the skilled, the largest group was invariably composed of shipwrights and shipwright-caulkers. They worked side-by-side with working parties of seamen to unload and load mastships and storeships, sorting and storing the materials received. They laid out the decayed stores sold at public auction. They served as carters and fire engine crews. They acted as builders' labourers when structural repairs to buildings were undertaken by the yard. At times they maintained officers' houses and gardens and worked in the commissioner's stables and cowshed. They served as domestic servants, messengers, and watchmen. Others served as crewmen on the boats maintained for the principal officers, or as hulksmen in the sheer hulk. One group of workmen employed by the yard were employed afloat. These were the hulksmen, whose task it was to work under the orders of the master attendant. As the Navy Board specified their numbers in the establishment, there was frequently the same sort of tug-ofwar of their numbers between the Board and the yard commissioner as there was over the establishment as a whole. As an example, when the peacetime establishment was instituted at Halifax in the brief period of peace after the ratification of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, difficulties from staff shortages manifested themselves. The reduced establishment called for six sheer hulksmen. One task normally undertaken in winter was to make small cordage for the use of the yard. Sobusy were they in 1802-03 that this service could not be undertaken as usual. Worse, the master attendant for whom they worked had experienced difficulty in preventing different yard craft and launches from being damaged for lack of men to secure them. An additional four men were requested.2 Repeated requests to increase the establishment of this crucial body of men made by Inglefield during his ten years in the yard and detailed in chapter 6, were refused. As a touchstone to gauge the very limited importance of the Halifax yard in the eyes of the Admiralty and Navy Board there is scarcely a better example. To complete its work on those occasions when the squadron was in harbour and urgently needing to be refitted, the yard made extensive use of ships' artificers as well as large working parties of seamen.3 They came not only from warships, but from transports.4 Even when [18.116.63.236] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 04:04...

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