Category: England, Lightermen

Categories: England, Occupations | Lightermen

Landing level category

This category is managed by the England Project in association with the Categorization Project. For assistance with this or related categories ask in G2G making sure to tag your question with both categorization and England.

This category contains profiles for individuals who worked in this occupation in England.

Lightermen worked flat bottomed barges. Lighters which loaded and unloaded vessels away from the quay. This could be simply working on the opposite side of the vessel, but especially before the provision of enclosed docks it often meant loading and unloading vessels moored in the estuary away from the harbour. At this time lighters were generally powered mainly or entirely by poles and oars but especially by the use of the tides and currents to move the lighters.

A sub-category were ballast lighters specialising in loading and unloading ballast, (rocks cobbles bricks and other heavy rubbish) in and out of the holds of vessels below any cargo to keep the vessel from heeling over even in the stormiest seas.

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