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The Introduction of Task Work into the Royal Dockyards, 1775

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

James M. Haas
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Extract

Looking back on his tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1771 to 1782, Lord Sandwich considered that one of his most important accomplishments was the introduction into the royal dockyards of task work for shipwrights — “a matter very little known in the world, but the only material improvement … which will enable us to build and repair a much larger number of ships.” Task work had long been universal in private shipyards, and its use in the navy's own yards was discussed at intervals for eighty years at least before its adoption in 1775. But opposition to the method — from the Navy Board and the shipwrights and their officers — was entrenched. Arguments against it, having once prevailed, afterwards were seemingly invincible, their mere invocation being enough to stop further consideration. The obstacles after so long a time might have been insuperable to one less confident and determined than Sandwich. Indeed, the innovation when it was made produced a strike of shipwrights which forced its partial abandonment before the scheme had properly been tried.

Task workers, instead of being employed for a fixed daily wage with an additional allowance for overtime, were paid according to the amount of work actually performed, the ship itself being divided into parts, for each of which an over-all labor price was established and apportioned equally among the men. The advantages of the method appear on the face of it overwhelming. The shipwrights were encouraged to work steadily and rapidly in order to increase their earnings, which thus were greater than those of the day workers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , May 1969 , pp. 44 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1969

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References

1. Barnes, G. R. and Owen, J. H. (eds.), The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich (London, 1932–1938), IV, 287Google Scholar.

2. The dockyards were the responsibility of the Navy Board, which in turn was under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty.

3. The following discussion is based on observations made by the Navy Board in 1775. PRO, Adm. 106/2203, pp. 16-18.

4. Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 287–310Google Scholar.

5. PRO, Adm. 106/2201, p. 293.

6. PRO, Adm. 106/2186, pp. 132-33; Navy Board to Admiralty, June 27, 1694, quoted in PRO, ibid., pp. 133-34.

7. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 54. Adm. 7/662 is Sandwich's minutes of the dockyards visitation of 1775 containing invaluable observations on task work and the attitudes to it as well as an eyewitness account of the shipwrights' strike.

8. PRO, Adm. 106/2186, p. 133.

9. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 7-8.

10. PRO, ibid., fol. 54.

11. Sandwich and Anson had been Commissioners of the Admiralty since 1744. During Sandwich's administration as First Lord from 1748 to June 1751, when Anson succeeded him, they acted in effect as a duumvirate. Anson probably was the dominant of the two; “Mr. Anson will have as much of the power of the office while I am at the head of it as he can ever desire,” Sandwich once wrote. LordRussell, John (ed.), Correspondence of John Fourth Duke of Bedford (London, 1842–1846), I, 192–93Google Scholar.

12. One of the purposes of the visitation of 1749 — the first ever made — was to effect reforms which would “prevent any unnecessary expence of the Public Treasure.” PRO, Adm. 106/2507, No. 399. By 1753 there was enough money only for the most essential works of the yards. PRO, Adm. 3/63, Feb. 13, 1753. By the end of 1754 only 5,146 artificers remained in the yards, 1,600 fewer than tho least number employed between 1763 and 1778, which was also a period of strict economy. These and subsequent statistics of the number of dockyard workers are taken from PRO, Adm. 106/2188 ff.

13. PRO, Adm. 3/61, Aug. 5, 1749.

14. PRO, Adm. 2/215, p. 50.

15. PRO, Adm. 106/2186, pp. 128-29; Adm. 3/62, June 2, 1752.

16. PRO, Adm. 106/2186, pp. 129-37; Adm. 3/62, June 2, 1752.

17. Perhaps the most remarkable example is the Admiralty directive to the Navy Board in 1764, repeated in 1767, to digest the standing orders to the dockyards which had accumulated haphazardly for a century and by then were largely unintelligible, inadequate, and ineffective. Despite the Navy Board's assurances at the outset that the work was being done as quickly as possible, little if any progress had been made by 1783, when Sir Charles Middleton took it up, finishing it in 1786. PRO, Adm. 106/2196, p. 219; Adm. 3/75, fol. 121; SirLaughton, John Knox (ed.), Letters and Papers of Charles, Lord Barham (London, 1907–1911), II, 228Google Scholar.

18. The two Commissioners of the Navy whose opinions were decisive in matters of this nature.

19. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 73-74.

20. See PRO, Adm. 7/661, fols. 80-81.

21. Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 310–11Google Scholar.

22. PRO, Adm. 106/2508, Nos. 458, 610, 619, 667, 669.

23. Sir Hugh Palliser was promoted to the Board of Admiralty in April 1775, a few days after the plan was implemented. Sir Maurice Suckling succeeded him as Comptroller.

24. PRO, Adm. 7/659, fols. 54, 85. Concerning timber supplies see Albion, Robert Greenhalgh, Forests and Sea Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), pp. 133–35Google Scholar; Commons Reports, XXXI (1771), passimGoogle Scholar.

25. PRO, Adm. 106/2186, p. 348. The yards were no better supplied in 1771 than in 1753, when only a year and a half's supply of timber was in store or due on contract.

26. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 74-75.

27. There were nearly fifty-nine thousand loads. This is an equivalent computation derived by reckoning sided and converted timber as one-third more than rough. In the next year, however, the supply increased to only slightly more than sixty thousand loads. Moreover, it was improperly distributed; Portsmouth and Plymouth had more than three years' supply, the other yards much less. PRO, ibid., fols. 18, 19, 31, 42, 50, 57; Adm. 2/243, p. 543.

28. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 4. The schedule is printed in Parliamentary Papers (1806), V, 352 ffGoogle Scholar.

29. PRO, Adm. 3/81, fols. 10, 50, 70; Adm. 106/2508, No. 673. The America had been completed as far as the fifth article, the Culloden the eighth, which was the reason for their selection. Work on them by task began on Apr. 1.

30. PRO, Adm. 106/2203, pp. 160-66. The number of task gangs in the various yards was: Deptford — 14, Woolwich — 10, Chatham — 20, Sheerness — 4, Portsmouth — 21, Plymouth — 26. Of 3,232 shipwrights in the yards, 1,908 (62 per cent) were put into task gangs.

31. PRO, Adm. 106/2508, No. 673.

32. This regulation was applied to day workers also in 1776. PRO, ibid., No. 684.

33. The foreman of a gang.

34. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 2, 9.

35. PRO, ibid., fol. 5.

36. PRO, ibid., fols. 4-6; Adm. 106/2508, No. 673.

37. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 6; Adm. 106/2508, No. 673. Extra work, or overtime, consisted of “tides” of one and one-half hours each and “nights” of five hours; a “double tide” was a regular working day of twelve hours and a “night.”

38. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 5, 61; Adm. 106/2508, No. 673.

39. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 1-2.

40. PRO, ibid., fols. 59-60.

41. PRO, ibid., fols. 60-61; see Baugh, Daniel A., British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965), p. 322Google Scholar. During the War of the Austrian Succession shipwrights in merchant yards earned from 3s 6d to upwards of 7s for a twelve-hour day; those in the royal dockyards could earn no more than 4s 2d working double tides.

42. Decommissioned ships. These were moored in the dockyards.

43. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 61-62.

44. PRO, ibid., fol. 3.

45. PRO, Adm. 3/81, fol. 50; Adm. 7/662, fols. 13-15. A piece of timber which had purposely been bent by heating was being laid when the dinner bell rang and the men were made to stop work immediately. The timber cooled and the work had to be done again at the men's expense.

46. PRO, ibid., fols. 10, 13, 16, 21. Sandwich was accompanied on the visitation by Palliser and four Commissioner of the Navy — Sir Maurice Suckling (Comptroller), Sir John Williams (Surveyor), George Marsh (Clerk of the Acts), and William Palmer (Comptroller of the Victualling Accounts).

47. PRO, ibid., fols. 23-24.

48. PRO, ibid., fol. 37; Adm. 106/2203, pp. 145, 147. For previous strikes in the dockyards see Ehrman, John, The Navy in the War of William III, 1689-1697 (Cambridge, 1953), p. 489Google Scholar; Baugh, , Naval Administration, pp. 288, 323–27Google Scholar; Ranft, B. McL., “Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards in 1739,” Mariner's Mirror, XLVII (1961), 281–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. Of 3,221 shipwrights in the yards on June 14, about 1,450 struck (see below). Not all the shipwrights, however, were employed in the building and repair of ships; many worked in the mast and boathouses or belonged to no gang. See PRO, Adm. 106/2203, p. 160.

50. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 25; Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 312Google Scholar.

51. This was one of several petitions.

52. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 24-28; Adm. 106/2203, pp. 111, 145.

53. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 28-29. Many at least of the repenters were not immediately reinstated; all applications were to be approved by the Commissioners of the Navy, who left for Plymouth on Wednesday morning.

54. PRO, ibid., fols. 34-35. There were 857 shipwrights at Portsmouth. Of the 794 at Plymouth, 521 were in task gangs. PRO, Adm. 106/2203, p. 160.

55. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 46; Adm. 106/2203, p. 147. Eleven men refused to strike, and five men in day gangs joined the strikers. There were 331 shipwrights at Deptford. At Chatham, where there were 657 (402 in task gangs), 249 struck. PRO, ibid., p. 160; Gentleman's Magazine, XLV (1775), 405Google Scholar.

56. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 63. Sheerness was exceptional in being situated in marshy, unhealthy country remote from any town. Since it was difficult to attract an adequate number of workers, as an inducement they were provided with free lodgings in either houses or cabins in the hulks which served as a breakwater. BM, King's MSS, 44, fol. 20.

57. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 51-53.

58. PRO, ibid., fol. 26.

59. PRO, ibid., fol. 36.

60. See PRO, Adm. 3/61, June 7, 1749; Adm. 106/2193, p. 239.

61. PRO, Adm. 2/243, p. 285; Adm. 7/662, fol. 53.

62. At Woolwich, however, the men were paid 8d per tide. Until 1772 the rate at Deptford was only 6d per tide. PRO, Adm. 106/2201, p. 251. The amount and duration of extra depended on the requirements of the service and the money available. Two tides extra and nights were worked only in times of emergency. Parliamentary Papers (1803–1804), III, 17.Google Scholar

63. See ibid.; Baugh, , Naval Administration, pp. 327–28Google Scholar.

64. PRO, Adm. 2/243, p. 285; Adm. 7/662, fol. 53. An anonymous correspondent sympathetic with the strikers asserted that some men made 4s a day, others only Is 6d. See Gentleman's Magazine, XLV, 325–26Google Scholar. The writer's remarks are interesting chiefly for their misconceptions, which were duly corrected in the next issue in an authoritative letter probably written by a member of the Admiralty or Navy Boards, perhaps by Sandwich himself. Ibid., XLV, 389-90.

65. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 25, 34, 47; Adm. 106/2203, p. 145. There was of course the fear that task might again be made obligatory which at Plymouth led to demands for its permanent abandonment. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 36.

66. PRO, ibid., fols. 23-24, 36-37, 47.

67. Parliamentary Papers (1803–1804), III, 16Google Scholar.

68. However, they were less than in merchant yards. See above, n. 42. See charts and tables in Gilboy, Elizabeth W., Wages in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), passimGoogle Scholar.

69. See Baugh, , Naval Administration, p. 316Google Scholar.

70. Gentleman's Magazine, XLV, 389–90Google Scholar.

71. See PRO, Adm. 3/61, July 6, 1749; Adm. 106/2198, pp. 236-37, 239, 242.

72. PRO, Adm. 106/2203, p. 18.

73. Parliamentary Papers (1803–1804), III, 17.Google Scholar

74. See Baugh, , Naval Administration, pp. 323–27Google Scholar.

75. The average wage at Plymouth in 1758 was 3s. Parliamentary Papers (1803–1804), III, 16Google Scholar. In wartime, when two tides and double tides might be worked, earnings were much greater.

76. See Ashton, T. S., An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London, 1955), pp. 40, 197-98, 234Google Scholar; Gilboy, , Wages, pp. 288–92Google Scholar.

77. PRO, Adm. 106/2201, p. 220. A pay rise could be granted only by the king in council.

78. Gentleman's Magazine, XLV, 389Google Scholar.

79. See Ehrman, , Navy in the War of William III, pp. 328, 475, 489Google Scholar; Baugh, , Naval Administration, p. 327 and n. 272Google Scholar.

80. PRO, Adm. 3/75, fol. 190.

81. PRO, Adm. 106/2201, p. 220.

82. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 37-38.

83. See PRO, ibid., fol. 25.

84. PRO, ibid., fols. 37-38.

85. PRO, ibid., fol. 62.

86. On the matter of a wage rise see PRO, ibid., fol. 37; Gentleman's Magazine, XLV, 389Google Scholar.

87. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 25, 48.

88. PRO, ibid., fol. 49.

89. PRO, ibid., fols. 63-64; Adm. 3/81, fol. 77.

90. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fols. 63-64.

91. PRO, Adm. 3/81, fols. 77-78.

92. Sandwich's assertion that most of the contributions “came from American Agents, who wanted to seduce them to migrate to the Colonies,” is interesting. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 65. Improbable though this may seem — I have been unable to find other evidence — it should not be dismissed out of hand.

93. PRO, ibid., fols. 64-65.

94. Gentleman's Magazine, XLV, 403–05Google Scholar. Sandwich believed that if the men's demand to be paid for the time of the strike had been met, they would have returned to work much sooner; but this is problematical. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 63.

95. PRO, Adm. 2/243, p. 285.

96. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 65.

97. See above. When Sandwich visited the yards in 1772, he received many requests for a greater allowance of apprentices, and a small increase was made as an encouragement to the shipwrights. PRO, Adm. 106/2201, pp. 391-93.

98. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 65; Adm. 2/243, p. 355; Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 288Google Scholar.

Shipwrights discharged from the dockyards (based on PRO, Adm. 106/2202, pp. 203-04, 209-11):

99. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 63. There were 3,221 shipwrights in the yards on June 14, 3,070 on Sep. 30, a decrease of 151. Since 129 had been discharged, it appears that 22 new men had been hired as a result of the Navy Board's advertisements. PRO, Adm. 106/2202, p. 203.

100. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 65.

101. See PRO, Adm. 3/83, fols. 222-23; Adm. 3/84, fols. 86-87, 114.

102. PRO, Adm. 7/662, fol. 62; SirFortescue, John (ed.), The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1927–1928), III, 254, No. 1707Google Scholar.

103. PRO, Adm. 106/2203, p. 205.

104. No doubt these matters were already under review.

105. PRO, ibid., pp. 158-59, 161-66; Adm. 2/243, pp. 284-85; Adm. 106/2508, No. 684. The revised rates were established early in Sep., the amended rules and regulations on Apr. 1, 1776.

106. PRO, ibid., No. 693.

107. Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 288Google Scholar.

108. PRO, Adtn. 106/2203, p. 205.

109. PRO, Adm. 106/2508, No. 918; Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 288Google Scholar. Yet many of the best men did. In 1778 the master shipwright at Portsmouth and his assistants complained of “the great inequality there is between the Day and Task Gangs, the former being so much weaker than the latter and desired that … they may be permitted to put them on a more equal footing, which will prevent the many inconveniences they now experience.” As a result, some of the task workers at Chatham, Portsmouth, and Plymouth were distributed among the day gangs. PRO, Adm. 106/2205, pp. 198-99.

110. Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 409;Google Scholar see also PRO, Adm. 106/2508, No. 918.

111. Barnes, and Owen, , Sandwich Papers, IV, 288–89Google Scholar.

112. Parliamentary Papers (1803–1804), III, 20–21Google Scholar. Plymouth held out until 1788.

113. For a brief survey see Cole, G. D. H. and Postgate, Raymond, The British Common People, 1746-1946 (London, 1961), pp. 169–72Google Scholar.

114. See Parliamentary Papers (1859), XVIII, 15.Google Scholar