Two of my ancestors worked the docks in Red Hook, Brooklyn and Hoboken, New Jersey.

Fritz Kettler, born Freisland c 1862, was a longshoreman in Red Hook, Brooklyn and Hoboken, New Jersey between 1886 and his death in 1896.

Johann Berend Peterman was born in Ganderkessee, Germany in 1843. He spent a number of years at sea in the German Merchant Marines before immigrating to America. He was a longshoreman, stevedore and dock forman in Red Hook, Brooklyn and Hoboken, New Jersey between 1887 and 1905.

In the days before container shipping, stevedores worked inside the ship, packing and securing the merchandise. Dock workers and longshoreman worked on the docks moving merchandise from the ship to the docks and vice verse.

The port of New York, which included the docks in Brooklyn and Hoboken, was one of the busiest ports in the world in the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s when Johann Bernard Petermann, Fritz Kettler and Johannus Jensen (the first and second husbands of Hannah Peters) worked on the docks in Brooklyn and Hoboken.

Unloading

"The unloading, once begun, proceeds rapidly, as any men being employed as can work together conveniently, and the freight being hoisted out by means of tackle suspended from the yard-arm, and operated by steam or horse power. Usually, as fast as it is discharged, the cargo is sent to warehouses near by, and assorted for the owners."

Longshoremen

"The longshore-men are among the most ignorant and brutal of men. Their work is very laborious, but requires little skill; their surroundings and associations are all such as tend to degrade them; their pay is smaller than that of almost any other class of workmen, and their prejudices are easily excited. It thus happens that debauchery and murderous fighting are constant among them; extensive strikes against reduction of wages or some fancied imposition are of frequent occurrence; and some of the bloodiest riots New York has ever seen originated among them. Intemperate and brutal in every respect, yet hard workers, and consequently muscular, no class of men gives the police so much trouble as the longshore-men."

Several pages later the tone changes from the contempt of the previous paragraph to one of awe at the ability of the longshoremen to move heavy cargo.

"The ease with which exceedingly heavy bodies are handled by the stevedore's men is remarkable. The hatchways are often just large enough to let the package through, and frequently the space between decks is so circumscribed that the men have hardly room to move; yet by skillfully landing the hogshead, or boxed piano, or granite monument, or huge piece of machinery, as it is lowered to them by the tackle, by bringing it up and twisting it over with iron bars, pulling it with cotton hooks, and pushing it with brawny hands and shoulders, sitting down four or five in a row, against a bulkhead shoving with their feet, they slowly work the unwieldily mass into its corner, and brace it firmly by wedges; until its successor is placed."

Excerpts from Harper's Weekly September, 1877, THE LADING OF A SHIP

"Every human tied that has broken on the shores of America has left its mark on the dock-laboring class. Indeed, it is no more than sober truth that the history of emigration could be written inductively from the water-front.......

Facts have an uncanny way of smashing theories, prejudices and notions, and the first delusions about these men is their moral conduct. Unthinkingly they have been classed as dissolute and shiftless. So strong is this feeling that the best of them deny their calling when in a tight place......

....a longshoreman will handle 3,000 pounds weight per hour. These men carry on their backs for from 5 to 20 hours bags of sugar, flour, beef, coal, weighting from 175 to 350 pounds. How could these loads and weights and the commerce of a great port like New York be carried by a dissolute class of men?

Physically they must be strong, husky muscular men, to perform such feats. Before their work begins, there may be hours of waiting in the cold, when a man cannot afford to jeopardize his chance of being employed by going to a saloon for a snack.

Many of them have testified that a stretch of 20 to 35 hours' work with only occasional stops for meals leaves them impaired for days. The rush to get a ship to sea and working under high pressure is the cause of the high percentage of accidents.

The risks of the occupation are abnormally high. Longshoremen work in ships' holds cramped in narrow spaces like miners where the heat is oppressive in summer. Dust in some cargoes compels them to wear wet sponges over their mouths. Potatoes give off fumes that sometimes prove fatal, bone-dust is dreaded, dried hides cut the hands and blood-poising follows. Cuts, bruises, strains and ruptures are common."

Harper's Weekly August 13, 1881

Longshore-men

Loading and Unloading, Pier No. 6, East River

Harper's Weekly July 14, 1877

"A word about the lighters. They are broad, blunt-nosed, sloop-rigged boats, all deck except a little hole of a cabin, and used about the harbor for transporting merchandise to and from vessels at anchorage, or from wharf to wharf. They are thoroughly ill-looking, always in the way, and only to be excused for existence on the score of the great usefulness. The lighters are on the rivers what the carts are on the streets."

Loading From A Floating Elevator

Interior of Bonded-Warehouse

SCENE ON THE GREAT FLOUR DOCKS, COENTIES SLIP, EAST RIVER, NEW YORK

Coenties Slip was located in lower Manhattan.

Unfortunately, the accompanying article was not included with this image. However, I believe that the men with the T shaped devises on the left are inspecting the flour. There were laws regulating the quality or grade of the flour to insure that it would make a decent bread. The barrels were inspected to determine that they were constructed according to regulations to protect the flour from moisture and bugs. They barrels were also weighed.

I do not know why there are women and children on the dock. They appear to be working at something and may be helpers of the flour inspectors.