The Tribes of Port Baltimore

Non-Fiction – Maryland Writer’s Association 2019 Anthology

March 1976

Working on the waterfront means learning to deal with tribalism, in all of its forms. Each port has its own unique flair, its own tribes and its own dialect. In Baltimore, the largest tribes are Irish, Polish and African-American, sometimes called Micks, Polacks and Blacks. The tone of voice of the speaker determines whether it is a descriptive adjective, harmless banter or vitriolic acid, thrown at the recipient. It’s amazing what you can tell from the tone of someone’s voice.
When dealing with the waterfront, there is a hierarchy, a union, the International Longshoremen’s Association. The big Kahuna of tribes. There are also local unions, tribes within the tribe. What helps define them as tribes is everyone is related to most of the others in that tribe, whether through blood, marriage or long-standing family feuds.

Growing up near the docks in South Boston, I already knew about the Micks. No secrets there. I am one. Now, in Baltimore I have to learn the ways of Polacks and Blacks, cultures I know about, but only from a distance. On the waterfront there is bias. Large chasms difficult if not impossible to cross, but to limit it to skin color ignores the true nature of the rift. On the Baltimore waterfront, the personal bias has little to do with skin color but everything to do with culture.

I admit, first day on the job, there is trepidation on my part. Four years of being at sea with crew members of many cultural heritages have given me a glimpse at how important “commonality” is in our everyday lives. Find something in common with the folks you work with and focus on that. By focusing on the common ground, other things, potentially disagreeable and even explosive, get set aside and tolerated. They still exist, but are no longer ‘triggerable’ by an inadvertent word or misinterpreted look. On the waterfront, the common ground is hard work.

As the new guy on the block, bearing a strong, New England accent, I am an outsider. Tribalism exists within the management ranks also, with the Irish being leery of the Polish. Blacks don’t exist in management. They hold positions of leadership in the unions but haven’t broken the tribal barriers of management.
My tribal barrier to entry is language. I don’t speak “Balmorese.” For example, the third time the secretary in the office called me “Hon,” I felt obliged to explain to her I am a happily married man and wouldn’t succumb to her charms. By the twentieth time, I understood that they called everyone “Hon,” your given name was incidental, and I no longer felt the need to fend off amorous advances that existed only in my mind. Big sigh of relief, followed by, “Hey, why doesn’t she think I’m the cat’s meow?”

The Port of Baltimore comprises different geographical tribal areas. Downtown, predominantly Blacks, is the inner harbor, beginning to convert to tourism as the old piers either collapse or get torn down. Locust Point, both North and South, are predominantly Irish. Both North and South terminals are break-bulk terminals that can also handle containers. Western Maryland piers abutting South Locust Point are old and purely break-bulk. Dundalk, a large Polish area, is king. The Maryland Port Administration (MPA) has put most of its money into the building of Dundalk Marine Terminal to handle the newer container and Roll-On / Roll-Off ships. Different parts of the city, different neighborhoods, different cultures, different tribes.

I had arrived at the Dundalk office on Friday afternoon and checked in with my boss. Booked into the Days Inn in Towson where I would live for three months until my wife and kids could join me, I spent the weekend driving around town, familiarizing myself with the city. I’ve been here before. The first time on my training cruise in 1964. The “Block” the ultimate den of iniquity, was the highlight of that stop. I had also stopped here a few times when I sailed as a Third Mate. When here as a deck officer on a freighter, your perspective is different. You’re leery of the longshoremen, presuming they will damage the cargo or the ship or try to steal things. Now, after working as a stevedore in Boston supervising those same longshoremen, I knew they were just guys, earning a living. No different here in Baltimore.

Cargo doesn’t appear by magic. To load cargo on a ship, it first has to arrive at the pier carried by trucks or railcars. Vice versa for the cargo discharged from ships. Handling that cargo is hard, demanding work. Depending on the type cargo, it might have to be hand-thrown, like bags of coffee or cocoa beans weighing over one hundred pounds, or handled with a forklift if palletized or crated. Someone also has to count that cargo and verify it’s correct. Here is where the ‘tribes within the tribes’ comes into play. The counters are the clerks and checkers.

The clerks/checkers union is Irish with a smattering of Polish. They are responsible for all the clerical work required for the proper receiving and delivering of the cargo, both to and from the ships, trucks and railcars. Clerks work in an office, checkers work outdoors on the pier and on the ships. There is a rigid seniority system for getting a job, but on the job, it’s the Chief Clerk who controls your fate. All tribes have chiefs, but the Chief Clerk is more of a Shaman, able to work magic. For example, putting his brother-in-law who has a tough time tying his own shoes on a tallying (counting) job. When said brother-in-law lets the tally slips blow away into the harbor while lighting a cigarette and sneaking a nip out of his flask, magic is required to make the counts come out right.
That same Shaman also has the magical ability to interpret time. When a checker he doesn’t like or one who screwed up the counts too many times in the past shows up two minutes late on the job, there is a reaction. The Shaman sitting at his desk, without lifting his head, will point at the clock on the wall and say, “Try again tomorrow, I’ve called for a replacement.” The miscreant slinks away, knowing it is futile to argue. When the Shaman’s poker partner shows up forty minutes late, the only statement made is “Did you bring me a donut?” Tribalism!

The car-handlers union is Black. They don’t handle cars. That is a throwback reference to railcar work. The car-handlers do all the physical work of loading and unloading trucks and railcars. Everyone in the car-handlers union is old. Very old! Ancient! Some of them can barely move. The foreman on our pier, exaggerates egregiously, telling blatant lies about his prowess in everything from sex to sporting events. He is one of those who can barely move, except for his jaw, which never stops. He is a legend in his own mind.
More importantly, he is respected by the other car handlers and the checkers. If there is a problem with a car-handler, it is instantly resolved when the foreman shows up. It may take him half an hour to get there but the resolution is instantaneous. He is slow but effective. Knowing what a difficult work environment the waterfront can be, and knowing no one gets respect on the waterfront without earning it, I will respect him.

The longshoremen’s union, called ‘the big local’ is Black, Irish and Polish. Back in the day, a “Stevedore” was an individual with knowledge and experience at loading and unloading cargo and the Stevedore would hire and direct longshoremen. Now it is a generic term for the companies who hire longshoremen. Every stevedore company has a certain number of ‘gangs’ assigned to it, called ‘house gangs’ and the company has first call on their services. Every gang has a foreman (Gang Boss). If not being used by their ‘house’ company, gangs may be assigned to other, competing, stevedore companies. This is the best example of management ignoring tribalism. Every gang carries its reputation, good, bad or indifferent. Management wants the gang that works hardest, often preferring another company’s gang over one of their own. Another form of tribalism.
To complicate matters further, each individual longshoreman can work for any company on the waterfront and will get his job on a daily basis through the hiring hall, based on his seniority.
Prior to my arriving at Baltimore, the longshore union was split into two locals, one black, one white. A legal proceeding resolved that and they formed one local, but there still exists Black Gangs, Irish Gangs and Polish Gangs. There is some mixing when an individual doesn’t show up for work and they order a fill-in replacement from the hiring hall, but, by and large, the tribes stand apart.
The Gang Boss, like the Chief Clerk is a law unto himself. If you screwed up on the job and embarrassed the Gang Boss, you’d sit on the sidelines for a month or more before he’d hire you again. Although the seniority system is cast in stone, the Gang Bosses are hammers that break the stone when it suits them. If you complain, you are ostracized, sometimes silently, sometimes vociferously. Few complain. They know the price to pay.

Notice I keep saying “him”, ‘his,’ or “he.” Here in Baltimore, in fact, on the entire east coast there are no women in the waterfront tribes. There are rumors of a few brave souls trying to break into the work force. It won’t be easy. Machoism is alive and thriving in all tribes on the waterfront.

Monday morning, clear weather, fifty-two degrees. Considered cold in Baltimore, this is a warm day in New England. Same temperature and humidity, different attitude.
No ships working this morning, only terminal operations. How do I handle the tribalism? More important, how will they handle me? My boss introduced me to the chief clerk, car-handler foreman and cooper foreman. A cooper is a carpenter, known as a wood-butcher. A lot of minor repairs are necessary for the cargo. Broken crates, slits in bags to be sewn up. This morning, we are also stripping containers. No, not some illicit or immoral activity. Stripping is unloading the cargo that arrives in containers. A driver backs a container into one of the truck platforms at the transit shed. The checker checks the seal to see if it is intact and records the number of the seal. The longshoremen open the container door, same as a truck door, and then unload it. Two tribes working in unison. The car handlers don’t touch the cargo until after it has reached a place-of-rest on the transit shed floor. It’s called “jurisdiction” and is the biggest source of arguments on the waterfront. The tribes are not always friendly to one another.

Today, first day, two-and-a-half hours on the job, I lend a hand to a longshoreman struggling to open a sticky container door. Normally, they don’t allow management to do anything that is “union” work for fear you are trying to replace them, but no one minds when you give them a hand with something. He had unlatched the door handles, one on each of the two rear doors, but couldn’t get the door to move. I reached in and grabbed the edge of the door along with him and we heaved. It moved an inch and froze. I prepared to give another heave when the longshoreman who I later became good friends with, slammed the handle in frustration, slamming the door on my left hand catching the middle finger. OUCH!
I pulled the hand back and gingerly peeled off my work glove. Half an inch of the finger was crushed.
“Geez, Cap.” Everyone one in a position of authority is labeled Captain. “I’m sorry.”
Grimacing, I responded, “It’s okay, shit happens. Just keep going here.” I went to the chief clerk’s office, told him what happened and went to the company office. They filled out a few forms, and I drove myself to the hospital. After the usual emergency room frustration, the doctor decided they needed to snip a piece of bone off to get a clean closure to the wound. I said “Fine, let’s get it over with.” Two hours later, I drove back to the pier, the middle finger half an inch shorter than before. I finished the day, hurting, but I’d rather be busy than idle.

That night, in the motel room, the finger throbbed. The doctor had said to keep it elevated. Easy to do when awake but sleeping is another thing. I thought ahead and borrowed two #10 nails and hammer from the cooper at the pier and took them to the motel room. At bedtime, I took my belt and looped it, then hammered in one nail at a steep angle through the belt hole just above the headboard on the bed. I wrapped a facecloth around my left wrist, slipped it into the belt loop and tightened it. Voila, an elevated hand all night long. Wary of the maid seeing it, I didn’t know if her tribe would be friendly, I removed the nail every morning and reinserted it into the same hole at night.

For the next two weeks, whenever anyone asked me how I was, I gave them the finger, making sure I smiled when I did so. That I came back to work the same day, never complained and made a point of telling the longshoreman responsible for the gaffe it was my fault for not paying attention, helped me get accepted into the waterfront. I didn’t plan it that way, but it worked. The icing on the cake was when I told them about my belt-in-the-wall story. A couple guys agreed that maids can’t be trusted. I didn’t ask how they came to that conclusion. Now, even though a member of management, I am one of the guys. Today, I get my feather and am unofficially inducted into the Baltimore segment of the “Micks” tribe.

OCTOBER 2018

Forty-two years later, I now follow the tribes on Facebook. Not much has changed.

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