In the early days, in the First World War and around that time,
all the ships were coal burners and all the coal had to be towed
round in barges alongside the ships for it...to be put in the
bunkers. So they had their own two tugs here, which they also used
for their coaling machine, they had two, specially constructed
coaling machines which the coal trimmers when they first brought
them in called the baby starvers because they did away with a lot
of men shovelling out of the barge. What happened was that the coal
was grabbed out of the colliers into the coaling machine and then
was picked up on a bucket, dredger... system, and put down through
shoots direct into the ship's bunkers you see. So there's no
shovelling to be done as far as the barges were concerned. When the
barges were used of course it was all hand, hand shovels into
tanks, what we called tanks, big steel tubs, and up on the crane
and tipped into the bunkers that way.
