Briggs Brothers’ Clipper Ships

The 19th century Boston directories, which list workers by occupation, provide a ready inventory of what skills were most utilized in Boston’s shipyards. Work in the yard, generally, was divided into three main categories: shipwright/ship carpenter, caulker, or joiner.

Some workers identified themselves as ship carpenters, a skilled trade, but not as skilled as that of the shipwright, who would often work in the mould loft, converting drawings into frames, and making sure those frames were set properly. Caulkers used special mallets and chisels to force oakum into the seams of the hull and deck. When these seams were coated with tar, they became waterproof. Ship joiners built cabins, stairs, doors, and furniture.

Wooden vessels required thousands of holes to be bored, both for iron rods to hold the knees–crooked timbers acting as braces–to the frame, and for treenails (pronounced “trunnels”) to fasten planking to the exterior. Often, carpenters were called upon to do this. They might also be required to adze the exterior joints of the hull, or to act in the capacity of sawyers, hewing planks for logs. This was very heavy labor and the fact that the carpenter sometimes did work more often associated with workers of the lowest skill level in the yards, suggests, again, that the ship carpenter ranked below a shipwright in skill level. Nevertheless, the ship carpenter was a skilled craftsman who had learned his trade through a multi-year apprenticeship.

The caulker, a man of critical importance in the construction of a sailing vessel, often worked on his back under the belly of the vessel. Hammer noise was an occupational hazard in getting oakum into a seam, and men who did this work often became deaf. Their work was perhaps the most repetitive in the yard and required a good deal of physical strength. But for those who had the aptitude, it was one of the most prized and highly paid jobs in the yard, no matter how occupationally risky. In order for a ship to remain tight, caulkers had to do their jobs well. Lives depended upon them. But it was dreadful, tedious work.

Caulkers and joiners pursued specialized finishing trades, and were apt to move from one yard to another looking for ships near the finishing stage. A ship carpenter, or shipwright, tended to remain with a single yard while a ship was under construction. Once the work was done, however, he too would move along.

Excerpt from George O’Har. “Shipbuilding, Markets, and Technological Change in East Boston.” Doctoral Thesis, MIT, 1995.