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letters of American seamen to their families, back in the 1790s, the 1830s, '40s and '50s. You will find sentences like, “Our rudder broke and we drifted into an island cost, and found men along shore who knew how to make us fast.” Among the other duties of the men along shore is catching the line that is thrown out and make fast to some kind of a dock, or steady solid body. Then you proceed to deal with them.

In a primitive port the captain of a ship made a bargain with the men along shore - would they unload the ship for so much apiece for the job? But where you had a more organized port and a more civilized society, there was a stevedore who made a business of finding men along shore. The men who were lying around along shore, hoping for some work and wages, some way of earning a living, quickly learned to make friends with the stevedore who regularly assembled the gang to unload ships of the Cunard Line, or ships of some other line. So this man performed an important function in a port that became even more important after the days of cable because he could then estimate about the length of a voyage of a particular ship. She would be sighted off the outermost point of a harbor at about the time expected. He would assemble a gang whom he had previously alerted or notified.