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Dockside; time is money
Currently on display
Not a part of the official Smithsonian Collection
This photograph appears in the book, Men and Machines, A Story About Longshoring on the West Coast Waterfront, a photo essay by Otto Hagel published in 1963, shortly after the first Mechanization and Modernization Agreement was put into practice. It shows the dockside world of conventional longshoring: men are handling drums, canvas bags, boxes, a slingload of sacks, and other loose cargo. |
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Physical Description |
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Photograph
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Details |
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Dates Used: |
about 1960 - about 1960
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History |
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Conventional (non-containerized) longshore work involved gangs of men working together to load or discharge various types of cargo. It would often take a week or more for the men to handle all of the boxes, bags, bales, drums, and other loose cargo in just one ship. From the employers' perspective, a week in port was too much time: every day a ship sat idle at the dock was a day the ship wasn't making money. Containerization radically changed this dynamic, slashing the turnaround time in port to just a few hours or a day.
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Related People, Places, and Events |
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Photographer
Otto Hagel
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