Dockers

I went on a walking tour of Sailortown earlier today and I am amazed (and a little ashamed) that there is so much about the history of Belfast that I am completely ignorant of. The tour was really an introduction to the lives of people who lived in the area and who worked as dockers.
The tour started off at the Sailortown Historical Society in Garmoyle Street where they had an exhibition from the Shared History Interpretive Project which was about the lives of dockers and their families. There were photographs of the workers and their families and also information about the ships they would have worked on. There was so much I didn't know - like the fact that in docker's families the women were essentially the breadwinners as the men were employed on a casual basis and basically had to just turn up on the day to find out if they would be able to get work or not. The women would have been employed in the linen mills or in the tobacco industry. How times have changed!
Walking round the area and thinking about the people who used to live there was quite moving in places. Outside the Docker's Club in Pilot Street there is a plaque commemorating those dockers who died while at work, or years later as a result of working with hazardous substances on board ship. People in those days had it a lot harder than we do now, at the end of the tour I did feel a little ashamed that I don't really appreciate what people in those days did, and what they sacrificed so that we can have better working conditions now. I have definitely been inspired to find out more about the dockers and their families, their working conditions and the communities they lived in. There is so much history that is hidden, and I want to explore it.