Britain's history hasn't ust been made
by kings and queens and generals and admirals,
but by a whole host of ordinary people doing a lot of really terrible obs.
And if you don't believe me, take a look at how we Came to rule the waves.
Thls time, luxury liners that needed people working with sacks on their heads.
I am the gunier-man!
How Britain's very first navy survived on minimal rations.
And why the heroes who kept our coasts safe didn't like getting their toes wet.
Welcome to The Worst Maritime Jobs in History.
The sea put the 'great' in Great Britain.
International trade, politics and our military success
have all depended on controlling the oceans.
Many of our greatest heroes were sailors -
legends like Nelson, Drake or Captain Cook.
But despite having trading connections long before the Romans,
we hadn't explored the ocean's potential.
We had no navy.
The sea kept us captive, prey to invaders.
But in the 9th century, the threat of the skilled seagoing Vikings
forced a national crisis.
It was Alfred the Great who got into the record books
as the first king to fight back successfully against the Vikings.
He built our first navy, which was a fleet of ships
based on the drakkar, or dragon ships, of the Vikings.
But if you were a land-loving Saxon desperately trying to emulate a Viking,
which means 'sea warrior',
you must have had a really miserable time.
So my first worst job is the Saxon oarsman.
Saxon oarsmen had a double challenge.
They had to fight the Vikings,
but first they had to overcome their own fear and prejudice about going to sea.
They were forced to copy the enemy from the north.
So my landlubber's learning curve also begins on a freezing Norwegian fjord,
with a bunch of experimental archaeologists.
Most Viking craft were comparatively small
and well built for stability and speed.
But as soon as you're on the water, you get a worrying insight
into how scary Viking technology must have been for the novice Saxons.
How come we've just got onto the boat and it's full of water?
It leaks.
Why?
The planks, basically, are not tight, and it needs time for the wood to swell,
and as you can see, it leaks.
Have a look here, just where my feet are.
It's a constant problem, because if it rains, it fills with water.
Yeah. If there's waves, it fills with water.
It's a lousy job.
Look at this.
This is what me as an oarsman would have had to use
for the bits that I couldn't reach with the bucket.
What do you call that? It's just... It's just...
Basically, it's called a spoon.
It's called a spoon. Wouldn't you know it?
There's an awful lot of water actually under this decking.
I'm not taking that up. If you take that up...
Look down here. Look. Terrific.
So I've got to be chucking this stuff out the way all the time?
Yeah.
The water's only just above freezing, the wind chill about -10.
If your hands are sore from rowing,
bailing, an absolutely essential part of the oarsman's job,
turns them red raw.
And the only alternative to bailing is the back-breaking business of rowing.
There's a lead man who rows. And that's me.
And basically, everybody keeps pace with me.
So it's got to be the guy who basically is at the front, or, rather, at the back,
so everybody can see him.
But a little craft like this could cross the North Sea.
They were the long-haul aircraft of their day,
forging the Vikings' international reputation,
at the cost of personal comfort.
Even Vikings hated it.
In one saga, the hero moans about spending his Ionely winter
on the ice-cold sea, hung round by icicles.
If they didn't make landfall, nights were spent in the open boat,
with only animal skins and their hairy mates for warmth.
Food was pretty basic too.
That's what's called fairnalaw, and that's salted and dried meat.
Ham? Yeah.
And basically... Yeah?
Try a bit.
What do you think? That's alright.
Yeah, and the other alternative is...
Fish. I'm not quite so sure about this!
Pretty bony.
God, it stinks! Yeah, it does.
But did you bite into the fleshy bit or? I bit into that bit there.
And you just rip it off, bones and all, and just chew it.
That's disgusting!
I can see you're impressed.
But it doesn't taste like smoked fish, does it? It just tastes manky.
(Laughs)
Got a mouthful of bones. Yeah.
But it's very good for you.
The Saxon oarsman set the nation on a new course.
In the centuries that followed, Britons really took to the sea.
Improved design made for much larger ships for trade and warfare.
But our history at sea has always meant worst jobs on land as well.
And the massive expansion in medieval shipbuilding
needed raw ingredients.
Britain's maritime tradition starts here, with wood.
But in order to work the wood to make the ships,
you needed the skills of the shipwright, who was such a highly prized craftsman
that he'd certainly never sully his hands
by making the basic component of the ship - the plank.
Making ships with sawn planks was a new technology.
Literally at the cutting edge was one bad job and one worst job.
Damian? Yeah?
Who was the chap who made the planks for the shipwright?
Well, it was a pair of them.
One down the hole there and one up here, the sawyers,
'cause you always have at least two.
They would saw out the planks for the shipwright by the 16th century,
and also a lot of the other timbers of the ship.
They prepared most of the timber for the shipbuilding.
TONY: So, what was so bad about the job?
Just unending labour. I mean, you know, six days a week doing this.
I mean, we play at it.
We do it for an afternoon at a weekend a few times in the summer. That's OK.
But six days a week, hour after hour.
They had a real reputation for drinking, and you can see why.
It's thirsty work, but it's also numbing work, and, you know,
you'd rather be doing almost anything else, I think, after a while.
The heyday of the under-sawyer came in Tudor times.
Thousands of them were employed after the Spanish Armada,
building 174 ships in London alone.
They got through 40,000 tonnes of wood.
Whole forests were turned into millions of planks and mountains of sawdust.
And a word for a whole new underclass was born.
What are these things, these great grips? These iron staple things?
They're called dogs.
The top-sawyer, usually the most senior person,
standing over the dogs, the top dog,
and then the underdog, the more junior person, underneath them.
You're the top dog and Joe's the underdog.
Joe, you're the underdog. Do you mind if I take over?
Certainly not. Away you go.
Well, those are small planks you could use for small-boat-building.
You know, for a big ship, they'd be an awful lot bigger than that.
It's a bit manky down here, isn't it? Any hole in the ground gets wet, yeah.
A lot of them would be wet and rather stinky.
So... Alright, what do I have to do?
Well, the idea is you concentrate on the line,
you steer the saw, just like a children's scooter, but only on the downstroke.
And on the upstroke, you push up slightly to help me lift the saw.
OK, I'm gonna lift it now. Yeah.
OK? And then we'll go down.
You've got to tell me if you're going off the line.
You have to help me a bit on the upstroke.
Yep.
(Tony coughs)
(Coughs)
I tell you what is so difficult about this - it's all this flippin' dust.
Uh, it is when we get a gust of wind and it blows it,
but most of it's going down in front of where you're cutting.
I'm down here. It isn't.
Isn't it? (Coughs)
This has got to be the worst job in the shipyard, hasn't it?
It probably was one of the very worst jobs.
Very hard on the hands, and get in your lungs.
Yeah.
Don't tip more on!
That's not on you. That's right in front of you.
You have to do that, otherwise you can't see the line
and you can't see what you're cutting.
There may not have been a worse job in the shipyard,
but once the under-sawyers' ships were launched,
a brand-new world of employment misery bobbed onto the horizon.
The 16th century was a turning point for the British at sea.
Queen Elizabeth's navy managed to fend off the awesome Spanish Armada.
Walter Raleigh went exploring and discovered potatoes.
And Francis Drake went round the world on the 'Golden Hind'.
They got the glory, but all the work was done by anonymous sailors.
There were 80 on the 'Golden Hind', risking death in battle,
falling from the rigging or being swept overboard.
But there was one arduous task beneath deck
that strained every fibre even before leaving port.
Sailors had to haul the anchor,
up to a tonne of metal stuck in the sea bed,
in the most cramped conditions imaginable.
If you're a physiotherapist, look away now.
TONY: What do I do?
Tony, your job is to push the capstan.
You're gonna have to get one of the bars out here with the guys.
Come on, guys. Let's get those capstan bars out.
Put the bar in the slot. Yeah.
And then, with all the other guys... you're gonna drive the capstan round
to pull the anchor cable up.
OK.
ANDREW: Everybody ready? Yep.
OK, let's go.
Sometimes this job took days.
The commonest injury for sailors was a rupture.
This feels a physically hard job, but was it at all dangerous?
ANDREW: Yes, this could be a very dangerous job.
If the cable snapped, the capstan would spin back and knock the men over.
If the anchor snags, it could be really hard work to try and pull it out.
Presumably you were quite vulnerable when the anchor was rising.
As most of the crew had to be used to get the anchor up,
this was a perfect time for somebody to attack you,
to catch you, quite literally, with your crew below deck, running round the capstan.
There'd be nobody upstairs to defend the ship.
It's a very vulnerable time.
(Sighs)
Yep, that's it. Hooray!
Great job! (Sighs)
Can we get up top and have a look?
Yeah, we better go and see if you've done the job.
Thanks, guys.
Oh, wow. That is big, isn't it?
Yep, that is a really big one.
No wonder it took quite so much effort, but job done.
Although, having said that, there is one even worse job, isn't there,
which you're gonna make me do.
What is it? The worst job on the ship.
It's not just pulling. It's not sweating. It's a punishment.
The job is called 'being the liar'.
Liar, as in pants on fire? Yeah.
Every Monday morning, the first person to tell a lie
would be named and shamed,
and they would then have the job of being the swabber's mate.
And what were they swabbing?
They were swabbing the outside of the ship.
They were swabbing the dirtiest parts of the ship.
In particular, they were swabbing the toilet area out here on the beak head.
This is down here... Come and have a look at this.
Right down there.
And you want me to go and clear that up?
Oh, yes.
Now, how the heck do I get down there? There's no ladder or anything.
We're gonna put you in the bosun's chair,
and we're gonna lower you over the side, we're gonna take you right down there,
and I'm gonna pass you the bucket and the swabs.
You're to do the job.
You're so looking forward to this, aren't you?!
I'm glad you're doing it.
Right, lads, come on. Rig us up.
The captain had his own privy.
Everyone else had to negotiate this obstacle course to go to the heads.
Clinging onto a rope and aiming between the slats
can't have been easy in a force eight gale.
Right.
And we know that many of the British sailors during the assault on the Armada
also had to cope with food poisoning.
Oh, I haven't got my bucket and...
...swab, have I?
This 'Golden Hind' is a replica of the Tudor version.
And this is replica too.
Although, to be frank, it still makes you feel sick.
The great advantage of being at sea is you wouldn't have needed to do this job,
because this toilet facility's entirely self-cleaning in heavy weather.
Yeah.
Right.
Now do I have to get out on here?
Yep, right out there.
Charming.
Did they understand about hygiene? Yes, they did.
The Tudors already understood that disease was caused by dirt.
Yeah? And they didn't like bad smells.
So they cleaned the ship every day with salt water.
If there was any suspicion of illness on board,
they would scrub the decks down with vinegar
and then they would fumigate the place
with charcoal braziers and frankincense.
Why were these blokes called swabbers?
They were called swabbers
because what you've got in your hand is a bundle of cloths, or swabs.
Can't see any toilet paper. No such thing.
They used bits of rope's end and any other old rags they could find.
Must have been painful.
I tell you what, I'm surprised anyone... of them ever told a lie.
Probably not twice.
Yeah.
This is just foul.
(Sighs)
That's a lousy job.
And at the end of a voyage, if a sailor survived the dirt, disease and back strain,
he could be dumped onshore with no pay.
The tough job of the work force at sea didn't come with a pension scheme.
But in the 17th and 18th century, people paid good money
to see death-defying aerial stunts,
and sailors were uniquely qualified to apply,
with their head for heights and physical strength.
It's my next worst job,
and it's the forerunner of the high-wire act - the flying man.
But did they actually fly?
Well, I'm just about to find out.
What did the flying men actually do?
Well, Tony, they slid down ropes, rather like this one,
but attached to very high buildings,
sometimes three or four times the height of this.
For instance, in 1546, at the coronation procession of King Edward VI,
a native of Aragon - his name isn't known -
slid down from the steeple of old St Paul's Cathedral.
Who were the people who did this?
Not an awful lot is known about them.
There was one case of a Mr Cadman, who fell off, unfortunately, in 1740,
in his descent from Shrewsbury Parish Church,
and was killed because the rope broke.
And this is the rope I've got to slide down?
I'm afraid so.
Oh, great.
All you had to do was glide headfirst down a single rope.
A sailor-turned-flying man could earn a year's wages, about $40,
from one successful stunt.
But it was crucial that others shared his expertise.
Slack ropes could, and did, spell death.
I don't have much of a head for heights,
so whizzing down a rope from a 30-metre tower
definitely makes this a worst job for me.
A real flying man would step out onto the rope from the tower.
What I have to do, though, because of compulsory safety measures,
is to be winched into place, hop on the rope and then slide down.
Is that about it?
That's it. Try and swing your leg over. Try and get it up and over the rope.
What sounds like a doddle is actually complicated by the safety line.
Oh, God! It's funny, you get... You get so...
All the tops of your shoulders are really, really, really weak.
(Groans)
MAN: Almost there.
You know, I'm not gonna be able to do it. I'm so...
I'm so mad. It's partly because this rope is so wet.
Partly 'cause, I think, I'm very cold, and partly 'cause I'm fairly scared!
Can you let me down, lads?
On 5 October 1732, a flying man fell off a slack rope
tied to the tower of Greenwich Church.
He was dead the next day.
Give us a hand.
Ah, I'm so angry.
I am so bloody angry! Why?
'Cause I couldn't get that flipping knee over!
I bet you I could do it... do it here.
Give us a shove up, will you?
I bet you I could...
Look.
Everybody, this is the action... Oh!
...that I'm supposed to be doing.
You keep this leg down. I know how to do it.
You keep this leg down, that leg's tucked along, and you slide along like... this.
One of the things that made this so hard this time -
it's been pouring with rain all day, and it's just so... wet.
But still, I should have been able to get my knee...
Just think what it might have been like in the 16th century,
or even in the 19th, when they didn't have nylon ropes like this,
but they would have just had hemp hawser-laid ropes.
It's pretty lousy in the 21 st century.
It's a pride thing, isn't it? I so wanted to do that.
MAN: Fire!
The Georgian navy was a golden age for Britain at sea.
It was a time when legends were born, from Nelson at Trafalgar
to Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the 'Bounty'.
But there was no romance to life on board.
Gun crews could be blown apart, powder monkeys fetched and scurried,
top men went higher than they'd ever gone before,
and swabbers still swabbed.
No-one was immune.
(CANNON FIRES)
Even officers had a tough time, particularly the very junior ones,
who could be as young as 11 or 12.
These were little boys from well-to-do homes.
It was their first time at sea. They were queasy. They were nervous.
And they had to cope with a motley crew of men
who were bigger and tougher and older than they were.
Welcome to the horrible world of the snotties - the midshipmen.
In their smart uniform, they must have made their mums proud,
but for me, it's the horrifying plunging of a child into a brutal man's world
that makes midshipman a worst job.
These boys, who may never have seen the sea,
had no idea what they were signing on for.
"I had anticipated an elegant house with guns at the windows,"
wrote a midshipman called Frederick Chaumier in 1806.
"But the shrill whistle squeaked,
"the voice of the bosun and his mates rattled like thunder in my ears,
"the decks were dirty and slippery, the smells, abominable."
Tedious job. It is, isn't it?
Working in shifts day and night,
the tiny midshipman had the hourly job
of measuring the speed of the ship.
There we go. Let's see how you get on with that this time.
So I let it out to the first knot.
Yes.
So if you hold the spindle... with one hand.
That's it. So, it's gonna run absolutely freely.
OK.
But, obviously, you don't try and pull it off.
The ship has got to let it take it itself to get an accurate gauge of the speed.
One hundred, two hundred, three...
And 28. There we go.
They counted actual knots on a rope as it floated away over a set period,
hence the nautical speed of knots.
We can say that's about 0.8.
One...
...two...
God, if you were 11, trying to pull this in,
you'd have a job, wouldn't you?
Yeah. Quite heavy, isn't it?
Three.
Four. Four.
There's five.
Six.
Seven. (Laughs)
Here it comes.
That was seven, and the 0.8 we had, and you're knackered, aren't you?
7.8, yeah.
No. Fit as a fiddle, mate.
Yeah.
Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Perhaps a young 11 - or 12-year-old boy hauling on that,
and it could be the middle of the night in the dead of winter.
He's freezing cold.
You've got a nice pair of gloves on, I noticed.
He probably skinned his fingers raw just pulling that one in.
But even if he'd been up all night, the exhausted midshipman
had to join the captain and officers at midday
for my least favourite part of the job.
From sextant readings at noon, you had to calculate your latitude.
What do we do?
I'd rather be swabbing than spending my life doing hard sums,
but this was a key part of officer training.
DAVID: You with me? TONY: Yep.
I thought you were.
The only way to be promoted to lieutenant was to pass an exam
to show you could do all the maths.
Failure could ruin your life.
12-year-old Billy Culmer failed his exam in 1757.
33 years later, he was still a midshipman,
a laughing-stock on minimal pay.
Right, I know how many knots we're doing,
and after about half an hour of intellectual struggle,
I've worked out what our latitude is.
But all that tells me is that we're somewhere in the world
along this line here.
In order to work out our position, I need our longitude.
And if you think it was a song and dance getting the latitude,
wait until you see what we've got to cope with to get the longitude.
The safety of Britain's shipping
depended on captains knowing where they were.
One in five of all deaths at sea were from shipwreck.
Accurate longitude, or east-west position,
wasn't reliable until the beginning of the 19th century.
To measure how far you are from Greenwich Mean Time,
you need a really accurate clock.
And this was only possible when the genius John Harrison
created his famous ship's chronometer.
We may know about the first clock designers,
but I bet you're not aware of the contribution made by my next worst job -
the extraordinarily tedious task of fusee chain making.
The fusee chain was vital to the accuracy of the new clock.
It released the energy of the mechanism to the hands at an even pace.
An essential component, but one so small and fiddly
that making them was a full-time worst job.
And who was the person who made the fusee chain?
The fusee chain, in this instance,
was probably made by workhouse people or children in workhouses.
Which is rather sad. How old?
Oh, they started about 9 to about 11, and they were mostly girls.
They had good dexterity skills. They could handle small components.
Here's a little chain here.
And this is the size that they would make for small deck watches. Navigation again.
What was their day like?
They would start and probably do, ooh,
from first sunlight, really, to right down to sunset.
And they would do a complete day and 70-hour week,
and they would have two hours a day for a bit of going out for fresh air
and 20 minutes for education.
That's got to be the worst job in watch-making.
It was pretty bad, yes. So how do you do it?
Well, I've got one here.
And this particular one is a chronometer chain.
Yeah. And this is making the old-fashioned way.
These are the raw materials - sheet steel, softened, ready for hardening,
and wire, ready to go in.
We're going to stamp out the link.
There you go. OK.
Tap that out. Just gently does it.
Bit more. That's it. Lovely.
Clear off the thing, and then we just push the link out,
which is in there, look, in the press.
There we go. Hey! I made this.
How many of these do you reckon
one of these workhouse girls would have made a day?
Well, we know one lady did 150,000 in a year.
So we're talking of chains, millions.
Right. There you go.
OK. Now, steady as she goes.
If you rest the pin on the table, it acts as a sort of lock. That's it.
Cut. I'm gonna go and get my glasses.
Oh! I can see it. It's got holes in.
Right.
That is... slightly easier.
OK.
Oh! It's gone. It's gone.
If I was one of those little girls, I'd probably get whipped for that, wouldn't I?
I'm afraid you would have done, in those days, yes.
When you touch the head of the wire, it doesn't flip it up on one side.
(Leslie laughs)
Oh, triumph. Oh, great triumph.
Da-da! OK.
If you use the tweezer and put either side to the actual point and push down,
and then you lock on.
Push down with the tweezers onto the... You close the tweezers.
Oh... Does that matter?
No, it doesn't really matter. We can soon straighten it up.
OK, now, it won't actually stay on very well.
You've got a little bit too much metal showing. So we need to file it down.
There we... Whoop, whoop. Steady as she goes.
Right. Have we got a file? We have that, there.
After stamping out the minuscule links,
you have to begin the eye-bending task of putting them together.
Can see why you'd have needed natural light.
Trying to do this in artificial light would be virtually impossible.
I think I'm just about done here, don't you?
So if you snip off on the other side.
Go. Good click. It'll go.
Oh, gosh! It's just gone flying off all over the place.
Oh, that is rubbish. That is complete rubbish.
There's about quarter-of-an-inch of metal sticking up out of this.
That will keep the nation's ships on course, that will.
It would take me about a month to make that.
So would you like to do some more to this?
Only another... Another few hours.
149,999 and I've done my year's worth. Yes.
For me, fusee chain makers really were the unsung heroes of longitude.
Look at that.
Of course, what we'll do now...
(People laugh) The entire crew are laughing at me.
The 19th century brought the industrial revolution to the sea.
With steam and steel, a new form of luxury transport was born -
the massive liner.
In these floating hotels, the idle rich could swan across the globe in style.
But none of this would have been possible
without the workers who suffered in the deafening roar and wilting heat
of the boiler room below deck.
They were the stokers.
And it was a job so unpopular
that it was forced on penniless workers from the colonies,
whose contribution is only now being reviewed by historians.
It's a heck of a big boiler, isn't it?
Yes.
Would they really have been that size on board a ship?
They would have been that size,
but you would have had four instead of just the two that there are here now.
Roger, what do you have to do to keep one of these boilers going?
Well, it's quite an art, Tony.
It's maintaining an even fire bed and shovelling in the coal.
So am I gonna get all my stuff dirty? Oh, you will indeed.
You better change into some suitable working gear.
Boiler suit? Yeah, OK.
You can have the little one, Cliff.
Right, so what do you do? Got it.
ROGER: Well, we'll open the furnace.
Yeah.
Phew! Blimey! It's hot, isn't it? It is.
And you bring this bar back. Yep.
Now, what am I doing?
You're raking the fire bars, and you're removing any obnoxious clinker.
Yeah, bring it out onto the floor, Tony. OK.
TONY: Blimey.
Were they able to protect themselves from being burnt at all?
Well, the good old guys used to make themselves hessian hoods,
which they'd put over their head and protect their faces.
Can you hold this for me?
Where's the eyes? Oh, here they are.
It would just burn, wouldn't it?
Well, they used to soak them in water. They'd dunk them in the bucket.
Like this?
TONY: There we are.
That is better. It is better. It may look ridiculous, but, actually, it does work.
If you'd like to go and prepare the other furnace for coal?
You'll probably need to level it off with the fire-irons.
So I've got to rake that, then.
Just rake the bars to remove the ash.
OK.
Who were the people who did this work, Cliff?
Well, a lot of them were Somalis and people from sort of the ex-colonies,
places like Calcutta,
where a lot of the shipping companies had their headquarters.
So why were they doing it?
Because, basically, very few British people wanted to work below decks.
How hot do you reckon it would have got?
Well, in the Red Sea, it got up to 160 at times.
TONY: But it would have been just as bad for Africans and Asians
as it would have been for people from Britain, presumably.
It was, but it was taken that they were better adapted at that time
to work in those sort of conditions.
And sometimes they wore a leather apron as well,
because that could splatter, and sometimes it would even explode
because of the temperature difference.
I'm not surprised they had to wear these things. It really is boiling in here.
Yes. And we know that they did wear these?
Oh, yes, there are diagrams of them wearing them,
and kids were sort of told that if they misbehaved,
the gunier-man, which is you,
would come up and grab hold of them and take 'em away.
Like the boogieman? Yes, yes.
I am the gunier-man!
The stokers didn't just need brute force.
The furnaces had to be carefully balanced, or they could explode.
Accidents were common.
In 1859, five stokers lost their lives
when Brunel's 'Great Eastern' blew an engine jacket
on her maiden voyage.
Watch the safety valve, guys. I think that it's just about to blow.
(BELL CLANGS)
(HISSING)
I think we put enough coal in!
In spite of advancing technology,
working at sea remained extremely dangerous.
20,000 sailors died in shipwrecks between 1793 and 1815.
Loss of life could always be ignored, but lost cargo, never.
As the British Empire grew and trade burgeoned,
the huge loss of revenue became unacceptable
to merchants and industrialists.
The daring solution was a new system of lighthouses,
perched on top of the very rocks that caused the wrecks -
a major engineering challenge.
And construction required a suicidal worst job - the lighthouse builder.
Nowhere was theirjob harder than this place - Wolf Rock -
a handkerchief of land at the entrance to the English Channel.
You might think that the ambition of building a 30-metre tower
out of 2-tonne blocks of granite
when the waves reach 35 metres
is quite bonkers.
And you'd be right.
The granite for Wolf Rock was loaded here at Penzance.
We decided to follow the lighthouse builders' course
to see what they had to face.
Anyway, that was the plan.
MAN: OK, action.
How did you start to build a lighthouse?
Mad, like, you know...
Can we stop for a minute? We're drowning here! Just cut for one sec.
OK, cut. There you have...
The wave will go right over them... Sorry. Whoa! Hang on.
And after all that, we never even got close.
Our skipper made us turn back two miles from the Wolf.
But that's just like the lighthouse builders.
They were paid by the day, but they only managed to get to work
about 80 days a year.
The sea really fools you, doesn't it? Looks as flat as a mill pond.
But if you...
...look at those rocks down there, you can see it's really swirling around.
Yeah, well, that was the whole problem with anything like that.
If you wanted to put a structure on it, you had to watch out for the sea,
'cause it holds no mercy.
Where's our lighthouse?
Just out on the horizon, behind the rock.
I'd been thinking that our skipper had been a bit chicken.
But this is the Wolf from nine miles away.
Those waves are at least 10 metres high and would have swamped us.
How did they start to build one of these things?
Well, it was quite a... quite a problem.
They had to land, first of all.
They'd have used that flat section on the right-hand side of the rock,
landed on there.
TONY: Is this about the same size, then? PHIL: Roughly, yes.
It was a bit lower than that, but near enough the same, yes.
They blow the top off, and then they have to put stakes in all the way round,
for safety reasons, tie ropes on them,
and then employ a man who was called a crow
to shout out when there was a dangerous wave coming in.
What did he shout out?
He'd have shouted out something like, "Watch out, men, there's a wave coming!
"Down tools!"
He'd have said something like that.
That would seem to be an appropriate shout, wouldn't it, if a wave was coming.
We haven't got casualty figures for the Wolf,
but at Bell Rock, men were crushed by cranes and rocks, boats capsized,
and one builder, Charles Henderson, was simply washed into the sea.
The only thing that stopped the building going the same way
was a unique design.
Each block had a double mortice on it - a vertically and horizontal mortice on it -
and each one interlocked, rather like a LEGO in a way.
And once the lighthouse was completed,
it was said that it was just like a solid block of granite.
The success of the Victorian lighthouse builders
was bad news for another worst job -
the island lighthouse keeper.
He was a volunteer desert island castaway
who needed huge mental reserves.
When you lived on a lighthouse, how did you cope?
The worst part of the job was the psychological side.
I was one of the lucky ones, and I saw it through,
because I always said, "There's always another day,"
and I always knew that my maker was up there to guide me through.
There was something... a certain religious aspect, I found,
with being off on a lighthouse like the Wolf.
Weren't there times when you thought
all that solitude would drive you nutty, though?
No, because I have so many interests.
Reading books, modelling. I used to... Like, say...
Well, Surprise peas was one of the items I used to eat a lot,
and I used to use the packets from them and make model buildings from them.
And that kept you sane? Yeah, that kept me sane, yes. Mmm.
Victorian lighthouse keepers worked in pairs.
When their supplies ran out, they had to live on fish from the sea.
If one died or was injured, his mate had to work 24-hour days for weeks,
until he was relieved.
The work was sheer heavy slog.
Whoo.
Daily window cleaning may sound easy,
but perched on a ladder in a force nine gale trying to cling onto the handholds
is a perilous business.
And then there were the stairs.
(BELL RINGS)
If you've ever lived in a block of flats when the lift's broken,
you'll know the drill.
The light was turned by clockwork.
Every hour, day and night, a bell would ring...
(BELL RINGS)
...and the keeper would have to trudge up to wind it again.
It was a devastating mixture of boredom and aerobics workout.
(BELL RINGS)
But apart from giant calves and going stir-crazy,
the lighthouse keeper was safe and clean.
Others weren't so fortunate.
Our maritime history was about empire-building and trade,
but it was also about feeding the nation.
The women may have managed to avoid the rigours of fishing at sea,
but when their menfolk came back home after days and nights
of exhausting, back-breaking work,
an especially smelly worst job became the women's responsibility.
But despite the dangers of being a fisherman,
for me it was the gut girls who had the worst bit of keeping the nation in kippers.
What could be worse than being a gut girl,
faced with the unending task of removing the innards of up to 20,000 fish a day?
WOMAN: The oil that comes out of these is a very, very smelly oil,
and if you go anywhere where there's people that hasn't come in contact with it,
they smell it right away.
The stench must have been unbelievable.
The gut girls were paid per fish, so they worked incredibly quickly -
up to one a second.
The fish were packed in ice, so hands were numb and frozen.
When they cut themselves, they hardly noticed.
TONY: Can I have another fish?
You can. This must...
This must have been really boring
for the women who had to do it all day, every day.
Well, it's like everything. You get used to it.
How did they get through the day? Oh, they used to gossip.
What'd they talk about?
Women having affairs with other men.
You're joking. No, I'm not.
Each others' houses like rabbits.
Did they use to use the guts for anything?
Sometimes they used to make fish manure with it.
Used to be put away into a factory,
and fish manure used to be made with it.
My dad used to put that on the garden. Yeah, that's right, yeah.
The gut girls were eventually replaced by machines.
Amazingly, they couldn't gut fish any faster than the girls,
but they didn't need a lunch break.
This is the guts of about 60 fish, which in the old days
would have taken one fish gutter about a minute to do.
Imagine how many guts you'd have had by the end of an entire day.
Of course this is a lousy job.
It stinks of fish guts here and it's cold and it's all slimy,
but I can imagine that if you're doing this day after day
with a group of women like Margaret,
it could be quite a laugh.
So if working elbow-deep in fish guts isn't the very worst job in maritime history,
what is?
Stoking was hard work,
but didn't have the eye-straining tedium of the fusee maker.
It's gone! It's gone!
Sailors risked their necks, but could make a fortune as flying men.
And even the frightening childhood of the midshipman
offered the chance of promotion.
No, for me, the very worst job of all is completely counterintuitive.
Imagine if there was a raging storm out there, a wrecking storm.
What's the worst thing you could possibly do?
Row straight out into it.
And yet that's exactly what my very worst job is all about.
It's the job of lifeboat man, or, indeed, lifeboat woman,
'cause we all remember Grace Darling, don't we,
who rowed out into the storm with her dad
in order to rescue the drowning sailors.
And there are still Grace Darlings even today
doing exactly the same voluntary job, aren't there, Tamsin?
Indeed there are.
How did they use to rescue people in years gone by?
They literally got in the boat and rowed out, often into the teeth of a storm,
because that's what would have caused the original problem,
and went out there and hauled them into the boat and rowed them back again.
So, what do you want me to do? We're going to go to sea.
So we're gonna get you dressed up in Victorian kit, gonna put you in the boat,
give you an oar, we're gonna row out and hopefully we're gonna rescue someone.
Right, where do I start?
I'm not being rude when I say I'd like you to go home.
What do you mean? Well, I want you to start at home.
Because that's where you'd be.
Any volunteer lifeboat man would be going about his business
when the alarm was raised,
and he'd have to get running from there.
OK, let me know when you need me. No problem.
The bizarre thing is,
even though I know this is just an exercise, a demonstration...
...after a while, just the wait starts to wind you up.
They've given me this to... to wear.
This... bizarre floatation jacket thing.
Authentic, apparently, from Victorian times.
This waterproof jacket.
The old sou'wester. Gonna look good in that.
Must be about an hour and a quarter now, I think.
(KNOCK ON DOOR)
Here we go.
I wasn't expecting this bit.
Where do I go?
If you sit on that cushion there, Tony,
and, then, this is your oar, Tony, where my hand is.
This oar here. I can't see!
Tony, this is your oar.
OK, let's go. OK, pull away! This one here, Tony.
Whoa-ho!
This job was risky.
435 crew members have died in rescues over the years.
It's funny - even though it's just a demo, there is that hit of adrenalin, isn't there?
Course there is.
Because we know we've got to get him out of the water.
The job was never worse than in 1861,
when the Whitby lifeboat crew paid the ultimate price.
On 9 February, they made four separate launches in a gale.
After rowing for hours in mountainous seas
and saving the crews of four ships,
the lifeboat men were exhausted.
Then another schooner ran aground.
The crew set out again.
As they approached the stricken vessel,
the lifeboat was capsized by two freak waves.
Only lifeboat man Henry Freeman survived.
It was his first day on the lifeboat.
And now imagine what it was like with cold hands, cold face, wet clothes.
But there was one coxswain in the Victorian times
who described the cold on his face like a dog gnawing at his features.
TONY: Where is he?
There he is! I can see him. Whoa! My oar's gone.
We've got to bounce him down three times.
Hold on, Dave. We've got you.
To avoid breaking ribs, you have to drag the victim in backwards.
It's a dead weight and needs great strength.
I think you're alright now, ain't you?
Go! One...
Two...
I found this job difficult on a sea as flat as a millpond.
In pitch black in a real storm,
it must have been impossible once, let alone coming out again and again.
Henry Freeman went on to serve for 40 years.
Britain hasn't been invaded for the best part of 900 years.
And surely that must be in part due to the really awful jobs
that our sailors and volunteer rescuers have done over the centuries.
Next time, I'll be back on terra firma,
where the ground may be firmer, but the jobs are just as terrible.
Awful joke, isn't it? I hope that doesn't stay in.
There's no rest for the wicked out in the country when you sell red for a living,
turn white keeping church spires in good nick.
Am I nearly there?
Or get black and blue washing sheep the old way.
Ouch! It trod on my foot!