HERITAGE TALK: THE KEELMEN OF TYNESIDE

It is a pleasure to welcome back Alan Fidler who will share his recent research on the history of the Keelmen, a colourful group of men and their families who played a significant role in the story of Tyneside and the coal industry which was crucial to the development of Britain for 300 years.

The importance of coal for London and other major cities allowed a small group of wealthy families to dominate its price and availability.

However, Alan will explain how vital to this trade was the transport and loading of coal onto ships by the Keelmen so that it could be carried south.

The Keelmen were the hardy men who loaded and crewed the keel boats down the River Tyne to the waiting collier ships. Fiercely independent, they formed their own ‘guild’ and a hospital to care for their fellows and families who fell on hard times.

The Keelmen could strike with enormous consequences for the coal trade, but they were also subject to the tight control of the colliery owners and the Hostmen of Newcastle who ruled their daily lives and employment through strict regulation and wage control.

As the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century progressed, led in large part by the industrialists and inventors of Tyneside, changes in technology and the breaking of the stranglehold of the Hostmen would lead to the demise of the Keelmen’s monopoly on the handling of coal for export.

A series of strikes in the early part of the 19th century were an ultimately failed attempt to preserve their livelihood through restrictive practices and opposition to more efficient and practical loading of colliers.

By the end of the 19th century, they were a footnote in history, remembered only in a folk song, with the well-known lyric ‘Weel may the Keel Row’.

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