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The vessel had a figure-head representing the bird after which she was named, so the keelmen hailed in the following terms, "Like-a-goose-and-not-a-goose, ahoy!" They were much disappointed by the inattention of the crew. The keelman is religious in his way, but his ideas lack lucidity.
In the old times, when the Tyne was very shallow, the colliers were loaded from keels, and the river then swarmed with the low black craft. The keelmen formed a little commonwealth by themselves; their dress, their language, their customs were all peculiar, and they were like a foreign race planted among English neighbours.
Opposite the old houses of the Sandhill, close to the river bank, is the old Guildhall, greatly altered in appearance from the time when John Wesley preached from its steps to the keelmen and fishermen of the town.
In that case, if the weather was fine, i.e., wind off the land, and smooth water, the vessels were taken outside, and the balance of their cargoes sent to them by a peculiar type of lighter known in that part of England by the name of keels. These craft were skilfully managed by two men called keelmen, who worked them up and down the stream with the tide and manipulated them with long oars.
The basis of such levies varied from one man in ten to one in five a percentage which the Admiralty considered a "matter of no distress"; and the penalty for refusing to entertain them was wholesale pressing. The Tyne keelmen, while ostensibly consenting to buy immunity on this basis, seldom levied the quota upon themselves.
Thames watermen and Tyne keelmen in particular acquired an astounding proficiency in the choice and application of abusive epithets, but of the two the keelman carried off the palm.
Amen.". He knelt for a minute, praying silently; then arose, dusted his knees and professed himself ready to be rowed ashore. The keelmen slid their deck-boat overside, and presently all embarked and were tided back to shore, the boat taking ground about fifty yards above the bend where Bounce stood shivering, caked in mud to her withers.
Its present appearance is very different from the green slope and sandy shore of former days; the keelmen, too, have vanished, and their place in the commercial economy of the Tyne is taken by waggon-ways and coal-shoots. The old narrow alleys of the town, called "chares," are fast disappearing; the best known is Pudding Chare, leading from Bigg Market to Westgate Road.
For a long time before the last championship race the sporting keelmen put by money every week to back the Tynesider, and the melancholy result of the race desolated Sandgate. Perhaps it was well that the Englishman was beaten; for in the event of any athletic success the whole Tyneside population become very arrogant, and the keelmen insufferable.
These keelmen are an exceedingly hardy class of workmen, not by any means so quarrelsome as their designation of “bully” would imply—the word being merely derived from the obsolete term “boolie,” or beloved, an appellation still in familiar use amongst brother workers in the coal districts.
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