Two 6-hour shifts a day?

[Hank Trent]

I was just reading about canal workers dividing the day's labor into four six-hour shifts ("tricks"), with each person working two of them. In other words, each person worked six hours, followed by six hours off, continually.

Probably not coincidentally, I recall reading that New York City policemen worked similar hours.

Now I'm curious how common that work schedule was in the mid 19th century, and what kind of industries it was used in. Did workers prefer it or hate it? You'd have to be living on site or very close to commute to work twice a day, and it would be odd never to get eight hours sleep all at once except on Sunday. On the other hand, it would be nice to break up a 12-hour shift with a rest in the middle.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Csayankee]

Re: Two 6-hour shifts a day?

Hank,

Could the day be broken up into 2 hour labor shifts on the canal and the next 6 performing another job. I am just thinking that the study of ergonomics or time management is not a new thing. Is there more detail there to rule out this possibility.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Two 6-hour shifts a day?

Could the day be broken up into 2 hour labor shifts on the canal and the next 6 performing another job. I am just thinking that the study of ergonomics or time management is not a new thing. Is there more detail there to rule out this possibility.

Well, as usual, the more detail you go into, the more complicated it gets. :) All this is based on research on the C&O Canal in Maryland, so I don't know how it applied elsewhere.

Since boats were run individually, each captain decided what he wanted to do, so it wasn't all the same, and the number and age of the crew and/or mules could affect it as well. The mules and workers all rode on the boat, working or not, except the mules who were working and their driver. Here's a summary from The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal by Thomas F. Hahn, 1984.

A full crew had five members: two steersmen (one of whom was the captain), two mules drivers, and a cook. The steersmen and mule drivers were divided generally into two shifts or "tricks," each working six hours and resting six hours. More often, the crew consisted of four members, the cooking being done on a haphazard basis. A boat could be run with only two persons... there were times when a boat in an emergency, such as when a boatman got sick, ran with only one person with the locktenders tending the lines at the locks... The mules were also usually divided into two teams which worked the same six-hour shifts as the crew. (p.. 98)

Some boats tied up at night, others kept going, while others tied up only for a short while, making the shifts total not quite 24 hours: "We'd tie up at eleven oclock [at night[ and at two o'clock[in the morning] we'd be gone"... "Sometimes a boatman would start off at twelve at night adn go until the next night at eleven o'clock and call that a day." (p. 115)

Other arrangements were mentioned in an account of an 1858 trip:

...we started on our day's journey driving [the mules] about four hours when they were changed for the other pair; at the end of the next four hours they were again changed, and so on making four shifts and sailing from sixteen to eighteen hours a day, the Capt., Pic, and myself taking turns at the rudder while the two boys changed off from time to time and occasionally Pic and myself would drive for an hour or two, walking for exercise; the boys usually rode the rear mule.

Some days the four mules were hitched tandem, then we drove about twelve hours, with a short rest at noon... These might seem long days to work in the present eight and ten hour times [the author is writing 30 years later], but as far as the work was concerned, it mattered little whether the boat sailed or not. There were the meals to cook, someone must stand at the tiller, and the mules must be driven, and there was about five minutes work for one of the others at each lock, the rest of the time could be spent reading, sleeping, viewing the landscape or tellin stories, in which all but the boy driving could take part. (p. 45)

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Becky Morgan]

Re: Two 6-hour shifts a day?

In the present day, the six-on six-off schedule is still common on Ohio and Mississippi River towboats, barring emergencies, of course. I'll have to dig some to see whether anyone mentions such scheduling in the past. When Mark Twain/Sam Clemens was a pilot, he mentioned standing watch and handing off to another pilot, but I don't recall his stating the hours involved. Could be the pilots' union dictated at least some of it, although the records seem sketchy due to some unpleasantness between 1861 and 1865. If you haven't already been on the River History section of steamboats.org, that might be a good place to ask for river sources. I haven't researched the Navy's watch hours during the CW; were they four-hour watches at that time?

I have never turned up a coal mine reference to split shifts, nor have I yet found anything of the sort in steel mills. In mining, of course, it wouldn't be practical to move in and out of the mine twice a day. In the mill, one would think getting out of the heat for awhile would have made for more productive workers, but I haven't seen any evidence that it was done. The glass industry was quite large here in the upper Ohio Valley, so that might be another place to look; I don't believe they split shifts, but will have to see if anyone knows otherwise.