The Rubbish Boats

[gregs dad]

Just recently walked by the Stanley & Collingwood docks which I knew very well as a lad (many, many years ago). I used to be taken there by my brother who used to fish by the Victoria tower into the Mersey. There was
always two boats in these docks called the Beta and the Delta which were used to ferry household waste out past the bar of the mersey and dumped into the sea.
Refuse was collected from household bins by a container pulled by a shire horse. This container when full was collected by a lorry which dropped an empty container off to be connected to the shire horse to carry on the collections. The lorry the went to the docks to be emptied onto the boats.
This required a few men to spread the rubbish evenly in the holds of the boats
It`s a good job we had coal fires in those days to burn a lot of household waste .

gregs dad