Berth 24

British Transport Films was an organisation set up in 1949 to make documentary films on the general subject of British transport, in the same way as the GPO Film Unit had been set up in the 1930s to make films about the work of the Post Office. "Berth 24" was the first film they produced and deals with the workers of Hull Docks. The film follows the unloading and reloading of a cargo ship, the SS Bravo, plying between Hull and Gothenburg; the title derives from the part of the docks in which the Bravo is berthed.

Most of the people we see in the film are genuine Hull dock workers, although there is also a fictional story about a Swedish businessman-cum-farmer, played by an actor. He has come to England to organise the purchase of an excavator, but while here he decides to buy a prize bull for his farm, and both excavator and bull are shipped back to Sweden on the Bravo's return journey.

Today documentaries are normally associated with TV, but television sets were few and far between in 1949, and BTF's films were made for the cinema, generally as "fillers" between the A-movie and the B-movie. At 40 minutes, however, "Berth 24" is unusually long for a filler, and when watching it I was struck by how boring it was and thought that it could, with profit, have been considerably shorter. Someone at BTF must have had the same thought, because it was later cut down to 15 minutes and retitled "Dockers at Work".

That new title gives a better idea of what the film is about and of its main purpose, namely to inform the wider public of the very demanding work done by the nation's dockers, work of vital importance in keeping international trade flowing. Today, of course, containerisation means that the traditional dock work we see here no longer exists, but this adds to the film's value as a record of our social history.