A rare piece of maritime history! Extremely limited quantities remaining!
These boards were in use at Harland & Wolff from 1861 until the 1970's. Any one of these boards may have belonged to a shipbuilder who worked on Titanic!
The number on this board is 35015... (stamped in the rebate at one end)
The first 2 digits refer to place of work (engineworks, platers shop, carpentry shop etc) and the last series of digits are specific to the worker himself.
Packaged in a business payment envelope accompanied by the extract below from local historian Stephen Cameron's book "Titanic-Made in Belfast"
"No bourd - no pay" (Reproduced from "Titanic-Made in Belfast" with the kind permission of the author Stephen Cameron.)
For those in work, there was a unique form of timekeeping. In the time office were the timekeepers, who were each responsible for up to 400 workers and their 'bourds'. These were small pieces of hardwood, approximately 1.5 x 3 inches in size, with two small shoulders cut into the smaller side. In this space was stamped the worker's number.
When a workman clocked in in the morning, his bourd was issued to him. he carried it all day, and if he needed special equipment during the day, the bourd would be given to the storeman as a deposit. If the equipment was not returned the bourd was held and this would have financial implication. At the end of the day the bourd was returned to the time office and the day's wages calculated.
There is a story that at quitting time, the exiting workers would not take the time to hand in their bourds individually, but would throw them in en masse into the time office, to the cowering timekeepers. The small hatches in the time office windows might lead one to think that the story is unlikely, but perhaps the men had a 'true eye'.
