Talk:Navvy/Archives/2015

Navvy Training, and work rate

There seems to be mention of how navvies were trained, which took a year, to work up to the high level of endurance required to work on the job, typically consisting of up to 4 times what a farmer could accomplish in the same time. Also the article doesn't contain any detail as regards their diet, which had to have a very high energy content, i.e. they were fed on bear and meat, in huge quantities, to keep up with the punishing workload.

Also, supposedly, being a navvy was the height of sustained physical endurance, in any arena, past or present, over an extended period of time. The sheer amount of work they did in the UK, now only in the initial effort for canal building, then later, putting in 1000's of miles of railway, but also diging hydro electric tunnels in scotland, thorough mountains, is an achievment. The building of the London and Birmingham Railway was an achievement in parallel to building the Giza Pyramid 1.5 times, in a very short time. scope_creep (talk) 22:19, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The article has ancient refs from non-reviewed sources. A 1968 novella is hardly an acceptable source of 1st hand info in 2010. More current thinking says the waterways navvy (from navigational engineer) was well paid and well fed. They travelled in demountable camps with their families. A fit and trained man can do 4x the work of anyone else. Herodotus' description of pyramid construction is wrong. He claimed 100000 slaves took 100yrs to build the big one. Modern forensic archeology shows it was built by very well feed tradesmen. 45000 men took 40yrs to build it. The baby pyramid seems to have taken about 5yrs. If there's one way to stall construction it's use a slave force of belligerents.220.240.254.161 (talk) 04:42, 17 June 2015 (UTC)