Daily AncestorCaulker
A caulker was a shipyard worker who sealed the seams between a ship's planks with oakum and pitch to make it watertight.
Wooden hulls leaked at every seam. A caulker drove twisted fibers called oakum into the gaps with a mallet and iron, then covered them with hot pitch.
Caulkers are found in shipbuilding towns from Maine to Baltimore. In Southern ports enslaved and free Black men also did this work; Frederick Douglass was hired out as a caulker in a Baltimore shipyard in 1835.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Wm. Foss, 30, Ship caulker, Me.
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Daily Ancestor. "Caulker." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/caulker. Last checked 2026-10-01.