 A year later he reached sufficient age to begin a seven-year apprenticeship to the Watermen's Company, working with his father on the wharves that would later become the site of the County Hall.The success of the 1889 London Dock Strike encouraged the river workers to form a union, the Amalgamated Society of Watermen, Lightermen and Bargemen.Gosling was one of its first members, and was appointed general secretary in 1892, aged 32.