Although masters and men were united in opposition to the demands of the impress service, the unanimity did not extend to the question of the keelmen's wages. The continuing rise in prices during the war involved them in increasing hardship, the more so since their employment was in many cases being curtailed. In a petition of 29 August 1809 to the Mayor, Joseph Forster, himself a fitter, and the rest of the trading brethren of the Hostmen's Company, the keelmen argued that even if they had constant employment with as much work as they could do throughout the year, ‘the very high price of every article connected with housekeeping’ would render their present wages barely sufficient for the sustenance of their families. They therefore requested that the men employed above Newcastle bridge should each receive an additional 1s 6d per tide, and those below the bridge 1s, with ‘house and firing’. The petition was couched in deferential terms and ‘in full confidence’ that it would be received ‘with all due attention’.

The fitters met the keelmen's delegates at the Mayor's Chamber on 7 September. The delegates produced memoranda stating that the requested wage increase bore little proportion to the rise in the price of provisions and other necessaries since 1710, nor to the advances granted to other labourers whose wages were proportionate to factors such as exposure to hardships and dangers, or work that was extremely laborious, slavish, or dirty – to all of which the keelmen could plead to a much greater extent. Their wages were irregular, and out of them they had to ‘vitual’ and pay the boy who made up the crew of each keel and support their own poor through the charity. Moreover, their house rents were ‘exorbitantly high’.

Their chief spokesman, Henry Strachan, claimed that apart from 2s 6d ‘bread money’ and 1s 2d per tide granted to those employed above the bridge, the keelmen's wages had not been increased since 1710. This did not fully take into account the adjustments made in 1792 to the owners’ wages element of the men's pay, and it was also objected that ‘making-in money’ had recently been augmented (though that payment was generally made in drink).