The Biograph catalog summarized this film as follows: "A splendid picture showing a crowd of Coolie men and women coaling a big ocean-going steamer by means of hand baskets passed from one to another."
       The U.S. Library of Congress catalog gives the following description: "The camera was positioned on a steamship dock at a distance that allowed photographing the process of coaling a ship. Primitive scaffolding reached to the deck of the ship from the dock. Many women and children standing on the dock passed the coal piece by piece from hand to hand to the deck of the ship. Since the camera did not move, no operations are visible other than the lifting of the coal pieces."
       The American Mutoscope Company was co-founded in Dec 1895 by former Edison Manufacturing Company inventor William K. L. Dickson (who left Edison in Apr of that year), fellow inventors Herman Casler and Harry Marvin, and businessman Elias Koopman. Their Mutoscope, which originally made flip-card peep show movies, soon rivaled Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope (see Edison Kinetoscopic Records for 1893). In the summer of 1896, when Edison introduced the Vitascope 35mm projector, American Mutoscope immediately came out with its own 68mm projector that offered a superior image. In 1899, the company changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, then shortened it nine years later to the Biograph Company. ...