The Work and Community of Seafarers in The Late Nineteenth Century
"Fiction and truth, sympathy and cynicism, have for many a long day exercised themselves in framing the character sketches of 'Jack Ashore' and 'Jack Afloat". It is astonishing in what many colours he has been painted." The Seaman (Journal of the NSFU) 29 November, 1912.
The life and work of the seafarer are better known to us from the colourful images of popular literature than from more dispassionate sources: Doctor Johnson considered a ship to be worse than a gaol and felt that "when men come to like a sea life they are not fit to live on land." Herman Melville, (author of Moby Dick and Redbum) typecast sailors as ignorant and depraved and advised his (middle-class) readers to keep them at arm's length: and Jack London featured a drunken, wife-beating ship's fireman in People of The Abyss. The paucity of serious studies of the seafarer is particularly lamentable.
This paper argues against the characterisation of seafarers as a class apart. It begins with a brief review of the seafarer's work and an examination of the living and working conditions on board ship which highlight the particular hardships of seafaring. We do not deny that employment as a seafarer was hard and danger ous, nevertheless, it was neither so disorienting or degrading as to make the seafarer an outcast from society. This point is made more strongly in the second section of the paper which deduces from the demographic characteristics of the workforce that sea going was but a temporary phase of life. Furthermore, it argues from the voyage patterns common in the latter part of the nineteenth century that men could keep up some semblance of contact with shore communities, even whilst employed as seafarers. It was not uncommon for seafarers to have families ashore, and the vital role of seafarers' wives should be recognised. The temporal focus of this study is the later nineteenth century and specifically 1887 - the year of the founding of the first national seafarers' union, the centenary of which was commemorated at the conference in Liverpool, in September 1987, where a version of this paper was delivered. Our final aim is to identify some of the roots of unionism at the workplace and in the community which have been neglected in institutional histories of the National Seamen's and Firemen's Union (NSFU).
In 1887, seafaring occupied over 161,000 men and boys and it was one of the ten most common occupations of males in England and Wales. The workforce included firemen and coal trimmers, able-bodied (A.B.) seamen and ordinary seamen (O.S.), stewards, cooks and stewardesses. It is important not to gloss over these occupational distinctions which had emerged with, or become more pronounced as a result of, the development of steam shipping. By 1887, the steam revolution was well underway and the majority of seafarers worked in steam vessels; two-thirds in fact, as corn pared with one-third less than a dozen years before. Sail was a depressed sector of employment: wages in sail were low by corn parison with wages in steam (table 1). The skills of the seaman were in decline since sail handling - the essence of seamanship - was less and less in demand with the supremacy of steam over sail. On board steamships, seamen's tasks were chiefly those of maintenance (holystoning the decks and painting) and taking a hand at the wheel. But the critic who stated that all that was wanted on a steamship was a "burly labourer who can steer" (2) did not do justice to seamen. Seamen did not follow a formal apprenticeship but a four year period of service distinguished an A.B. seaman from a novice, an Ordinary seaman. Experience of all manner of weather and climatic condition was acquired during these years. No careful shipowner would risk manning his vessels with too few experienced seamen despite the greater expense of A.B.'s as compared with 0.S.'s (table 1).
The stokehold gang was a class of seafarer created by the steam revolution at sea. The jobs of coal trimmer and fireman were, respectively, trimming the coal and building and stoking the fires to make steam to power the ship's engines. It was strenuous work and particularly debilitating in hot climates where the temperature in the stokehold reached one hundred de grees. On large vessels the firemen tended three fires each and on average each man loaded five tones of coal per day into the furnaces. The Majestic, a liner of 1,247 horse power had seventy six furnaces and carried one hundred and ten firemen and coal trimmers. The physically demanding nature of the work justified a longer break between watches: firemen worked four hours on and eight hours off; seamen worked four hours on and four hours off. But muscular strength was not the only at tribute of a fireman; a degree of skill and experience was neces sary to be able to build a fire which would burn evenly. Firemen gained the necessary skills whilst serving as coal trimmer or, prior to going to sea, as firemen on shore. Firemen were the best paid of the hands on board ship (table 1) but higher wages were a necessary attraction.
Firemen and coaltrimmers formed the core of industrial militancy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their uncongenial working conditions were a stimulus to pursue improve ments in wages and conditions; their collective work organisation (firemen and coal trimmers worked together in gangs) suggested unity as a means of achieving it; and their bargaining position - stronger than other seafarers because of the difficulty of replacing firemen - provided the chance of success neces sary to encourage acts of militancy.
The stewards' department was, by contrast, unpromising ground for trade union organisation. The hierarchical job struc ture of the department encouraged per-sonal ambition. Subservient in their relationship to passengers, stewards were also obliged to ingratiate themselves with their superiors in the department. Tips, gratuities and backhanders provided the incentive. Firemen and seamen were contemptuous of stewards and of their work. But personal services was exacting and stewards worked long hours, the longest on board ship - a sixteen hour day was not uncommon. Moreover, lucrative rewards were confmed to the very few at the top of the career ladder, whilst the mass of stewards, waiters and kitchen assistants were very poorly paid (table 1). The NSFU made no attempt to unionise stewards. A separate stewards' union was, however, established in Liverpool in 1909 and struck a surprising note of militancy as stewards awoke to a consciousness of their servitude.
These are but brief sketches of the three types of sea-going workers but sufficient, we hope, to show that the omnibus designation 'Seaman' does not do justice to the differences in ship board workers. Indeed the argument might be made out that the workers in the three departments had more in common with their counterparts on shore than with each other. But the particular conditions which sea-going workers alone experienced should be set against this argument. Sea-going imposed its own set of conditions upon the workforce owing, firstly, to the seafarer's confinement to his place of work, the ship, and secondly, to the peripatetic nature of his work. (It should, perhaps, be made clear that our discussion is confmed to seafarers in foreign-going employment - different circumstances prevailed in the coasting trade).
The first point is that accommodation and victuals were provided on board ship by the seaman's employer. The quality of both left much to be desired. There were unavoidable limitations - the difficulty, for example, of keeping food fresh during several weeks or months at sea - but seamen's employers were culpable in their penny-pinching economies in expenditure on crew. "Sufficiently without waste" was the shipowner's motto and the quantities of food dished out to the crew were, at first sight, generous - one and a half pounds of meat (salt pork or salt beef) and a pound of bread per person per day - but this took no account of weight lost from the highly salted meat in cooking, or of gristle and bone. Scurvy caused by shortage of vitamin C had not, even as late as 1887, been eliminated from the mercantile marine despite the statutory tot of lime juice dolled out under merchant navy legislation. Parliament increasingly took responsibility for regulating the living condi-tions of merchant seafarers - much to the chagrin of many shipowners who resented the increase of 'grandmotherly legislation'. However, the statutes described bare minimum standards. In the case of foc'sul (forecastle) accommodation, for example, seafarers were permitted seventy two cubic feet of space - one third of the space allocated to prisoners in British gaols. Nevertheless, despite the poor food and cramped living accommoda tion, seafar ers' living conditions at sea were not substantially worse than those of the working class on shore. But the man on board ship was exposed to extremes of weather and climate and to the many hazards of the sea.
Seafaring was a riskier occupation than coal mining. In the late nineteenth century the accident rate in shipping was four times higher than in the mining industry. Between 1884 and 1908, over seventy five thousand seafarers died at sea, more than half of them as a result of accident. Over the previous fifty years government had attempted to reduce the loss of life by regulating the seaworthiness of vessels. The Board of Trade had powers of inspection and could prevent an unseaworthy ship from setting sail. Seafarers could initiate an inspection provided that no fewer than five men or three quarters of the ship's crew (which ever was the greater) mounted a deputation to the local marine board. Legislation of this type created, though unintentionally, "sea lawyers", men who mastered the letter of the law and used it to defend their rights. The step from spokesman to trade union activist was a natural progression and Havelock Wilson is only the most famous example of a trade union leader whose early experience in fight ing for seafarers' rights was gained as a "sea lawyer".
Shipowners complained that the establishment of statutory rights for seafarers gave them leverage to challenge authority and undermine ship discipline. But, as well as extending rights to seafarers, the merchant shipping act also reinforced the shipmaster's disciplinary powers. The acts prescribed penalties for insubordination to a maximum of three months imprisonment with hard labour. The system of discipline in the merchant marine was based upon royal navy practices, consequently seafarers lived and worked under a stricter set of rules than any working man ashore. The need for discipline was a constant refrain amongst seafarers' employers. Discipline was, they argued, necessary for order: a disorderly ship endangered the safety of the vessel. The truth of the matter was, however, that a punitive system of discipline obviated the need for positive schemes of labour management. Shipowners who recruited seafarers on an ad hoc basis were concerned only that their master had sufficient authority to weld them into a working team.
Seafarers worked long hours. Firemen and seamen worked around the clock on a shift system and all seafarers worked seven days a week. The average working week of a fireman was fifty six hours and a seaman was eighty four hours. Lord Inchcape, managing owner of the Pacific and Orient Company, when pressed on the question of a shorter working day said "I am convinced that the men themselves don't want it and would be bored to death if they got it." (3) In reality shipowners knew that any decrease in working hours could only be achieved by their employing extra men. The hours of work lend perspective to the rates of pay given in table 1. These wage rates were comparable with the wages of a building artisan, a carpenter or stonemason when a monetary allowance for the cost of the seafarer's food (estimated at twenty four shillings a month in 1887) was included in the reckoning. But the seamen's hours were long and rates of pay were low by comparison with hours worked. Nevertheless, despite the long hours, despite the discomforts of shipboard life and the strict system of discipline, men were attracted to sea.
The majority of seafarers were young men, for the most part under forty years of age and they remained at sea but for a few years. In middle age when men were less able to tolerate ship board conditions and, moreover, when their family responsibilities in creased, they came ashore. Former seafarers fitted into jobs which were directly related to their previous experience: A.B. seamen as stevedores, dockers and riggers; firemen as engine drivers and gas stokers; stewards and cooks established boarding houses and restaurants. Ten per cent or more of the working male population of port towns might be engaged in seafaring at any one instant, but a very much greater proportion went to sea at some time in their lives. It is nonsense, therefore, to regard seafarers as a class apart. Seafaring and seafarers were well known and understood in the port communities and smaller maritime settlements which supplied so many of the nation's seafarers.
Seafarers did have roots in shore society and even if their peripatetic employment took them around the world most seafarers regarded one port as their home port. The changing work pattern consequential upon the rise of steam and decline of sail was important. The very long sea voyage of a year or more, common in the age of sail, was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Seafarers returned to their home ports more regularly. Men employed on liners were on a regular shuttle from the home port to set destinations overseas, men employed on tramps did not work to set pattern but they returned to the United Kingdom with some frequency. These factors encouraged men to set up homes in the ports from which their vessels sailed. The establishment of the Chinese community in Liverpool is proof enough of the desire of seamen to put down roots.
Seafarers should not marry, they had "no right to marry" in the opinion of their employer since their periodic absence meant they wG7 could not provide regularly for their wives and children. However, in the latter part of the nineteenth century between one-half and one-third of all seafarers were married. True, it is not easy for them to provide for families. Seafarers were paid only at the end of a voyage and, whilst they could have allotments paid to their wives during their absence, the maximum value of the allotment was half the monthly wage and this was scarcely sufficient to support a family. Seafarers' wives had to take waged work. They worked at the casual and low paid jobs which customarily fell to married women, charring and laundering being the most common. Occasionally they kept a 'family' business running. A noteworthy example was Mrs Havelock Wilson who, with the assistance of her daughter kept "Wilson's Temperance and Dining Rooms" running whilst her husband was absent, not at sea (though Wilson had once been a ship's cook), but on union business for which he was unpaid.
Wilson was working towards the formation of a national seafarers' union which he was instrumental in founding in 1887. It was established in Sunderland and did not warrant the title 'national' until 1889 when seafarers in many ports rallied round the union encouraged by their strengthened bargaining position during shipping boom and labour shortage. It was no accident that the national union grew from a base on the North East coast, for there seafarers had the longest tradition of organisation in benefit clubs, the precursors of trade unions. They looked to the benefit and sickness clubs to provide security for their depend ents in case of death or injury. These seafarers of North and South Shields, Newcastle and Blyth, as well as Sunderland, were very much men of their communities. They worked in the coasting or short-haul Baltic trade aboard colliers and, even in the days of sail, returned to their home ports at regular intervals. A settled pattern of employment was important to the growth of trade unionism, and so too were roots in the community. In the first place it increased the accessibility of seafarers to trade union organisers and, in the second, fostered solidarity between the seafarers themselves and between seafarers and other port workers. It is significant that no national seafarers' union arose before the time when most seafarers worked on steam vessels and returned to a home port on a regular basis. In conclusion then; it is not only misleading to treat seafarers as a 'class apart', but to do so is fundamentally distorting to the history of seafaring labour.
Table 1 Monthly Wage Rates of Seafarers, 1887
| Sailing Vessels | Steam Vessels |
| £2 lOs A.B. Seaman | £1 Ordinary Seaman |
| £3 lOs A.B. Seaman | £1 Ordinary Seaman |
| £5 Fireman | |
| £4 Coal Trimmer | |
| £3 Steward | |
| £1 Ordinary Seaman |
Footnotes
1 Annual statement of Navigation and Shipping for 1887, pp 1888, xcvii.
2 FT Bulletin, The Men of The Merchant Service (1900), p 255. 3 British Seafarer, January 1921 4 T. Brassey, British Seamen (1887), p 172.