We are super excited that the Mariners conference is about to kick off at the Brunel Institute of the ss Great Britain.
Delegates are coming from as far afield as Australia, the US, Germany and India to workshop ideas about religion, race and empire with other colleagues.
We hope to keep the event relatively small so as to encourage conversations and exchanges of view, but visitors are welcome so long as you let us know you would like to attend. Requests should be sent to the conference email: mariners.conference2024@bristol.ac.uk.
It was exciting to attend the British Crime History conference which was held in Manchester, at the Friends Meeting House, on 5-6 September.
This was a great opportunity to meet other teams currently working on British social and cultural history project, using the latest methodologies and approaches, as well as traditional story telling.
There were particular intersections with the Mariners project in papers addressing crime and mobilities, crime and race, and gendered approaches to the past. The Clive Emsley award went to Libby Collard for her remakale paper on mapping the black presence in 18th century criminal justice records, using the mighty Old Bailey online archive to track black witnesses and other participants in the criminal justice process. She concluded that racial demarkation of the city was much less than might be supposed from qualitative sources.
There were also fascinating papers on issues of gender and youth, infanticide, institutionalised girls, sex workers and prisons, and the significance of space and locality for crimes as varied as motor bandits, and timber workers in rural Scotland. Religious themes were pursued by Alexandra Cox and Stuart Sweeney who looked at the religious lives of the those transported to the Americas from the UK and Ireland in the era before convict transportation to Australia.
One highlight for me was the final keynote paper by Hallie Rubenhold, who gave us a prelude to her new book on the notorious Cribben murder case.
My head is spinning with new ideas for approaches by the Mariners team to religion, race and empire in the merchant marine, a world that often intersected with that of criminal justice.
We are delighted to be able to feature this fascinating piece from Bristol PhD student, Ting Ruan. Ting will be participating in the Mariners conference, coming up on 12-13 September 2024.
Ting writes:
I am a third-year PhD student in the History Department, and my research focuses on China’s coastal lighting construction during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This project involved the dissemination and adaptation of technology and, more broadly, embodied the presence of Britain’s informal empire and the globalisation process of that era.
China has a long coastline, stretching from its northeastern corner down to its southernmost point, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was largely unlit. The lighting was sporadic, and the facilities were primitive, using vegetable oil in lanterns made of oyster shells, which produced only a dull and smoky flame. Consequently, the lack of modern lighting became a major obstacle for foreign vessels approaching China’s waters. Merchants and captains cried out in the press about the losses in property and human lives caused by shipwrecks.
However, at that time, the Chinese Imperial Court was beset by both internal and external difficulties. Internally, it was plagued by the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted more than ten years and proved to be the largest peasant uprising in Chinese history. . Externally, it contended with European powers, striving to avoid the fate of complete colonisation like some Asian and African countries. Consequently, the Court lacked the resources to systematically build maritime facilities and did not possess the necessary technical personnel.
At the same time, a pivotal institution in China’s modern era was founded: the Chinese Maritime Customs Service.This institution had a unique characteristic: although it was always a branch of the Chinese government, from its establishment in 1861 until the Communist Party seized power in 1949, all six chief leaders were foreigners. Five were British (until 1943), and the last was an American. Its employees, however, came from as many as 23 countries around the world. Therefore, the Customs Service was a Chinese authority with a distinctly global dimension but was clearly dominated by Britain.
Another crucial feature of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service is that it went far beyond being a revenue-collecting agency. It was actively involved in a wide range of affairs in China, including diplomacy, military, postal services, meteorology, and education. Notably, it played a significant role in establishing China’s maritime infrastructure. Sir Robert Hart, the second and longest-serving head, was instrumental in making this ambitious project a success.
Dodd Island Lighthouse with the flag of the Republic of China flying alongside, photo taken in the 1930s. Source: Banister, 1932. (Public Domain)
First and foremost was the issue of funding, which was the basis for everything. In 1868, Hart succeeded in securing 70 percent of the tonnage dues for the lighting project, a sum that the Customs retained exclusively for the construction and maintenance of lighthouses.
For the equipment, Hart, with the support of his loyal assistant James Duncan Campbell, the head of the Customs’ London Office, imported devices and components from Europe and the United States. The second half of the nineteenth century was a critical period in the evolution of lighthouse technology. The rapid development of steamship transportation and the consequent expansion of sea lanes created an increased demand for lighthouses. At the time, France was the world leader in lighthouse technology, with the invention of the Fresnel lens marking a significant breakthrough in the field. Additionally, Chance Brothers, a British company based near Birmingham that initially started as a glass manufacturer, gradually became a competitive producer of illuminating apparatus—specifically, the core component for lighthouses, the lighting device..The Customs Service introduced sophisticated technologies, ensuring that China’s lighthouses were on par with the world’s advanced standards. By the 1920s, China’s coastline was praised as ‘one of the best lit coasts in the world’ (North China Herald, 11 February 1928).Looking back to the mid-nineteenth century, when foreign merchants and captains heavily complained about China’s lack of marine facilities, this accomplishment cannot be overstated.
Image: Lantern room made by Chance Brothers for Dodd Island Lighthouse. Source: Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net).
Having advanced equipment was not enough; technical personnel were essential to design the lighthouses and adapt the technologies. This is where engineers were needed. One of the prominent figures in China’s lighthouse construction was an Englishman named David Marr Henderson. He was the Customs’ first engineer-in-chief, serving nearly 30 years in China. Almost all large coastal lighthouses were built under his supervision. He designed and supervised the construction of the greatest number of lighthouses in the world among his contemporaries.Henderson returned to England in 1898 and lived the rest of his life at Hove, East Sussex.. After his departure, the subsequent engineers-in-chief employed by the Customs were all Britons like him; it was not until the end of World War II that the position was held by Chinese engineers.
Image: Studio Portrait of David Marr Henderson. Source: Photograph by A. Esmé Collings. Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net).
The engineers’ role was in designing and supervising the construction of lighthouses. Once a lighthouse was established, it was the lighthouse keepers who were responsible for its daily operation, ensuring that the light stayed on after sunset and that passing vessels navigated safely. Unlike the engineers, Chinese personnel were involved in the position of lighthouse keepers from an early stage. However, despite Chinese lightkeepers far outnumbering their foreign counterparts, they were largely limited to roles as assistants. Some of them were classed as ‘coolies’, who were not involved in work related to the light but were only assigned chores such as cleaning the house and painting the walls. The Customs was reluctant to appoint Chinese as lightkeepers-in-charge, particularly for large coastal lighthouses, until the 1920s. During this period, nationalist sentiment in China surged, forcing the Customs to adjust its personnel policies by restricting the proportion of foreign staff and promoting Chinese personnel to higher positions; only then were China’s lighthouses gradually placed under Chinese control.
Image: Lighthouse construction workers. Source: Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net).
However, until the outbreak of the Pacific War, a considerable number of large coastal lighthouses were still operated by foreigners. After 1949, when the Communist regime seized power, the history of foreign-controlled Customs came to an end. With only a few exceptions, Westerners were declared unwelcome in this country and driven away.China entered a whole new era. However, the lighthouses still stand along the coastline, guiding passing vessels. With the widespread use of GPS technology, lighthouses in China, as in the rest of the world, gradually lost their practical significance and became more of a tourist attraction. Their unique architectural style, integrated into the vastness of the ocean, soon became a popular holiday landscape, fascinating travellers from all over the world.
Nevertheless, their history always reminds us of the unique period that China went through and the legacy left even beyond its formal reach by the British Empire. These lighthouses embody the British imperial networks, which facilitated the transfer of technology, the movement of people and commodities, and the integration of different parts of the world into an ever-accelerating interconnected globe.
References:
‘The Lights of the China Coast’, North China Herald, 11 February, p. 239.
Banister, T. Roger. 1932. The Coastwise Lights of China: An Illustrated Account of the Chinese Maritime Customs Light Service (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Chinese Customs)
Wright, Stanley F. 1952. Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: Wm Mullan)
China. Maritime Customs. Reports on Lights, Buoys, and Beacons, 1875–1947 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs)
Chen, Xiafei and Han Rongfang (eds). 1990–1993. Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence Between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press)
Resources:
Chance, Toby and Peter Williams. 2008. Lighthouses: The Race to Illuminate the World (London: New Holland Publishers)
Levitt, Theresa. 2013. A Short, Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse (New York: W. W. Norton & Company)
Van de Ven, Hans. 2014. Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press).
I am the Director of The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre which holds the archives, reference library and other heritage items relating to this international church and charity. As well as caring for these collections and providing access to them, my colleagues and I also research aspects of Salvation Army history. The existence of a Salvation Navy in the 1880s isn’t well known, even within our own history, and it’s a story that I’ve been keen to highlight for some time.
This year, 2024, is the 150th anniversary of the Salvation Army opening its first chapel in Wales. Part of the celebrations of this has been to find stories from our work in Wales over the years. So I decided to look in more detail at the Salvation Navy, whose ships were given by a Cardiff industrialist and which we knew held evangelical meetings in Cardiff dock.
The Heritage Centre holds a small archive of original documents and photographs relating to the Salvation Navy, as well as supporting information in contemporary Salvation Army periodicals, primarily the weekly newspaper, The War Cry. I was surprised, therefore, to discover how little anyone know about the actual history and detail of the Salvation Navy. The official History of The Salvation Army only includes the most basic details and our own catalogue records included little more detail, for instance we knew nothing about the later years of the Salvation Navy and had no date for when it was wound up. I supplemented our records with contemporary newspaper reports from the British Newspaper Archive and have been able, for the first time, to piece together the story of The Salvation Navy.
That story begins in August 1885 when the first flagship of The Salvation Navy was launched. The SS Iole’s three masts flew the Salvation Army colours of red, blue and yellow, alongside flags bearing the words ‘Are you Saved’ and ‘Holiness unto the Lord’. Her sails carried the monogram ‘SN’ for Salvation Navy. The Iole was described by her first commander as looking ‘like a bird on the water.’ (‘Description’ 4)
The Salvation Army had been founded by William and Catherine Booth in 1865. In 1884, the Booths were offered the Iole, a 100ft steam yacht, by one of their wealthier supporters- John Cory, a coal broker and ship-owner from Cardiff, who had originally bought the yacht for his wife. It was described as ‘a little gem, perfect in all her appointments, which are, indeed, almost too luxurious for salvationists.’ in the Salvation Army’s magazine All the World (‘S. S. Iole’ 19)
The crew of the SS Iole was assembled from Officers (ministers) and Soldiers (members) of the Salvation Army with nautical backgrounds. Command of the Iole was given to ‘ex-Admiral’ Sherrington Foster who had been master of the Hartlepool lifeboat. The purpose of the Salvation Navy was “to visit every fishing town and seaport village along the English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh coast, boarding every vessel when lying in any roadstead, giving Bibles and good books, preaching Christ, and doing all in our power to get the sailors and fishermen of our country converted.” The Salvation Army’s newspaper, The War Cry, dramatically stated that the Iole had been ‘chartered by the King of Kings to go on a fishing expedition for men’ (‘Our Navy’ 13)
Print. S. S. ‘Iole, July 1885 [Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, SN/3]The Iole began its evangelical campaign in the Channel Islands and then made her way to ports on the English Channel. In early 1886 she was on the Cornish and Devonian coast where ‘vast crowds were assembled on pier and beach, whilst from the deck of the little vessel the yacht’s crew, assisted by the local Corps where there was one, proclaimed salvation to all sorts and conditions of men.’ (‘The Salvation Navy’ 159)
While attempts to secure a second ship for the Salvation Navy were unsuccessful, ‘Naval Brigades’ were established in the communities it worked amongst. Ships whose captains and crews were made up of Salvationists were encouraged to fly the Salvation Army colours and to ‘labour specially for the salvation of their fellows of the deep’ (‘The Salvation Navy’ 159). A pamphlet of Salvation Navy Songs was published for use by the Brigades.
In the summer of 1886 the Iole was visiting East Anglian ports when disaster struck as the Iole was sailing for Hull. On the evening of 11 June 1886, she struck a sandbank in the Humber and the crew had to row ashore in the lifeboat. It was reported that, the next morning, ‘at dead low water only two or three feet of the Iole’s funnel was to be seen’ (‘General Booth’s Yacht’ 2).
The Salvation Navy was without a ship for some seven months until John Cory again came to the rescue and gave an 82 foot racing yacht, the Vestal, to Booth. This became known as the ‘Salvation Gun-Boat’. Although the Vestal was ‘awaiting orders’ in a Southampton shipyard in February 1887, she had to await significant repairs before she could be launched on 5 April (‘Yachting’ 7. Her first captain was Abbot Taylor, previously the ‘skipper of a Brixham smack’ (The Salvation Navy Yacht 3). The Vestal continued the evangelical work that had been carried out by the Iole, visiting Bridport and Watchet in July and carrying out an evangelical campaign along the south Wales coast in the winter, spending Christmas 1887 in Cardiff Dock.
Crew of the Vestal, 1888 [Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, SN/3]However then, in February 1888, the Vestal was badly damaged in a collision with another vessel in the Thames. It seems the ship, and her crew, never fully recovered. Despite plans to sail to Cornwall, the Vestal remained on the Sussex coast throughout the summer of 1888, delayed by costly repairs and the illness of Captain Taylor. Adverts in The War Cry also show a shortage of crew, asking for ‘Captain and Mate, with a good knowledge of the Coast, well saved and able to lead Salvation meetings. Also two Able-bodied Seamen, One Ordinary Seaman, a Cook and Steward. Must in each case be well saved men’ (Wanted 7).
Pamphlet, ‘Songs of the Sea of Time as Sung by the crew of the Salvation Gun-Boat ‘Vestal,’ 1887 [Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, SN/1]The last known report from the Vestal is in October 1888 when Captain Taylor was preaching about their work at the corps in East Grinstead, while the ship was lying at Portslade. Which may imply that the coastal work was not at that time taking place and that the Vestal had been limiting its activities to the Sussex coast since May.
While the Salvation Navy may only have been short-lived, it shows General Booth and the Salvation Army learning from and developing the missions to mariners that had been active since early in the century. The militaristic language and embellished metaphors illustrate the dynamic innovations of The Salvation Army in the 1880s.
By Steven Spencer, Salvation Army International Heritage Centre
Sources
‘Description of our Salvation Stream Yacht ‘Iole.’ Rough report by Staff-Captain Foster’, The War Cry, 17 June, p. 4.
‘General Booth’s Yacht Sunk in the Humber,’ Norwich Mercury, 16 June, p. 2.
Booth, William. 1886. Orders and Regulations for Field Officers of The Salvation Army (International Headquarters of The Salvation Army), p. 569.
‘The Salvation Navy,’ The Salvation War, p. 159.
‘The Salvation Navy Yacht Vestal,’ Western Daily Press, 17 September, p. 3.
‘S. S. Iole,’All the World, January, p. 19.
‘Our Navy,’ The War Cry, 6 March, p. 13.
‘Wanted for the Salvation Yacht Vestal,’ The War Cry, 19 May, p. 7.
‘Yachting,’ The Hampshire Independent, 26 February, p. 7.
The Archives are a welcoming place, housed in B Bond Warehouse hard by the River Avon and the impressive engineering works that created the Floating Harbour. I was there to explore the one surviving Book of Minutes, 1843-1844, for the Bristol Channel Mission Society (BCMS), a forerunner of the Anglican Mission to Seafarers.
The BCMS originated in the efforts of the Rev. John Ashley to visit isolated maritime communities in the Channel, as well as the much larger number of ships moored in the Channel’s roadsteads waiting for wind and tide to take them to their next port. A ‘roadstead’ or ‘roadstay’ is a nautical term for a sheltered stretch of water, where it is (relatively) safe to anchor. In the Bristol Channel, hundreds of ships could be found anchored at Kings-road off Portishead, the Penarth roadstead, and other locations in the notoriously dangerous waterway. One sailing guide describes a roadstay near Ilfracombe, which was visited several times by Ashley on his lecture tours on behalf of the mission, in this way: ‘Ilfracombe is a little pier harbour, drying at low water; on its western point is a lighthouse… [O]utside of the pier there is a roadstead with good anchorage from 5 to 8 fathoms. This part is much frequented by coasting vessels; and pilots generally may be had here to conduct you to King’s-road.’ [J.W. Norie, New and Complete Sailing Directions for St George’s and Bristol Channels (London: Norie, 1816), p.1.]
Although Ashley is usually said to have begun his ministry in 1839, it is necessary to rely on newspaper reports for much of the early history of the mission. According to the Bristol Mercury (one of 13 local newspapers serving the busy port city), Ashley was instrumental in creating the first roadstead mission and trying to reach seafarers afloat and at work. It was through his advocacy that funds were raised for a specially fitted vessel, the Eirene, which was built at Pill to Ashley’s specifications in 1841. The Eirene served not just to visit ships and distribute tracts, but also as a floating chapel. Along the busy roadsteads of the great Severn estuary, Ashley would preach, deliver sermons in aid of the mission, and advocate on behalf of the merchant seaman. Along the ports of the Bristol Channel, ‘it happened that considerable fleets of 200 to 300 sail were detained by contrary winds in Kings-road and the Penarth-roads’. [‘Bristol Channel Mission’, Bristol Mercury, 6 June 1840]. Most were commercial vessels, serving the coastal trade in goods such as coal, as well as imports from the Americas, sugar, tobacco, wine and spirits, meat, live cattle, fruit and timber. A lithograph in the Bristol Museums collection, dated 29 November 1843, shows the Mission Cutter Eirene, anchored among these vessels off Penarth, signalling that was time for divine service.
The Bristol Channel Mission Cutter Eirene, 29 November 1843. Source: Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives. Object Number J129.
Ashley would later write about his mission in these terms:
Truly I pass from roadstead to roadstead here; as a dying man preaching to dying men. Every heavy gale that sweeps the sea buries in its abyss some of the Bibles I have sold, the books and tracts I have given, and in the prime and vigour of life, the men whose hands received them from mine. [‘Missions to Merchant Seamen‘, Churchman 4 ( 1881 ), 329.]
The Minute Book shows that Ashley and the BCMS had high-level support in the city, at least at first. The Society was formed ‘under the auspices of the Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol [ie. James Henry Monk] for the purposes of sending a Clergyman to officiate among the fleets in Penarth-road, Kings-road, etc.’ [Taunton Courier, 22 Feb. 1842]. A sub-committee held at Sundon House, on 21 April 1843, was chaired by Charles Pinney (1793-1867), a Bristol merchant who had been Mayor of Bristol during the disastrous riots following the House of Lords’ rejection of the 1831 Reform Bill. Like the Ashley family and many wealthier Bristolians, Pinney is listed in the Legacies of Slavery database, and benefitted substantially from slave labour. Also on the BCMS committee was a future Mayor of Bristol, Thomas Porter Jose (1801-1875), a colliery owner and director of the Ashton Vale Iron Company, and George John Hadow (1789-1869), formerly of the Madras civil service and assistant under collector of sea customs. Hadow was an active philanthropist, and in 1838 also served on the committee of the Bristol Asylum for the Blind. Sundon House was Hadow’s Clifton home. At the second anniversary of the Society, the meetings was held in the Victoria Rooms, and was chaired by the then mayor of Bristol, James Gibbs. [Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, 6 May 1843].
While Ashley was also on the committee, it is evident from the minutes that things were not all as they should be. For undisclosed reasons, Ashley demanded that the captain of the missionary cutter, the Eirene, be dismissed. While he was able to achieve his wish, it was not long before there was a parting of the ways.
As the Society’s debts mounted, Ashley and the Committee were on a collision course. Ashley failed to attend the Annual Meeting held in the Victoria Rooms on Thursday 25 April 1844. Money seems to have been the main issue. In June 1843, the Society decided to set the chaplain’s salary at £250 – backdated to 31 March 1843. Ashley seems to have declared war on the Committee, and began withholding subscriptions, including from the Merchant Venturers.
By December 1844, most of the Committee had had enough, and almost all of them resigned. This removed the treasurer, both Secretaries, W.C. Bernard and Jose, as well as the Committee’s leading cleric, the Archdeacon of Wells [Henry Law], along with seven clergy and seven laymen, including Charles Pinney. Ashley promptly offered to fill up all the vacancies with his own choice of officers, but – unsurprisingly – his offer was not accepted. At this rather exciting moment, the Minute Book ends.
There are press reports of accusations and counter accusations exchanged between Ashley and the Committee, though the pamphlets distributed by the warring parties have not survived. Perhaps this is just as well. In their reply to Ashley, the Committee quoted scripture: ‘He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him.” – Proverbs 18, v. 17 [Bristol Times and Mirror, 5 Feb. 1845]
The NCMS Committee v. the Rev. John Ashley, Bristol Times and Mirror, Sat. 8 February 1845.
So what happened? The Society limped on, and Ashley himself went on an heroic fund-raising tour in 1852, moving from ‘town to town’ to support the cause. Ashley’s tour ended in London where, at a meeting chaired by Lord Shaftesbury, Ashley spoke for three hours on behalf of the mission he had founded. [Morning Chronicle, 11 June 1853]:
But it was not enough. In July 1856, the Bristol Channel Mission Society held its final meeting. There was a very poor attendance as the Committee explained that the Society would be wound up and incorporated into a new national organisation, based in London [Bristol Mercury, 5 July 1856]. With relief, it was also reported that the new Society would take over their debt of £450. This included all that was owed to Ashley, who had agreed to resign on being paid his full stipend of £400, an enormous salary by the standards of any other missionary society. By this stage, Ashley had already been replaced by three new chaplains, the Rev. T.C. Childs, well known for his mission to emigrants now extended to seamen from his base at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, for the English Channel, the Rev. C.D. Strong for the Bristol Channel, and the Rev. R. B. Howe for the Great Harbour of Malta. Putting on a brave show, the committee reported: ‘Feeling then that the time is come – that already the adequate discharge of our duty as a mission to the seafaring population of Great Britain is entirely beyond our strength as a small local committee, we propose that this society be now dissolved in favour of the society for promoting missions to seamen at home and abroad.’ [Bristol Mercury, 5 July 1856]
The Missions to Seamen (1856), incorporating both the Bristol Channel Mission Society and the Thames Church Mission Society (1844) was launched under new, more effective management. Ashley himself never recovered from the collapse of his vision, though fondly remembered as a pioneer of the Anglican Missions to Seafarers, and the first to attempt a direct mission to seafarers isolated on the roadsteads of the Bristol Channel. Based on the BCMS Minutes, the mission he pioneered succeeded despite rather than because of his involvement with the cause. However, given the many gaps in the record, it may not be possible to understand the full story.
For accounts of the BCMS and the Rev. John Ashley: Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Bristol Times and Mirror, Bristol Mercury, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, Morning Chronicle (London), Southampton Herald.
Miller, R.H.W. Dr Ashley’s Pleasure Yacht: John Ashley, the Bristol Channel Mission and all that Followed. London: Lutterworth, 2017. [Available as an ebook here]
Miller, R.H.W. ‘Thomas Cave Childs: Pioneer chaplain to female emigrants and the Missions to Seamen’, The Mariner’s Mirror 106.4 (2020), 436-449.
For older views of Ashley:
Strong, L.A.G. Flying Angel: The Story of Missions to Seamen. London: Methuen, 1956
Walrond, Mary L. Launching out into the deep; or the pioners of a noble effort. London: SPCK, 1904.
The Mariners project was delighted to welcome Advisory Board members to Bristol on 4 September. The Board consists of leading marine historians, archivists and community leaders:
Claire Weatherall, Hull History Centre, is a trained archivist who has completed the catalogue of the archives of the Mission to Seafarers
Brad Beaven, University of Portsmouth, is a leading marine historian with a special interest in the history of British ports;
Aaron Jaffer, Royal Museums Greenwich is a leading authority on the history of lascars;
Asif Shakoor is a community historian whose family were employed on lascar contracts in the British mercantile marine.
In the morning the Bristol team briefed the Advisory Board on progress since the project began on 1 October 2022. We were able to report that the website was on track for release in November, which will be the major milestone for the first stage of the project. All team members have also been contributing regularly to the project blog, which is shaping up as a great window to the evolution of the project.
We then headed down to the floating harbour for lunch in the Grain Barge where there was more chat and debriefing about the directions of the project. We are very grateful to Evan Jones, one of the leading authorities on the history of Bristol and Bristol Harbour, who took us on a superb walking tour of Bristol, pointing out key elements in the city’s port history, and ending up at Bristol Bridge where the medieval city began.
Evan Jones explaining why Bristol actually has two statues of Cabot – not one.
On the way we paused outside the badly damaged site of the former Bristol Missions to Seafarers in Prince’s Street, and the rather more salubrious Seaman’s Home in Queen Square. We look forward to our next Advisory Board meeting which will be in six months time.
Mariners Advisory Board and team members outside site of former Missions to Mariners, Prince Street Bristol.
The mast of our project blog has an image of portside preaching, A Mission to Seamen by Henry Herbert La Thangue (1859-1929). This is probably the best known painting of marine missions from the 19th century.
Another, which deserves to be better known, is ‘The Missionary Boat’, painted in 1894 by Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929), part of the Royal Cornish Polytechnic Society’s Tuke Collection, now on loan to Falmouth Art Gallery. Tuke was a member of the Newlyn School of painters, and for a while lived in Falmouth where he had a floating studio on a French barque, not unlike the one in this painting.
Henry Scott Tuke, The Missionary Boat, 1894 (oil on canvas). The Tuke Collection, Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. Wikimedia Commons: Public domain
Unlike many of Tuke’s marine paintings, this one is of a specific occasion. It shows the arrival of the chaplain, James Canning Badger, neatly sailing the mission yawl Clarice, to meet the French barque Verveine of Marseilles. Badger was a chaplain with the British and Foreign Sailor’s Society (now the Sailors’ Society) in Falmouth frm 1887 to 1916. Tuke depicts Badger as a competent sailor, little distinguishable from the sailors who hail his arrival.
On shore, Badger embraced the image of the sea and marine industry as part of the rhetoric and identity of his mission. The National Maritime Museum Cornwall has a striking photo which shows Badger astride his ship pulpit in the Seamens Bethel & Institute in Falmouth, resting his hand on the wheel.
James Canning Badger, chaplain British and Foreign Sailor’s Society, Seamens Bethel & Institute Falmouth. Source: National Maritime Museum Cornwall.
The most famous literary example of a ship pulpit is that for the sermon on Jonah and the Whale, delivered by Father Mapple in chapter eight of Henry Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). But they were surprisingly common in marine mission chapels and, along with floating ship chapels, they were to be found in both American and British contexts. But that must be the subject of another blog.
Last week I visited Lambeth Palace Library, checking for correspondence relating to missions to seamen in the national library and archive of the Church of England. I found plenty to catch the interest of the historian of missions to seafarers, especially as this was my first visit to the spectacular building, which was completed in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic.
Lambeth Conference 1968
What was evident from the papers of the Lambeth Conference of 1968 is how the central idea of the mission has changed since its Victorian foundation. According to John Chelmsford, Chairman of the Council of the Mission to Seamen, and Rev. Cyril Brown (1904-1997), General Secretary of the Society, the ‘main reasons for the existence of the Society’ inluded the need to provide for transients outside settled dioceses. But the ‘first duty of chaplains’ was to ‘meet seamen where they can be found – i.e. on board ship, whether alongside wharves, in roadsteads or harbours or at the isolated oil, bulk carriers and container terminals which are a feature of the modern shipping industry’. (LPL, LC 203/4, f. 285.)
This commitment to an essentially welfare orientation is a signficant change from the bombastic nationalism which was a notable feature of the Society’s literature until at least the 1950s. For example, a speech annotated and possibly delivered by Geoffrey Fisher, archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961, is unreconstructed in its evocation of Britain’s maritime greatness, going back to the glory days of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
It was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first that the seamen of England first captured the interest and the imagination of all Englishmen, and took their pre-eminent place in the affectionate regard of our people. Their achievements expressed on a great scale and with a new found confidence the varied genius of our race. They pushed out fearlessly to explore the unknown and bring it under man’s control: under God they were champions of our liberty and preserved freedom for England and the English Church against the assaults of alien tyrannies: they created and protected our commerce over all the world by which this county grew and prospered, lived and lives. (LPL, Fisher 177, f. 183)
The speech ended by giving thanks that the Duke of Edinburgh was leading the Society in the years ahead. Prince Philip took an active interest as President and this enabled a burst of new fund raising and support for the British merchant marine, but he also looked ahead to a much more diverse Society. A turning point from the old to the new was marked by the Centenary of the Society, which was celebrated in July 1956.
Mission to Seafarers Centenary, 1956
From the top of the new Lambeth Palace Library, there is a wonderful view of the city of London, overlooking the Thames, the Houses of Parliament and the Archbishop’s Garden below. The latter site was the location for the Centenary Garden Party of the Missions to Seamen, celebrated on July 18th, 1956. This was a grand occasion, with about 800 people in attendance. In his briefing letter to Fisher, Cyril Brown noted how important the work of the Honorary Secretaries was to the running of the Society, and that the Society could ‘scarsely continue’ without their help. He also noted that many of them were women, and ‘by no means young.’ (Brown to Fisher, 9 July 1956, LPL, Fisher 177, f. 192)
The Archbishop’s Garden from the New Lambeth Palace Library. Source: Hilary Carey, 26 June 2023.
Women’s work for mariners
This alerts us to an important theme, which we hope to develop as the Mariners project develops. Although in the time period of this project, seafarers were nearly always men, the work of the missions to seafarers, based on land and in and around ports, was significantly enabled by women. I like to think that the women who attended the centenary party in the Archbishop’s Garden in 1956 enjoyed their day, and the recognition of their work. Hopefully, this project will continue to uncover more of their contribution as we work through the archives.
