Author: Manikarnika Dutta

London Metropolitan Archives

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The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) specialises in the history of London and maintains records related to the development of London’s urban spaces and communities. I went there to consult documents on the seamen’s mission circuit and the Sailors’ Orphan Girls Home in Hampstead. While the Hull History Centre has most of the Hampstead home’s records, the LMA had some scattered documents on the institution and London’s seamen’s missions.

The LMA is housed in a brutalist building looking over a park. The reading room and reference centre floor had an exceptionally well-curated free exhibition on London’s racial minorities. I read several logbooks of the Wesleyan Chapel Trust seamen’s mission circuit (N/M/42/70) that described the frequency of preaching among seamen in five London locations: Brunswick Chapel (1832-), Mitre Buildings Sunday School (1843-), Queen Victoria Seamen’s Rest (1900-), Barking Road Chapel in Canning Town (1861-68), Barking Road Minister’s House (1894-) and Every Seamen’s Rest (1909). The local preachers also kept detailed minutes on the content of their lectures (N/M/42/69).

London Metropolitan Archives (photo credit: Manikarnika Dutta)

The archives held a large number of annual and occasional reports of the Sailors’ Orphan Girls School 9A/FWA/C/D/122/001) that provided an overview of the church’s work with orphans. Captain R.J. Elliott started the Home in Whitechapel in 1829 as a means to provide education to orphans of seamen and fishermen. The committee moved the institution to Frognal House in Hampstead in 1855, where they provided board, clothing, education, and training in domestic duties. It received children between the ages of five and 12, who remained there till 16. The Duke of Edinburgh led a fundraising campaign that helped the establishment of a new building in 1866.

The church and the admiralty jointly managed the enrolment and the religious and practical education of the orphans. Training in housework included cooking, laundry, and needlework, and the Home found them suitable jobs as they turned 16. The girls were given an outfit as they ventured out into the world, and prizes for serving for a long time at one place. The Home prided itself in saving orphaned children from poverty and ignominy, but its vision for preparing these children for life was grounded in archaic notions of class and gender roles: that working-class women could not aspire to become any more than servants. I will revisit Hull to consult other documents of the Home and generate a deeper understanding of the church’s role in orphan welfare.

Mersey Mission to Seamen – Merseyside Maritime Museum

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Three floors of irresistible exhibitions and galleries that tell the story of the Liverpool port and waterfront lead to the Maritime Museum archives. When I went there to consult documents on the Liverpool Sailor’s Home, the museum had two stimulating exhibitions on the Cunard ship Lusitania and its White Star Line competitor, Titanic. The archives closed before the rest of the museum, leaving me some time to take in the visual treats that contained a plethora of useful information on the lives of seamen aboard luxury liners.

The walls of the small reading room of the archives were lined with maritime magazines and an excellent collection of books on life at sea. The printed archive catalogues contained detailed descriptions of every folder and enabled me to swiftly cross-reference and request relevant materials without having to look up the online catalogue.

Permanent exhibition at the National Maritime Museum (Photo: Manikarnika Dutta, 2023)

The major attraction of the archives was the accessible reference library that had several scarce but crucial accounts of seamen’s missions. These books were published either privately or by short-lived or niche presses, which meant they were difficult to find in most libraries. A case in point was the two books on the Mersey Mission to Seamen by chaplain Bob Evans, among which The Mersey Mission to Seafarers, 1856-2006 was a rare find. Evans was awarded an MBE in 2008, shortly after the book’s publication, in recognition of his unstinting work for seamen’s welfare since the 1960s.

Source: Liverpool Maritime Museum Archives, 414.EVA

The book is an authoritative history of the Mersey Mission told in a serious and self-congratulatory tone. Evans was proud of what the Mission achieved and overlooked some fundamental problems such as the discrepancy in the annual remunerations of chaplains for different racial categories of seamen. While Rev Tom Patrick joined the chaplaincy with a salary of £300 in 1878 (p. 47), the first Lascar Missionary (Charles Seal) received £52 in 1902 (p. 76). The number of Asiatic seamen under Seal’s paternal care might have been fewer than white seamen in the port, but the stark difference in fees conveys a racialised outlook towards which service counted as more important. The project will further explore the politics of identity for charity matters as it progresses.

Mersey Mission to Seamen – Liverpool Central Library

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The Mission to Seamen opened a branch in Liverpool in 1856 to expand their spiritual and moral welfare objectives for British seamen. The Mersey Mission to Seamen was established in 1873 as a more autonomous body. It operated out of several premises in places such as Runcorn, Birkenhead, Bootle, and Garston, aside from Liverpool, before moving into a new building on Hanover Street in 1885. The Mission’s logo, an angel in flight with a book in hand, made no secret of their gospel-preaching ambitions and widening reach.

Source: ‘The Mersey Mission to Seamen: Its Work and Needs’, Elder Dempster Magazine 7, no. 2 (1923): 178-81 (Liverpool Central Library H 387.31805 ELD_2)

I visited the Liverpool Central Library to consult their records (LCL 361 MER), the Beatles’ version of Maggie Mae ringing in my ears. This collection includes 9 volumes of minute books (1866-1967), 40 miscellaneous documents (1848-1953), and 123 photographs (1895-1967). I read the annual reports of the Mission from 1889 to 1914, among other documents, which provide a useful snapshot of the nature of spiritual service and material benefits for seamen. The reports generally declared the Mission’s ever-increasing influence on seamen and acknowledged the support of the public towards its activities.

The 40th annual report, for instance, says that a large number of seamen used the Central Institute (in Liverpool) for games, seeking advice from the staff of the Mission, and to enjoy the ‘freedom and security of a carefully managed Social Club’ (Report of the Mersey Mission to Seamen Society for the Year 1897, p. 7). The Mission encouraged seamen to write letters (10,712 written in a year), attend religious meetings, enroll in a Communicants’ Union, and learn first aid with the St. John’s Ambulance Association.

Source: Mersey Mission to Seamen Annual Report for the Year 1897 (Liverpool Central Library 361.3 MER)

A key feature of this report was the information regarding the establishment of a women’s association named ‘Mersey Mission Helpers’ (Ibid, p. 12). I will further explore women’s role in seamen’s missions in Liverpool and other port cities. Another interesting fact was the individual efforts of the clergy in connecting and keeping in touch with the seamen who passed through these institutes. The reader-in-charge of the Garston branch, for example, wrote 226 letters to seamen and saved all their responses. He was even invited to visit their homes (Ibid, p. 21). Such narratives are helpful for unpacking the capacity, authority, and impact of the Mersey Mission.

Hull History Centre

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The Hull History Centre, located in a quiet yet central neighbourhood not far from the Maritime Museum and the original site of the Hull Sailor’s Home, houses the extensive records of the Anglican Mission to Seafarers (U DMS). Founded in 1856, the Mission to Seafarers ministered to the spiritual and moral welfare needs of seamen. The records covered all aspects of their activities in Britain and abroad and included minutes, annual reports and accounts, port files, personnel files, committee files, publications, photographs, diaries and scrapbooks, and documents from local branches and amalgamated societies.

The Hull History Centre holds some of the most significant source materials for understanding the everyday life of British seamen. I had been in touch with the archivist Claire Weatherall, who kindly helped me to scope out the materials before my first visit. I went through the records of the Hull branch of the Mission to Seamen and the Port of Hull Society for the Religious Instruction of Sailors, which was established in 1821 to care for seamen and their families through various welfare initiatives. These records offered a very interesting history of the mission’s care for the families of sailors.

The Mission – Seaman’s Mission converted into a pub (Image Manikarnika Dutta, June, 2023)

In particular, the records of the Seamen’s and General Orphanage (C DSHO) turned out to be a fantastic resource for understanding the Mariners’ Church Orphan Society’s operations since 1853. The society ran a boarding house and a school that provided food, clothing and education to orphaned young boys and girls whose fathers were victims of accidents at sea. It operated on a modest budget and saw some children return to their families to earn and take care of younger siblings. The number of children yet continued to increase, especially after a permanent care home was opened in Spring Bank in 1866.

Report of the Hull Mariner’s Church Sailors’ Orphan Society, 1858 (Source: Hull History Centre C DSHO/1/57)

The building, modelled after a barrack, was abandoned as the Port of Hull Society wanted to relocate the children out of the city into a cottage home. It found an ideal place in Hesslewood in 1921. The annual reports, minutes, and publications about the orphanage offer interesting insights into the Hull context of the projection of elitist civilisational sensibilities onto subaltern orphans in order to transform them into model citizens. The discussions on mundane decisions such as appropriate books and clothing for children of various ages shed light on a hidden chapter of child welfare that integrate religious, maritime, and family history of Victorian Britain.