Category: Sailors’ Home

What would 19th-century missionaries think of your New Year’s Resolutions?

Posted on by ka23004
Courtesy: Royal Museums Greenwich

Happy New Year from the Mariners project! Are you starting the New Year off full of promises to make changes to your life?

Maybe you’re hoping to drink less after an indulgent few weeks of wine, beer or even rum? Take up some new hobbies to cut back on your screen time? Or trying to travel or exercise more?

Not so fast! Some of these typical New Year’s Resolutions might be inciting you to vice or spreading corruption without you even realising, according to some historic sources.

We’re here to help, with some historical insights into your New Year’s Resolutions. Want to know what 19th-century Christian mission groups would have thought about some of the most common ones?

1) Dry January

19th-century missionaries would have loved Dry January! No drinking for a whole month would have seemed a great idea. But why stop at just January? Why not avoid alcohol and pubs altogether?

Groups trying to improve the welfare of seafarers often worked hand-in-hand with the temperance movement against alcohol, encouraging sailors to stop spending their money on drink.

Drinking was held up as one of the greatest social evils of the age. Sailors were encouraged to avoid the hundreds of pubs along the waterfront and around the Sailor’s Homes, since drinking was led to violence, gambling and sexual immorality. Mission groups reported incidences of men who spent all their wages in two days, leaving nothing for their families, or who ended up in drunken brawls.

One tract, which was handed out to sailors in 1871 and written by the wine-merchant Mr Lavington who helped run the Bristol Seamen’s Mission, told them in no uncertain term to “Avoid Public Houses and bad company. Drunkenness and other wickedness will ruin your happiness in this world and the world to come.”[1] That selling wicked alcohol was how Lavington had helped fund the Mission to Seamen was not commented upon…

For women, drinking was perhaps even more threatening, since it was said that “a woman that drinks will do anything”.[2] Many women who became sex workers in the 19th century also claimed that it was starting to drink alcohol years previously that had first led to their “immorality” that had finished with street sex work.

If you really want to go to the pub, why not try this one in Hull, converted from the old Seamen’s Mission?

2) Read more novels

Be careful with this one! Novels and other books were thought to “corrupt the morals, inflame the imagination, and excite the passions,” according to the magazine published by the Committee of the Maritime Penitent Female Refuge, which attempted to rescue women from prostitution.[3] Sentimental or romantic novels were thought to particularly dangerous and corrupting for young women, and many mission groups held them responsible for the rise in women selling sex to sailors around British ports. If you want to read more in 2026, beware of the “fatal influence of pernicious novels”![4]

Far safer to stick with reading a magazine produced by a Mission group, such as The Word on the Waters published by the Mission to Seafarers or The New Sailor’s Magazine, published by the British and Foreign Seamen’s & Soldier’s Friend Society and by G. C. (“Boatswain”) Smith launched after being forced to step down as editor of The Sailor’s Magazine. Easily found at the British Library or the Hull History centre, and much more improving!

3) Travelling

Another one to watch! What if you meet unsavoury or immoral characters during your travels? Missions to Seamen worried as much in 1890, when the committee’s secretary wrote that “the close assemblage on board ships of men of many nationalities, some of whom may be low moral characters, is itself contaminating”[5]. And when you arrive in a new port or a new city, there is even more possibility of moral danger. It was claimed that being away from home lead to the “opportunity for sensual indulgence without the knowledge of relatives and friends, especially in strange ports and on foreign shores.”[6]

Mission groups trying to protect seafarers in the 19th century believed that global travel allowed for the spread of vice, corrupted those who took part in it, and led to a rise in drunkenness.

Being in a new place meant the opportunity to take part in sin, as well as the possibility of danger. If you really have to travel, make sure that you go straight to the Sailor’s Home or other respectable lodgings as soon as you arrive, to avoid vice and wickedness as much as possible.

4) New hobbies

If your new hobbies include magic lantern lectures, concerts or recitals, then you should be absolutely fine. Missions to Seamen thought that these were “suitable and harmless secular entertainments.”[7]

However, if you’re thinking about joining a theatrical group or going to the theatre… think again! Acting and theatres were strongly associated with drinking, prostitution, and immorality, which were particularly dangerous for sailors who had just been paid. With their wages in their pocket, a trip to the music hall could easily turn into a booze-soaked few days where they could be robbed or victim to crimping.

In 1835, the committee for the Maritime Penitent Female Refuge described theatres as “dens of infamy” and quoted John Tillotson, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury in the 17th century when he called playhouses “the devil’s chapel, a nursery of licentiousness and vice”.[8] And in 1891, Missions to Seamen banned all “dramatic entertainments” from its institutions, explaining that it couldn’t allow any “amusements” with the potential for “degenerating” into anything that went against the society’s values.[9] Maybe theatre should be off the table for 2026?

5) Learn to cook

But if your new hobby is something like learning to cook, then wonderful. Maybe you could even go professional, and join the London School of Nautical Cookery. The Sailor’s Home in Wellclose Square, opened by “Boatswain” Smith in 1823, later opened the School of Nautical Cookery in 1893 to teach sailors how to be ships’ cooks. Learning how to peel potatoes properly and cook safely on a ship for hundreds of hungry sailors? No mean feat.

When the new Shipping Act changed in 1906, that law stated that every ship that travelled outside of British waters needed its own cook, which meant that the school had a huge boost in popularity. 19th-century missionaries would also have wholeheartedly supported this goal for 2026.

Courtesy: London Metropolitan Archives

The Mariner’s Project wishes you the best for 2026, whatever your New Years resolutions and regardless of whether you want to follow 19th-century advice. Godspeed!

by Catherine Phipps

 

[1] Hull History Centre, UDMS/13/1/6, The Word on the Waters, 1871, p.74.

[2] James Miller, Prostitution Considered in Relation to its Cause and Cure (Edinburgh: 1859). Cited in Paula Bartley, Prostitution: prevention and reform in England, 1860-1914 (Routledge, 2000), p.18.

[3] “Advocate of Moral Reform”, The Refuge: conducted by the Committee of the Maritime Penitent Female Refuge, August 1835, vol 3:8, p.179.

[4] “Ought This Magazine to be Generally Circulated?”, The Refuge: conducted by the Committee of the Maritime Penitent Female Refuge, November 1835, vol 3:11, p.243.

[5] Hull History Centre, UDMS/13/11/1, “Promotion of Purity Amongst Seamen”, W. C. Dawson, 12th May 1890.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Hull History Centre, UDMS/13/11/1, “Entertainments in Seamen’s Institutes”, 17th February 1891.

[8] “On the Moral State of London”, The Refuge: conducted by the Committee of the Maritime Penitent Female Refuge, December 1835, vol 3:12, p.266.

[9] Hull History Centre, UDMS/13/11/1, “Entertainments in Seamen’s Institutes”, 17th February 1891.

Mariners Special Issue: Cultural and Social History

Posted on by hilary.carey

We are excited that all the articles for the special issue of Cultural and Social History are now available on Open Access for all to view.

The Special Issue has the theme: Mariners: Race, Religion and Empire  and it is the culmination of the Mariners conference held at Bristol’s ss Great Britain last year.

The articles cover the same range of fascinating material which we traversed in the conference, with accounts of religious experiences and racial tensions across the working lives of both Lascar and British seafarers. There is an introduction by Sumita Mukherjee and Hilary Carey which draws together the different strands of the project around themes such as ‘home’ ‘race’ ‘religion’ and ‘place’. We are delighted with the surge of interest in the pieces which have already been placed on line – so do go and check out our work, and leave us some comments. We would love to hear from you.

The articles have not yet been put together as a Special Issue – but you can read them by following the links below. We are grateful to our funders at the Arts and Humanities Research Council whose funding has enabled us to publish all pieces for this Special Issue as Open Access. As researchers, one of the great advantages of this is that it means there is much more likelihood that our research will be read and circulated. Congratulations to Haseeb Khan who is currently leading the race for views for his terrific account of provision for Muslim sailors reflected in the architecture of Birkenhead’s Mere Hall Indian Seamen’s Home.

Mariners: Race, Religion and Empire. Special Issue: Introduction
Hilary M. Carey & Sumita Mukherjee
Published online: 09 Oct 2025
Finding a Place Within Empire: The Seamen’s Spiritual Welfare Movement in Nineteenth-Century Newcastle, N.S.W
Justine Atkinson
Published online: 9 Oct 2025
Birkenhead’s Mere Hall Indian Seamen’s Home: Labour and Religious Identity for Muslim Seamen in 1940s Britain
Haseeb Khan
Published online: 10 Sep 2025

Smith and the New Sailor’s Magazine

Posted on by hilary.carey

Back to the BL

After a long time waiting for the British Library to recover from the cyber attack earlier this year, it was exciting to be back and able to order in advance. On 4 December, I arrived early and found my orders waiting for me. Thank you BL staff!

British Library

Smith and the New Sailor’s Magazine

This time my principal target was the original – and undigitised – copies of the G.C. (‘Boatswain’) Smith’s issues of the Soldier’s and New Sailor’s Magazine (NSM), which was published by Smith from his headquarters in and around Wellclose Square in London from 1828 and continued, though with many changes of name, until Smith’s death in 1863. I was intrigued because historians have differed over the significance of this journal and Smith’s place in the marine mission movement.

Smith launched the New Sailor’s Magazine as an act of defiance following his dismissal as editor of the Sailor’s Magazine and acrminomious split from the main dissenting mission for seamen in London, the Port of London Society and Bethel Union (PLSBUS).New Sailor's Magazine

According to Kverndal (1986: 271), Smith was entirely the injured party, and had every right to take his talents elsewhere. He argues that Smith had triumphantly created the Mariner’s Church and its numerous satellite welfare and mission work for sailors’ and their families, while all Smith’s dissenting and Church rivals floundered without support or effectiveness. But was it really the case? Is it correct, as Kverndall (1986: 274) states, that the PLSBUS was motivated by sheer jealousy of Smith’s ‘continuing success, coupled with their own diminishing support’?

In fact, this is rather less than the whole story, as I soon discovered by reading Smith’s New Sailor’s Magazine, which proudly proclaimed Smith as the ‘late editor of the Sailor’s Magazine’.

As with all of Smith’s publications, marketing and branding were key features with attempts to entice subscribers and supporters through calls to patriotism, religion and national pride. The first volume included three separate publications, The Soldier’s Magazine and Military Chronicle, aimed at soldiers,  The New Sailor’s Magazine and Naval Chronicle, for supporters of maritime missions, and a monthly brochure for the Sailor’s Asylum and New Brunswick Institution, the precursor to the London Sailors’ Home.

The Soldier’s Magazine was brashly patriotic and included an engraving of Smith’s most important patron, Admiral Lord James Gambier (1756-1833). The cover was embellished with a header including flags, cannon, helmets, a trumpet and drum to the left, with naval emblems of an anchor, sails and masts to the right. Beneath was the logo: ‘Fear God. Honor the King’. It would take a wise reader to realise that the main business of the magazine was not to serving members of the military, but rather former soldiers and sailors of the merchant service and their urban patrons.

The cover of the New Sailor’s Magazine is less showy, but there are indications that Smith’s resources were rather less than he claimed. Unsurprisingly, there are no stories from the PLS and Bethel Union, and Smith instead resorted to publishing the sermon delivered by the Rev. William Scorseby, Anglican chaplain to the Episcopal Society for Sailors at Liverpool. Scorseby would soon become celebrated in his own right, as an Arctic explorer, and patron of Anglican missions to seafarers, especially deep sea fishermen.

With the editorial licence of The New Sailor’s Magazine, Smith would  denigrate the efforts of the Episcopal floating chapel in Liverpool and London, and the successful efforts of Anglican Evangelicals to make a success of the London Sailor’s Home, but for now he was dependent on Church rather than Chapel sources to fill the pages of his new magazine.

BFSSFS debt

The first sign of serious problems for Smith and his enterprises appear with the financial report published in the June 1828 issue of the New Sailor’s Magazine following the annual Meeting of the British and Foreign Seamen’s & Soldier’s Friend Society, or Mariners’ Church & Watermen’s Bethel Union (BFSSFS). While each monthly issue  always included a gratifying and minutely detailed list of all donations, big and small, this was the first set of fully audited accounts, as signed by William Hodge, W.G. Barnard, and R. Ward. These showed that from 17 May 1827 to 15 May 1828, income received had reached almost £2000, but there was a heavy debt of almost £800 for printing, stationers and ‘agents’ salaries’, ie payments to those employed full-time to collect funds for the society. Smith could not afford his grand publications, or his vision for a charitable empire based on the Mariner’s Church, nor could he afford to alienate the wealthier patrons who had earlier flocked to the Port of London Society and its signature floating chapel.

FS Accounts 1827-28

The ‘agents’ salaries’ are a particularly worrying feature of the cash account. They show that about 25% of all donations had been expended in salaries to those responsible for raising funds. Moreover, ‘travelling expenses’ amounted to over £200 – more than a year’s salary for many clergy – much of which would have been incurred by Smith on his relentless promotional and lecture tours. This was not sustainable, and the reality was that Smith’s Mariner’s church enterprise, conducted in belligerent rivalry to that of like-minded dissenting and Anglican Evangelical supporters of the same cause, was a white elephant. Yet Smith continued to attract admirers and donations, which the following year, 1828-29, were reported by the Missionary Register as no less than £3462. Twelve months later, the same journal reported that the BFSSFS debt stood at £1500, inflating to £2500 in 1831 and to £3000 by 1832. (Adjusted for inflation, this is the equivalent of over £420,000 today). This was a colossal burden for any small, voluntary society, even today, but was an overwhelming and alarming liability in 1832. Smith’s solution was to exclude any mention of the debt from the New Sailor’s Magazine,  while continuing to solicit new donations and make a show of transparency by listing everyone who made a contribution.

These were heady days for the marine mission movement, with handsome donations and subscriptions recorded by the Missonary Register (1830: 517) for a range of maritime missionary causes, including £3393 for the venerable Naval and Military Bible Society, £597 for the Merchant Seaman’s Bible Society, and £1700 for the Sailors’ Home. Smith’s main dissenting rival, the Port of London Society received a modest £884, reflecting the competition for support especially in London, but was managing to survive and – importantly – remained solvent.

Smith’s legacy

I have scrutinised Smith’s legacy as the leading figure in the maritime mission movement for an article forthcoming in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Smith’s personality has divided critics, with those from within his own Baptist and dissenting tradition, including Kverndal (1986) and Dray (2013) keen to overlook his financial improprieties. I am more critical, not least because hundreds of people of very small means contributed to the cause, and were entitled to know that their donations were spent helping sailors, not chasing Smith’s grandiose and debt-laden ambitions.

It may not be possible to untangle the details at this distance in time, but there is a smoking gun, and a pattern of over enthusiastic promotion, unexplained or inadequately explained debt, and the reality that Smith would eventually be imprisoned four times for debt.

Sources

Dray, Stephen. 2013. A Right Old Confloption Down Penzance (Carn-Brea Media: n.p.).

Kverndal, Roald. 1986. Seamen’s missions: their origin and early growth (William Carey Library: Pasadena, Calif).

CMS. Missionary Register, 17-20 (1829-1832). Yale Mission Periodicals Online

NSM. Soldiers’ Chronicle and New Sailor’s Magazine, 1-2 (1828-29).

 

Mariners conference sails away

Posted on by hilary.carey

Researchers from across the UK, the US, Europe, Australia and India came together  in Bristol to talk and debate issues of race, religion and empire among maritime workers on 12-13 September 2024. From the conference venue we enjoyed a view of the iconic ss Great Britain and, on Friday, followed guides around Brunel’s landmark iron passenger liner.

Delegates took a tour of Brunel’s ss Great Britain.

Over seven lively panels, we encountered the trial of an enslaved black seaman in Victorian London (Umberto Garcia), the pre-history of the Cardiff race riots (Hassam Latif), and the religious background to Birkenhead’s Mere Hall Indian Seaman’s Home (Haseeb Khan). For the British strand, there was a touching account of the emotional lives of children in sailors’ orphan homes (Emily Cuming), and the place of Roman Catholics in the Royal Navy (Michael Snape). Workers’ religious politics in late colonial Calcutta were discussed by Prerna Agarwal, and Florian Stadtler  considered the unique record of Aziz Ahmad and his mission to lascars in Scotland. Justine Atkinson took us to Australia, and the diverse seamen’s missions in the colonial port of Newcastle, NSW, while Houda Al-Kateb provided a rivetting account of passengers on the ss Great Britain – a great way to introduce us to the ship beckoning out the window. Ting Ruan spoke on lighthouses in China, drawing attention to the extreme disparity in the salaries of European and local Chinese workers. The two teams for the Mariners project presented on religion, race and the lascar body, and the soul of the sailor in missions to British seamen.

Haseeb Khan on Birkenhead’s Mere Hall Home for Indian Seamen.

The final session was made up of panels, beginning with archivist extraordinaire, Claire Weatherall, enlightening us on the challenges of knowledge exchange for archives and archivisrts, with examples from the Anglican Missions to Seafarers collection at the Hull History Centre. Asif Shakoor gave a moving presentation on the lascar legacy from the point of view of a community historian, and Brad Beaven and Valerie Burton enlightened us with wit and accumulated wisdom as maritime and social historians of port cities.

We have grand plans for publication, and hope to gather these rich contributions to maritime and religious history into a journal special issue as well as blog posts and contributions to the Mariners website.

 

Mersey Mission to Seamen – Liverpool Central Library

Posted on by Manikarnika Dutta

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

Posted on by Manikarnika Dutta

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.