As part of our research for the ‘Mariners’ project, we’re interested in how missionary engagement with sailors in British port cities affected religious practices, identities, customs and rituals.
Life at sea and in ports was quite often fatal for seafarers, especially seamen who were not British-born. For seamen known as ‘lascars’, cramped conditions on board ships and in port cities, illness, disease and poor health care, alongside the dangers of the sea, led to high fatalities. There were also high incidences of suicide. The ritual of funerals and burial services are an interesting indicator of the way in which sailors of non-Christian faiths adapted their customs and were catered for within burial spaces in port cities.
I’ve been doing some further research into ‘lascar funerals’ in the nineteenth and twentieth century in the major port cities of London, Hull, and Cardiff, and have found some very interesting newspaper reports that reveal the way Muslim and Hindu religious practices were observed by Asian seafarers. Scholars such as Nazneen Ahmed, Humayan Ansari, Eliza Cubitt and Diane Robinson-Dunn have written about some of the practices of burial and internship of mainly Muslim lascars in mainly London. Looking at newspapers enhances and furthers their findings.
For example, in May 1894, Bawa Golam Sahib, who was 30 years old and worked on a ship from Bombay to Roath Dock in Cardiff to load coal fell ill and was taken to the Hamadryad Hospital Ship. The HMS Hamadryad was permanently moored in Cardiff as a seamen’s hospital, next to the HMS Thisby used for missions, and HMS Havannah used as a school to train boys for seafaring. Sahib was interred at the New Cemetery at Cardiff and press reports reported that he had been given a Hindu funeral by his shipmates – around ten of them wearing white garments and brightly coloured turbans in a short, simple cemetery before pouring soil over his burial.[1]
Elsewhere in Wales, a lascar sailor was buried at Merthyr Dovan Cemetery, near Barry Dock, in December 1893 with roughly twenty mourners who observed Muslim rites, ‘as far as they possibly could’.[2] In January 1895, the funeral of a Muslim seaman, Ahmed Sk Dawood took place in Newport. Dawood had died on board the Indrapura in the Alexandra Dock. Six fellow Asian seamen wore turbans and rode the carriage that followed Dawood’s hearse through the snow to the graveside. A news report specifically noted that the mourners recited from the Koran. Finally, ‘leaving the grave by one of the paths, they suddenly halted, formed in a circle, and chanted their last farewell to the comrade whose remains they were leaving in the snow-covered strange land.’[3] Dawood left behind a widow in Bombay.
While illustrations of lascar funerals are few and far between, we have a photo of mourners at a lascar funeral in Hull in 1909. The photograph at Hedon-road cemetery shows more than ten mourners carrying a coffin. Taking place in September the men were all wearing trousers and jackets and kufi caps.[4] The sailor had died of beriberi, a deficiency of vitamin B1, which had inflicted four crew members of the Knight Errant in Hull but two lascars had died on the voyage too and had been buried at sea. Two of the deceased in Hull were lascars.[5] They were called Masrooda Jabudeen (aged 25) and Ahmed Yussuf (35) and had Christian services alongside prayers from around twenty crewmates.[6] While these seamen had many mourners, not all funerals were well-attended and might even be described as ’pathetic’. A year earlier in Hull Cassin Aleebux, a fireman on the SS Iran, had died of consumption. He was buried in Hull Western Cemetery but only four crew members attended his burial and performed Muslim rites while a small crowd looked on.[7]
[1] ’Funeral of the Beri-Beri Victims’, Hull Daily Mail, 15 September 1909, p. 3
[2] ’Beri-Beri at Hull’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 September 1909, p. 11; ’Beri-Beri at Hull’, Sheffield Independent, 14 September 1909, p. 4
[3] ’Lascars‘ Funerals To-Day’, Hull Daily Mail, 14 September 1909, p. 5
[4] ’Mahomedan Funeral in Hull’, Hull Daily Mail, 14 January 1908, p. 5
[5] ‘Hindoo Burial at Cardiff’, South Wales Daily News, 16 May 1894, p. 6
[6] ‘Local News Items’, Western Mail (Cardiff), 30 December 1893, p. 6
[7] ’Mahometan Funeral at Newport’, Cardiff Times, 2 February 1895, p. 5
Are you a postgraduate student in humanities at the University of Bristol? Are you interested in maritime history, religion, race, and the working life of port cities? If so, you are warmly invited to contribute a proposal to the Mariners conference, to be held in Bristol on 12 – 13 September 2024 at the ss Great Britain. This is part of a project funded by the AHRC entitled, ‘Mariners: Religion, Race and Empire in British Ports, 1800-1914’.
The aim of the conference is to explore fresh scholarship on the religious, racial, and imperial dimensions of maritime history and generate more critical thinking on the importance of religion to British imperial maritime networks and seafaring cultures in the long nineteenth century.
You can find out more about the Mariners project from the Mariners website, or from our blog.
If accepted, you will be given support to develop your research proposal as a conference presentation, with the possibility of inclusion in the final conference publication. Presentations may take a number of different formats, including conventional 20 minute papers, research debates and conversations, or pre-circulated papers.
Presenters will receive a conference bursary, participate as a full member of the conference programme, attend the conference dinner, and benefit from detailed commentary and guidance on their paper, and any future publication.
Process
Contact one of the Mariners’ team: Sumita Mukherjee, Hilary Carey, Lucy Wray, and Mani Dutta, to discuss your idea (see emails below).
On Wednesday 29th of November, I embarked on a four-day research trip to Liverpool. The purpose of my trip was to find material relating to lascars, a term used for seamen predominately from Asia, as well as Africa and the Caribbean who were employed in the merchant marine in large numbers in the long nineteenth century.
Liverpool has a rich history of mission activity to seamen in the nineteenth century, with myriad sailors’ homes, missions and rests operating during this period. While many of these institutions catered exclusively to British Sailors, some religious organisations focused on lascars. The Birkenhead Mission to Asiatic Seamen, for instance, opened in Morpeth Docks in 1900, and a year later amalgamated with the Mersey Mission to Seamen described as its Asiatic branch.
My search for sources relating to lascars, and religious organisations’ responses to them in Liverpool, led me to the archives centre at the city’s Maritime Museum and Liverpool Record Office. The archive centre, located on the second floor of the Maritime Museum, is open to the public Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 10.30 am-12.30 pm and 1.30-4 pm. No appointment is necessary. I was able to find references to some material through a searchable online catalogue prior to my visit. However, upon arrival at the archive, I found that I was able to better assess the extent of relevant material available through printed archive catalogues and information sheets which organised collections thematically. In this archive, I was able to observe material from organisations like the Seamen & Boatmen’s Friend Society and the Mersey Mission to Seamen. These sources have informed my understanding of mission activity to seamen in Liverpool during the period. In many ways, the absence of non-British sailors in these sources is a point for further enquiry, as I explore archival silences and what they in turn reveal.
View from Maritime Archives
Mersey Maritime Museum
The Liverpool Record Office, located on the third floor of the city’s central Library, open Monday to Friday 9 am to 8 pm, contains a diverse range of archives, rare books, microfilm and other material relating to Liverpool’s history. Booking is required for this archive, and the number of items readers can view per day is limited and must be requested 72 hours in advance of their visit. While I was able to see some items pertaining specifically to lascars, other archival material enriched my broader understanding of religious philanthropy, attitudes towards race, migration and mariners, as well as poverty in Liverpool in the nineteenth century. I was able to view copies of The Liverpool Review on microfilm, which I found particularly insightful. This was due to the presence of articles relating to non-British sailors, and the fact that this was a heavily illustrated newspaper, appealing to my interest and expertise in visual sources.
Ceiling of Bristol Central Library
During my spare time in Liverpool, I visited local museums and galleries including the World Museum, Museum of Liverpool, the Maritime Museum and the Walker Gallery. My observations, both of the presence and absence of representation of themes of race, religion and sailors will inform and inspire my planning of the project’s forthcoming exhibition in 2025.
The Mariners team are delighted to launch our project website: https://mar.ine.rs/
Built and designed with the help of Millipedia and Periscope, the website offers ‘stories’ about key events, individuals, places and institutions associated with the Mariners project i.e. related to missions to British and Asian seafarers at British ports between between 1801 and 1914.
You can navigate the site through the ‘Where’, ‘When’, ‘Who’ and ‘What’ to read dedicated sections on the four port cities the project covers – Bristol, Hull, Liverpool and London – a timeline and further stories showcasing our research findings.
We launched the site at a gathering of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Bristol on Monday 20 November 2023
Hilary Carey discussing the website
Lucy Wray discussing the website (Photos by Manikarnika Dutta)
Work on the website will be ongoing as we add new stories while we continue to work on the project, and we hope to add interviews and other materials in the lead up to the project’s travelling exhibition in 2025. Please do visit the site and scroll through to find out more about our research. Our contact details are on the site if any one has any feedback or would like to write stories to add to the site.
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.
The Mariners team and Advisory Board outside the Arts Complex, University of Bristol, 4 September 2023. From left to right: Claire Weatherall, Jess Kirkby, Lucy Wray, Brad Beaven, Sumita Mukherjee, Hilary Carey, Mankarnika Dutta, Asif Shakoor, and Aaron Jaffer.
In the morning the Bristol team of Lucy Wray, Jess Kirkby, Sumita Mukherjee, Mani Dutta, and Hilary Carey 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 team outside site of former Missions to Mariners, Prince Street Bristol
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.
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.
In this blog, Freya Malhi, an undergraduate history student who has been interning with the ‘lascar’ strand of the Mariners project, discusses her experience of a first archival trip to the British Library with Lucy Wray.
On the 19th of July I visited the British Library with Lucy Wray to continue her research using the India Office Records. Our focus was on ‘lascars’, a term used to describe non-European sailors, particularly from South Asia, who were employed in large numbers from the 16th to mid-20th century. We were particularly interested in their interactions with the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics in London, a missionary institution which provided boarding and aid in repatriating lascars who had fallen on hard times between 1857 and 1937.
As an undergraduate, my excitement and anticipation were particularly heightened by the fact that, although I have engaged with digitised collections of primary sources many times during my degree, this was my first time doing hands-on archival research. This was a fantastic opportunity for me to experience what a career in academia might look like, given that visiting archives is key to an historian’s work.
Atrium at the British Library, image Freya Malhi, July 2023
What were my expectations?
I had loose expectations prior to this trip of what it might be like. For example, in the preceding week, Lucy gave me some photographs of sources from her previous visit to transcribe and digitise, so from that experience I knew that I would likely be looking at handwritten correspondence and reports surrounding the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics. As the British Library allows you to request files prior to visiting, I even knew what the subjects of the documents I planned to look at would likely be.
However, if anything, there were more elements of research at the British Library that I had questions about. I was curious about how the process of collecting and viewing files would work. How many staff would there be? What were the reading rooms like?
I soon learned that the British Library, as a large-scale public institution, was very organised, with a large body of staff and an online catalogue and request system. Requesting new files was therefore a straightforward and quick process (a 70-minute wait – quite understandable given the 14 kilometres of shelves that hold the India Office Papers, according to the British Library’s website [1]). The reading rooms, too, were pleasant. The warnings that we couldn’t take in food, drinks, bags, or pens made me fear that we’d be entering an environment akin to a surgeon’s sterile field, but it turned out to be more like a quiet and warmly lit library. Lucy had thankfully warned me about the loop of quiet white noise that is played in the background.
I was also curious about the form the files and archival papers would take, and how they were held and preserved. I discovered that the records I viewed mostly consisted of files that were part of much larger bound volumes of correspondence from or to the India Office’s different departments. These volumes were organised by year rather than topic, so I could turn from the pages of correspondence about lascars that I had requested a volume for and immediately see reports about a plea for help dissolving a marriage in India or discussion of a book loan request from the Manchester Vegetarian Society. While these surrounding files were not usually relevant to our research, they gave me a fascinating insight into the other simultaneous concerns of the India Office.
What surprised me?
I was surprised by the ease of access to the British Library’s records – I had always assumed that there would be a level of bureaucracy or a longer process to be able to view archival documents, and I am sure that for many archives that remains the case, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that anyone over 18 can view British Library holdings so long as they apply for a library card and provide ID.
What did I discover?
Much like Lucy’s previous visit, many of the files I looked at comprised part of the ‘Public and Judicial Departmental Papers: Annual Files,’ IOR/L/PJ/6. However, a file of correspondence I found to be particularly revealing was instead part of the ‘Statistics and Commerce Department Papers’, IOR/L/E/6/37-74, the India Office’s Statistics and Commerce Department’s annual files produced between 1880 and 1881. This file, IOR/L/E/6/44, File 730, contained printed copies of internal correspondence within the Government of Madras Marine Department, as well as a copy of a complaint written in 1879 by Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes and the Directors of the Strangers’ Home, and remarks on that complaint from British Consuls in European ports.
The complaint itself argues that too many destitute lascars and ’Asiatic seamen’ have been sent to London by British officials in foreign ports, and that more provisions need to be made for their welfare, so they do not become destitute. The complaint includes four suggestions for how to achieve this.
This collection of correspondence demonstrates, through the various Consuls’ defences of their own positions and actions regarding lascars, that responsibility for lascar welfare was a concern oftentimes suspended between missionary and philanthropic organisations such as the Strangers’ Home, and Britain’s colonial bureaucracy and officials abroad. The British Consul at Rotterdam, for example, acquits British officials of any responsibility for high numbers of destitute lascars in his response to Hughes’s complaint:
‘In my opinion the remedy of an evil (if it can be so styled) is being sought in the wrong place. So long as Asiatics can be engaged as seamen or firemen in Indian or other Asiatic ports on the same terms as Europeans, there is no doubt that the number of such seamen temporarily destitute in European harbours […] will increase in proportion to the increased development of steam communication with the East.’
Furthermore, some of the Consuls refer to economic rather than welfare concerns surrounding the movement and repatriation of lascars. In this manner, the Strangers’ Home & the destitute lascars discussed became vehicles for a discourse about British subjects and state responsibility, while the movements of the lascars themselves were controlled and restricted.
Lucy and I have now begun the task of transcribing and cataloguing these materials. I feel certain that this experience of archival research will be invaluable as I enter my third year of my BA and tackle my dissertation; more importantly, however, it has served as confirmation that further study is something I want to pursue after I graduate.
[2] ‘File S&C 730/1880 – Government of Madras Marine Department papers in connection with a complaint by the Directors of the Strangers Home for Asiatics regarding the great number of Asiatic seamen sent to London in a destitute condition from continental ports,’ IOR/L/E/6/44, File 730: Dec 1879-May 1880, British Library, London
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.
