Catherine Phipps reports from Hull:
It’s five o’clock on a Friday afternoon and I’m heading to the pub… but there’s something special about this one.
I’ve been in the archives at the Hull History Centre all week, looking at the Missions to Seamen archives. Where better to go at the end of my first week than The Mission, a nearby pub that has been converted from the original Hull Mission to Seamen?
A blue plaque on the wall outside tells all the patrons coming in that Charles H. Wilson paid for the Seamen’s Mission to be built here in 1866. Wilson was a liberal MP who made his fortune from shipping who wanted to help the local community. The mission was here to help any seafarers in particular need, although they didn’t sleep here. Seafarers were sent to spend the night in the Sailor’s Home round the corner on Alfred Gelder street, but came to the Seamen’s Mission for somewhere warm and safe, with a place to worship and a recreation room to entertain themselves. This was right next to the Board of Trade offices and central to the docks, so was often full of sailors coming through and needing help.
The chapel was added on in 1927, and you can still see the beautiful stained glass window. Right underneath this stained glass, today there are four large pool tables, just as there were a hundred years ago. A report that I read from 1934 explained that this used to be “a very compact institute just opposite The Board of Trade offices, with a small but substantially built and beautiful church connected, and entered through the institute,” with “two billiard tables, canteen with light refreshments; offices and lavatories.”[1]
The glass is the same, the pool is the same, and there’s still warm food and bathrooms on offer. So what has changed since this was the Hull Mission to Seamen?
Most importantly, the presence of alcohol. The Seamen’s Missions were strict about temperance, and were firmly anti-alcohol. I opt for an alcohol-free beer in homage. Women were also only allowed if they were direct family members or were one of the female volunteers for the Missions. As a young, unmarried woman, I would not have been welcome in here, particularly because I’m wearing a short skirt that would have cast doubts on my reputation.
Many of the customers here are familiar with the Seamen’s Mission. I spoke to the barmaid at The Mission, Amber. According to her:
“lots of the people who come in like to talk about the history of the pub. They talk about when it used to be a church, and they talk about their memories of the shipping round here.”
She’s right: chatting to a few regulars at the next table, everyone seems to know the pub’s history. John, at the next table, sounds quite proud. He tells me why the road next door is called Dagger Lane:
“if you walked down here in the 1890s, you’d get hit on the head, and sent out on the ships. You’d wake up in South Africa.”
Crimping was a real fear for seamen, and one of the main reasons that the missions were set up. In public houses, men could be plied with alcohol that was often drugged and given huge bills, or “shanghaied” by being put on ships to far away ports against their will.[2] The twice-yearly publication from the Missions to Seamen, The Word on the Water, often warned about how common this practice was in the 19th century.
The Seamen’s Mission hoped to protect seamen from these dangers, so it is wonderful to see that this is still remembered 150 years later.
And if you want to look at the unchanged pool tables, stained glass, and lively conversation so you can imagine what the Seamen’s Mission was like, then The Mission is waiting for you on Dagger Lane.
[1] UDMS/11/1/191, “Report on Seamen’s Welfare Institutions in Hull: appendix to report”, 30th March 1934.
[2] G.J. Milne, People, Place and Power on the Nineteenth-Century Waterfront (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 104.