Black Salt: Britain’s black sailors

Black Tudors

BAME seafarers were sailing as early as the 16th century, explain the boards. Diego (no surname), who sailed with Francis Drake in 1577 and 1588, exemplifies the seafarers who circumnavigated the globe at this time. Kru and Fante seamen (from the north-west African coast and the Ghana coast respectively) are shown, particularly in the context of their extensive navigational skills on rivers and their ability with surf boats at the many challenging surf ports. John Stobart’s nearby painting of the Obuasi, Elder Dempster’s 1950s cadet training ship, loading cocoa at Accra, shows the loading difficulties experienced by relatively modern dockers and seafarers before port facilities improved at nearby Tema in 1961 under Ghana’s revolutionary first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

Among the objects in the Black Tudor section are a calabash made of decorated gourd and a carved wooden religious figure collected by an Elder Dempster chief engineer from Merseyside, Arnold Ridyard (1853–1924). Ridyard appears to have been an organic intellectual, who from the 1890s combined working for Elders with helping northern museums amass the best collection of West African material in Britain. ⁶ This section is where comments about how Black Tudor seafarers were valued and their cultural practices accepted would have been useful.

The age of slavery

In the long history of slavery from the 1400s, black seafarers were not only victims, but sometimes guards. ⁷ Some were enslaved people or runaways and some were ‘free’ or ‘apprenticed,’ but treated as if enslaved. This section of the exhibition makes clear that the period was dangerous to free black men because they could be snatched up by press gangs and ‘imprisoned’ in ships as landsmen, another kind of captivity that might end in recapture. But also those with some agency could use the opportunity to escape the plantations’ confines and see the world. Very interestingly, the role of black seafarers on slave voyages is briefly mentioned in relation to the higher-class seafarers who were related to traders, and sailed on slave ships as a way to explore more widely, and perhaps extend their wealth too.

Black interpreters are acknowledged in the exhibition text, although not the fact that sometimes women played this role, and were griottes too (female hereditary troubadour-historians), as well as preparing food and laundering (Figure 2). That is, the worker-passenger distinction could be somewhat blurred in reality. A clarification that not everyone black who was labouring on board a slave ship was paid and male would be useful.

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Figure 2.

Enslaved women, including the central figure with her communication skills, are far from cowed in this representation of a naval ship in the Illustrated London News, 23 February 1989. Note the armed black warder-type figure, far right (author’s collection).

Global seafarers

US historian Dr Charles R. Foy provides the exhibition with a small display of biographies of men’s voyages that show the scope of black seafarers’ global travels. Exhibition visitors wanting to take this further can benefit from his online database of 27,000 black seafarers in the 1700s. ⁸

The ‘From sail to steam’ subsection discusses the changes that occurred in 1851 following the repeal of the British Navigation Acts. This and related moves meant that far more foreign seafarers could serve on British vessels. Shipping companies took advantage of this to employ black stokers who were seen as better able to handle the heat than their white counterparts. And many more black men (seemingly never women) were employed as cooks and stewards, traditionally a role for the lowly and disabled. In the history of life’s lost opportunities for desegregation of gendered labour this was potentially a key moment for black women seafarers: it would have been logical to employ them as stewardesses sailing to very hot climes on ships without air-conditioning, which was a physically disabling situation for most European women. That did not happen.

The age of empire

This section particularly focuses on wars fought under sail, in which black seafarers participated. Ever since the 1970s, when historians first began looking for the hidden histories of diversity, Daniel Maclise’s Death of Nelson (1864) has been appreciated because of the black crew members (and women) represented there. Merseyside Maritime Museum has borrowed the Walker Art Gallery’s version of this famous oil painting. It fits well and vividly within this exhibition. Another key representation is J. E. Carew’s 1849 bronze relief commemorating the I805 Battle of Trafalgar on Nelson’s column in London. A photo highlights the section showing a black sailor with a gun (see Figure 3, far left). Scholars now contend, however, that the Royal Navy would not have allowed a black man to be armed, and so this is actually an idealised, but inaccurate, image. ⁹ What is true is that at least ten black men were aboard HMS Victory, including George Ryan from Monserrat, a ‘prest’ Ordinary Seaman who served until 1813, when he was honourably discharged after being injured. ¹⁰

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Figure 3.

Bronze relief of the Battle of Trafalgar, created in 1847. Photograph taken by Ray Costello. (Courtesy of Black Salt exhibition).

20th century conflict and resistance

Moving on from naval wars, this section explores some of the many merchant seafarers in both the World Wars of the 20th century. Evidence retrieved from families still alive today give details about the way several generations of black seafarers contributed. For example, Barbadian Marcus Bailey, an AB, married an Irish woman, lived in Liverpool, fought in World War One and had sons and a daughter who fought in the World Wars. ¹¹

Women and miscegenation come into the picture for the first time in this section, as some black seafarers married white women in port cities. The stories include Jamaican Guy Gibson’s family, and the Quarless family, originally from Barbados. This is where the recent turn to genealogy, for example with the popularity of genealogy television programmes such as ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, interfaces with more traditional maritime history, and greatly enhances visitors’ ability to understand a black seafarer as a contextualised subject in his or her own right. Families have provided several discharge books, which also help visitors see when ‘racial characteristics’ were officially noted or not. Tellingly, the blank books were not printed with room to insert such distinctions. In the space assigned for noting appearance, there are sometimes sections for height, eyes, hair and complexion. In one discharge book there is the insertion ‘Complexion: coloured,’ that is, not ‘black or ‘brown.’ Nor do any of the discharge books here say ‘Hair: frizzy,’ or ‘Distinguishing features: Negroid.’ It is the photos that identify these seafarers as of African origin, so it is useful for historians that the Board of Trade starting using photographs in this form of identity from 1918.

A decade later, Christopher Braithwaite, one of the best-known black maritime activists in Britain, had such a photo identity document (Figure 4). The Barbadian (1885–1944) founded the Colonial Seamen’s Association in 1935, which also included Asian seafarers. He is commemorated here, along with his statement that discrimination could be so bad, that white seafarers would tell shipowners: ‘If you take the darkie we will not sign on the ship.’ The National Union of Seamen’s archive proves that hostility to ‘non-domiciled seafarers’ continued until the union’s end, in 1985, when the courts sequestered its funds. ¹²

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Figure 4.

Chris Braithwaite (Courtesy of the Braithwaite family).

Two shipping companies that sailed to West Africa feature in this exhibition, Elder Dempster and Palm Line. Elder Dempster, known as ‘the kings of the coast,’ relied much on Kru and Fante men in its 150-year history. BAME personnel, including Chinese men, were mainly in the engine rooms, galleys, and laundries. But a 1950s publicity poster shows a black male bar tender. Palm Line was more recent: 1949 to 1986. There is no reference to any different labour conditions in Ghana’s own short-lived post-independence Black Star Line (1957–1997) (Figure 5). ¹³ Indeed, this section of the exhibition misses an opportunity to discuss labour relations in the BSL’s predecessor, the Black Star Line of 1919–22, which the Universal Negro Improvement Association idealistically set up.

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Figure 5.

Black Star Line inauguration stamps, 1957 (Author’s collection).

This section could have described more fully some of the discriminatory industrial relations practices: exclusion from promotion; subtle hegemonic assumptions of black inferiority; and overt injustice, despite the staunch contribution and bravery of so many black merchant seamen in wartime (the Royal Navy excluded them). Elder Dempster, which had a four-tier racially-based wage system, famously took passports off the West African crew and gave them just a green card, which deprived them of rights, roughly as trafficked Filipina housemaids are today disempowered. ¹⁴ The National Union of Seamen’s protection of ‘our’ jobs, at the expense of non-British seafarers, and its failure to challenge such green card practices, could have been better brought out in this part of the display.

One of the outcomes of the two main UK–West Africa operators both being based in Merseyside is that Liverpool had the oldest established black community in Britain. It was large and centralised – and sometimes attracted xenophobia, such as in the race riots from February–June 1919. A terrible impact of the riots was commemorated by a photograph of the recently erected plaque (suggested by broadcaster David Olusoga, and involving the local project ‘From Great War to Race Riots’), recording the death of Charles Wotten. This Bermudan seaman was thrown in the dock and pelted to death by locals with stones in race riots near the boarding house for black seafarers in Pitt Street, Toxteth, on Thursday 5 June 1919. ¹⁵

The exhibition very fully records Liverpool’s role in the 1919 riots, but could usefully have made clear the extent to which race riots happened in other ports too: South Shields, London, and Cardiff. And it was not only a matter of personal tragedy but a systemic and symptomatic excluding of the othered, such as the Arab and Somali sailors who had held British passports, but then lost their status and reclassified as aliens in 1920 and 1925. ¹⁶ Many miscarriages of justice especially affected Muslim seafarers, but religion is not very visible in this exhibition.

The voyage continues

This section contains biographical information about several black seafarers in modern times, including audio-visual interviews with two men. Complex factors that have helped end exclusion, although not necessarily racism. These include the 1976 Race Relations Act, flagging out (with all its attendant abuses of labour), personnel shortages and the practise of accepting ships as multicultural communities. Filipina and East European domestic labour in cabins, and South Asian on-board accountants, are just two examples of how BAME women seafarers have gained here. Very prominent is Britain’s first black female captain, Belinda Bennett (Figure 6). The first in the cruising industry, this Bermuda-born woman became master (yes, still that term!) of the MSY Wind Star in 2016.

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Figure 6.

Captain Belinda Bennett, 2016, picture courtesy of Windstar Cruises.

There is no discussion of the discrimination still facing seafarers in today’s maritime workforce. However, the Royal Navy speaker made clear that the short-staffed RN now embraces personnel from every background.

Related events

The talks programme that has been accompanying the exhibition has been most welcome. This has included Ray Costello discussing the role of black sailors at the Battle of Trafalgar; Charles Foy on 18th century black mariners globally; Miranda Kaufman, author of Black Tudors: The Untold Story (London, 2017) on black Tudor seafarers; and myself on BAME sea women’s history and why it is so sparse.

Some of the interactive activities with school students have included work on 18th century black seafarer Joseph Johnson, who lost his leg in an accident at sea and to survive begged and sang on the streets. He wore a model ship on his head which rocked when he tilted it. The museum’s education department has been working with children making a paper version of such hat-ships.

A success – and a start

In conclusion, it needs to be said that ‘Black Salt’ is a very important step forward, both in maritime historiography and in museums’ process of embracing diversity. It succeeds in showing, albeit in a limited way, occluded aspects of maritime history. In doing so it also widens our understandings of black British history, colonial history, and the history of the African diaspora.

I disclose an interest in it. I gave some initial advice and offered many links at the early stages, especially on black seawomen. ¹⁷ And my fingers have long been crossed, because for years an exhibition on this topic was in the making. Rachel Mulhearn, a previous director of MMM, had been keen on the subject since at least 2012, but her grant application was rejected. Finally internal funding was made available and the key decision-makers gave the go-ahead for something they recognised as very necessary. ¹⁸ The decision was helped by the existence of Costello’s book and his availability to co-curate in Liverpool.

For this visitor, there are three criticisms. Firstly, the museum’s strategic decision to focus only on people of African origin means that two other key BAME groups – Indian and Chinese seafarers – and many others too, are absent from representation. Because of this there could be no useful discussion of degrees of racism and the complex interaction of ideas about racial differences. For example, productive comparisons of 20th century patterns could have been made between patriarchal Lascar engine room teams from one village in India with ‘manly’ Caribbean ABs who joined solo and with non-mainland Chinese laundry teams whose national loyalty was in such doubt that they were excluded en masse in wars and whose ‘masculinity’ was impugned. Finding ways to understand (and pretending to not understand) each other’s language and culture in a mutually dependent enclave is a very important matter on ships where as many as 50 nationalities are present today. Coping with ‘foreign smells’ in an enclosed space is a major issue inhibiting mutual acceptance. Respecting culture – specific dietary needs on board – is crucial. White shipmates publicly choosing to eat food from non-Western galleys, such as eye-wateringly spicy curry, is a major part of multicultural relating at sea. To illustrate this point about cultural tensions, the author offers a telling cartoon about ‘mixed nationals’ on polyglot ships, from the merchant navy officers’ perspective in the 1990s (see Figure 7).

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Figure 7.

‘I think the problems of getting these mixed nationals to co-operate are about to pale into insignificance, George… Immigration just arrived to discuss the stowaways…!!!’. From NUMAST Telegraph, 1994 (Courtesy of Nautilus International).

Secondly, the texts on the boards need serious editing. Long unwieldy sentences mean the language level is insufficiently accessible to children. Indeed, this adult had to do several re-readings in some cases. Thirdly, better connections between periods, navies, and social trends would have been welcome. More explanations are needed, for example, to show how the 1919 race riots connected to wartime xenophobia and the 1930s Seamen’s Minority Movement, which connected to the Pan-Africanist and anti-colonialist movements after the Second World War, especially in West Africa. This writer found it was the kind of exhibition in which you do a lot of ‘Googling’ – during and after – to create a coherent understanding for yourself.

But the MMM has been path-breaking in creating an exhibition to ameliorate the almost silence about BAME seafarers in the world’s maritime museums. The most recent (post-2016) UK efforts have been made at the National Maritime Museum, and have been small and temporary though very significant: ‘Indian Ocean Seafarers 1891–1961’, and ‘Haenyeo’ (meaning the ‘diving grannies’ of Korea). ¹⁹ In the NMM’s case, the initiatives have especially focused on Asian seamen (partly because of Aaron Jaffer’s work there), for example tying in with 2016’s Muslims at Sea Study Day. ²⁰ S. I. Martin, the author of important several children’s books on fictional Sierra Leonean cadet Jupiter Williams, marked International Slavery Remembrance Day in 2016 with a talk about his Greenwich Tour, Black Sailors and Scribes. ²¹

In the US, Mystic Seaport’s Museum of America and The Sea was one of the first in having BAME actor-interpreters. US displays are indebted to W. Jeffrey Bolster, who might be called the American forerunner to Ray Costello, as he wrote the seminal Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. ²² Australia’s National Maritime Museum is currently (2018) exhibiting ‘Eora First People: Precious Works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture,’ which shows maritime labour as an organic activity, not so deeply inflected by industrial, military, and political contexts.

‘Black Salt,’ as the first major exhibition on the subject in the UK, and possibly in the English-speaking world, is a very important step. It will act as a model and inspiration for museums worldwide. Hopefully it will be digitally archived for posterity, if only as a YouTube film, to allow the widest possible access.