Neither fish nor fowl: Mercantile seamen on armed merchant cruisers in the Great War

Abstract

Recent scholarship has re-focused attention on British economic strategy in the Great War, and the role of armed merchant cruisers in blockading Germany’s maritime trade, mainly through the ‘Northern Patrol’. Armed merchant cruisers were crewed by regular Royal Navy sailors and by volunteers from the Royal Navy Reserve or Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, but also by ordinary merchant seamen who were not necessarily volunteers and who were transferred over with their ships as Royal Navy auxiliaries through T124 agreements. Their particular status as neither regular Royal Navy ratings nor civilian merchant seamen gave rise to problems which occasionally spilled over into industrial action, interpreted as mutiny. This article identifies the main causes of these problems and analyses the relationship between Royal Navy officers and these merchant seamen, who served together in these hybrid warships.