Ruling the Wages: The Austrian Lloyd Steam Navigation Company and seafarers’ incomes in the Habsburg Empire, 1885–1914

Abstract

One of the primary outcomes of the transition from sail to steam shipping was the profound change affecting maritime labour. The rise of new shipping companies played a pivotal role in reshaping the work onboard and the socio-economic position of maritime workers. In the Mediterranean, the case of the Austrian merchant marine, dominated by the powerful Austrian Lloyd steam navigation company, has long been neglected by historians. This article examines the dominant role of Austrian Lloyd in shaping maritime wages and depicts the main remunerative dynamics affecting maritime labour on steamers between the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century, when Austrian crews successfully joined for the first time in collective labour protests and managed to unionise. It frames seamen’s wage conditions in the socio-economic context of the Austrian littoral by relating maritime incomes to the cost of living and the remunerations of other socially comparable groups of workers in the port city of Trieste. By identifying the structural factors making up crews’ overall earnings, the article contributes to the broader understanding of Mediterranean maritime workers’ incomes in an age of profound technological and economic transformation of shipping.