British Merchant Shipping Research Articles

Risk, Uncertainty and the British Atlantic Merchant Ship as a Technology for Profit, 1600–1800

Douglass North's work on the productivity of early modern British merchant shipping, along with that of his students Gary Walton and James Shepherd, taught us much about how the economy of British America worked. While crediting the security of the seas and more efficient business organization for allowing modest growth in shipping productivity, they relegated technological adaptation to insignificance. While accepting the main thrust of their argument, and indeed furthering it, John McCusker, Russell Menard, Nathan Rosenberg and Frederic Lane declined to dismiss the role that such adaptation might have played, leaving open the possibility that ship technology was worth exploring in a time and place for which it was generally considered static. Phillip Reid’s exploration of that subject has been guided by two premises: first, that continuity as well as change can serve as technological adaptation to operating conditions; and, second, that economic maritime history has paid too little attention to the technology of the ordinary merchant ship in this period to evaluate its contribution to the success of the shipping industry – or lack thereof. Both continuity and change served as technological adaptations, allowing the merchant ship to serve a shipping industry that, in turn, served a world growing and changing demographically and economically, with that change accelerating in the second half of the eighteenth century. In past work, he has argued that specific continuities and changes in the merchant ship are best explained as strategies of ‘risk mitigation’. Here, he also considers the distinction between risk and uncertainty to determine what, if any, application it might have to understanding continuity and change in the hazards to profit presented by the ever-present and dangerous collection of hazards posed to the merchant ship and crew by the Atlantic and the human predators who cruised it.

A Prediction Method of Ship Traffic Accidents Based on Grey GM(1,1) Model

In order to improve the inaccuracy of the GM(1,1) model in the prediction of ship traffic accidents caused by large data fluctuations, a weighted average weakening buffer operator is applied to the GM(1,1) residual error correction model to improve the prediction accuracy. This method is based on the modeling principle of the GM(1,1) residual error correction model. Firstly, GM(1,1) model is established based on the original data sequence to obtain the simulated value, predicted value, and residual tail sequence. Then, the residual tail sequence of the oscillation fluctuation is processed by positive value and weighted average weakening buffer operator, so as to establish the residual GM(1,1) model and correct the original prediction value with the residual prediction value; Finally, this method is applied to the prediction of British merchant shipping traffic accidents to verify its effectiveness. The results show that this method has high prediction accuracy in the short-term prediction of ship traffic accidents.

Trabalhadores no mundo: marinheiros indianos, c. de 1870-1940

A expansão da marinha mercante britânica na era do vapor foi estimulada pelo emprego de tripulações do subcontinente indiano. Entre os mais mal pagos do mercado, os marinheiros indianos eram os trabalhadores internacionais pioneiros que compunham quase um terço da força de trabalho na marinha britânica em 1937. Rotulados genericamente como “lascars”, seu emprego em regimes semelhantes a contratos firmados reforçou o status de “coolies”, promoveu a desoneração/desqualificação do trabalho marítimo e instituiu hierarquias racializadas no trabalho na marinha mercante, que perduram até hoje dentro e fora do setor. Este artigo apresenta um breve relato das condições de vida e de trabalho dos marinheiros subcontinentais, explora a atitude dos sindicatos britânicos em relação ao emprego dessas tripulações e destaca sua crucial contribuição para a expansão da navegação imperial britânica e, de maneira mais geral, para a dimensão marítima do poder imperial britânico.

The 1852 Centaur Shipwreck: Law, politics and society in the Persian Gulf

The 1852 Centaur Shipwreck:Law, politics and society in the Persian Gulf Seema Alavi The Incident In 1852 Centaur—a 550-ton British merchant ship under the command of Captain William Taylor Salmon—set sail from Calcutta on a voyage to Bushire and Basrah in the Persian Gulf. Its owner was Haji Baba Tazim—a British Indian subject. She had an insured cargo of rice, sugar and 1,645 chests of indigo valued at about 12 lakh Indian rupees. She wrecked in dense fog 25 miles south of Rāʾs al-Ḥadd, located at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman where it enters the Persian Gulf above and meets the Indian Ocean below.1 The site of the wreck was 120 miles from Muscat and well within the territorial jurisdiction of its Sultan Sayyed Sa'id.2 Arabs mainly from the Banī Bū ʿAlī tribe looted her cargo. A passing sheikh of the Jeneba tribe, that was also involved in the plunder, offered his boat to carry the crew for 100 Maria Theresa dollars (hereafter, $MT) to the safety of Muscat.3 The Muscat sultan on the advice of A. Hamerton, the British consul, initiated an investigation to get to the bottom of the shipwreck.4 But his team was unable to reach the site because of bad weather and returned to Muscat. The damaged and plundered Centaur was set on fire by the tribes, making investigation impossible. The Context Observers noted that the looted Bengal indigo comprised the entire annual stock that was consumed in the Persian Gulf. This may well have been the case as Indigo—the vivid blue pigment produced from plants belonging to the genus Indigofera—, indigenous to many tropical and subtropical parts of the world including India, was of high value in the region. In the Persian Gulf societies it was used to dye cloth, and also as a pigment for body paint by tribes of the Arabian Peninsula at weddings and festivities. It also had medicinal value. Temporally and spatially the Centaur shipwreck can be located in a specific moment in Omani history when its political sovereignty was contested by Britain, which was determined to control the Western Indian Ocean. By the mid-nineteenth century Oman's economy was booming. The reduction in the European slave trade due to the anti-slavery campaign of Britain diverted slave labor and capital to the hands of Arabs, who invested it in Omani clove and date plantations.5 This increased Britain's resolve to interfere and have an upper hand in the ocean. The internal tensions within the Sultanate offered the perfect canvas for British intervention and competition: royal family feuds, ambitions of Omani political and religious leaders, the Arab tribes and the Wahabi incursions. The Argument It is in the backdrop of these imperial rivalries that the claims for the recovery and reparation of indigo assumes special significance. Historians have written the history of commodities, like indigo, that moved across the Indian Ocean as integral to the story of colonialism and capitalism.6 Recent histories offer a more textured view of imperialism by putting the spotlight on the Indian Ocean as a transregional space of exchange where itinerant communities created legal regimes that sustained their commercial and social exchanges with political implications.7 Other works explain the working of different forms of "customary law" at sea to explain incidents of piracy, and the role of the loot and plunder that followed shipwrecks in building the political economy of tribes.8 This essay enriches these legal histories of the ocean by detailing the microhistory of law as reflected in the unfolding of the Centaur story. The many different experiences of individuals impacted by the same mishap but located in different geographical, social and political contexts offers a thick connectedness of things on scales both small and large.9 The movement of the looted indigo and the fight for its recovery and reparation made the Persian Gulf the main site of social interaction for three sets of people: the merchants, ship-owners and underwriters; the sultans, the Arab sheikhs and the tribes; and the British political agents and legal experts. It became a critical social space of...

Book Review: Churchill’s Thin Grey Line: British Merchant Ships at War 1939–1945

Book Review: Churchill’s Thin Grey Line: British Merchant Ships at War 1939–1945

영국 상선 아르고노트호의 동해 항해와 ‘의문의 섬’ 발견

영국 상선 아르고노트호의 동해 항해와 ‘의문의 섬’ 발견

Britain and the Basque Campaign of 1937: The Government, the Royal Navy, the Labour Party and the Press

The policy of the British Conservative government towards the Spanish Civil War reflected the general policy of appeasement of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was influenced by a belief that the legitimate Spanish Republican Government was the puppet of extreme left Socialists and Communists. Accordingly, the British Cabinet adopted a policy of benevolent neutrality towards the military insurgents, with the covert aim of avoiding any direct or indirect help to the Popular Front Government. The official British line on the Spanish crisis was one of non-intervention despite awareness of the scale of German and Italian aid to the military rebels. The contradictions and deceit behind non-intervention were finally exposed by the humiliations suffered by the British government during the war in the Basque Country in the spring and early summer of 1937. Franco’s attempts to prevent the delivery of sea-borne food supplies to a starving Bilbao challenged the Government’s responsibility to protect British merchant shipping. At first, London accepted the rebel contention that they had effectively blockaded Bilbao and that Royal Navy protection of merchant shipping constituted intervention on the side of the Republic. On the basis of information supplied by the Times correspondent, George Steer, a campaign was mounted in parliament and the press which forced the government into a humiliating volte-face.

Causes and circumstances of maritime casualties and crew fatalities in British merchant shipping since 1925.

To determine the causes and circumstances of vessel accidents that led to fatalities in British merchant shipping since 1925, and among British seafarers who were employed in non-United Kingdom shipping since 1985. Secondly, to establish trends in vessel accidents and crew fatalities, and associations with type of casualty and location, type of ship, cargo carried and season. Reviews of annual mortality returns, marine accident investigation reports, death inquiry files, Lloyd's casualty returns, online newspapers, shipwreck websites and other searches over the period from 1925 to 2017 but excluding 1939 to 1946. The study identified 362 ship accidents in British shipping that led to 2760 crew and 605 passenger fatalities. There have been large reductions in both ship casualty and crew fatality rates, which have been greatest for vessels that were stranded, wrecked or foundered, particularly small coastal trading cargo ships. Reductions since the 1980s have coincided with proportionate increases in ship accidents and consequential crew fatalities among British seafarers employed in 'open register' shipping. Strong seasonal and geographical patterns show that most fatalities through foundering or wrecking occurred during winter months around Europe. Reductions in ship accidents and crew fatalities reflect major developments and improvements in ship navigational aids, improvements in rescue services and ship designs, and reductions in the volume of small coastal trading ships. Some disasters in 'open registry' shipping occurred in controversial circumstances, suggesting that substandard shipping has been flagged out or that lower cost but less competent crews have been employed.

Infectious disease mortality in British merchant seamen and Lascars since 1900: From causes to controls

Trends in mortality rates from infectious disease in seamen employed in British merchant shipping have been compared with those in the Royal Navy and with the onshore male working-age British population. Merchant seamen, and in particular those recruited from Asia (Lascars), had higher mortality rates than men in the navy and in the population ashore. Mortality declined progressively between 1900 and 1960, thereafter it was negligible; the decline was slowest for merchant seamen. The reasons for the high mortality from infectious diseases in merchant seamen are investigated. Some preventative measures, such as vaccination for smallpox, were not universal in merchant seamen. Improvements prior to the 1940s can be attributed to reduced infection risks in foreign ports; improvements in food, accommodation and hygiene standards, and better control of arthropod vectors in port and on board. The rapid subsequent decline can be attributed to the introduction of antibacterial medications and antibiotics.

Something ventured: Dangers and risk mitigation for the ordinary British Atlantic merchant ship, 1600–1800

Using diverse sources, including archaeological evidence, this paper scrutinises the technology of the ordinary British Atlantic merchant ship, assessing continuity and change during the formation and development of the Atlantic empire (1600–1800). The paper argues that observable continuities and changes in rig, in hull design, and in defensive armament were responses to risks posed to owners, builders, and crews. I state that ‘risk mitigation’ was the main policy of the actors involved in the business, thus suggesting an innovative research path to assess decisions to innovate and decisions not to. This can thus contribute to a better understanding of Atlantic and technological history, as well as to an understanding of risk mitigation as a driving force in business and technology, beyond the more commonly used concept of disruptive innovations. Naturally, changes did take place, and investigate why that is helps us understand the continuity more fully, and ship technology more fully.

The emergence of the engineer in the British merchant shipping industry, 1812–1863

This research note traces the emergence of the marine steam engineer in Britain from 1812 to 1860. It examines the development of the British merchant steam fleet and its need for engineers. Crew lists, muster rolls, certificate of service application forms and Parliamentary Papers are examined to reveal the numbers of men seeking to become qualified engineers, and their birthplace, age and training. Consideration is given to the career patterns of marine steam engineers, their relationship to other seafaring ranks, notably firemen and trimmers, the creation of personal wealth and new businesses by some engineers, and the place of their emerging profession in the social context of the era. Administrative and legislative change – essentially, from freedom to control and certification – is identified as a key element in the professionalization of engineers, leading to the establishment of the Institutes of Civil Engineers, Mechanical Engineers and, finally in 1888, Marine Engineers.

British merchant seafarers 1900–2010: A history of extreme risks of mortality from infectious disease

This study established trends in major infectious disease mortality in British merchant shipping from 1900 to 2010 as compared with the British male working population and the Royal Navy. A population mortality study of six infectious diseases using annual government mortality returns and death inquiry files for British merchant shipping and the Royal Navy, and official mortality data for the general male working aged population. Relative mortality risks for each disease were increased significantly in British merchant shipping when compared with the general population; malaria by 58.2 fold, yellow fever (6276), typhoid (9.5), cholera (1734), dysentery (20.6) and smallpox (142). For all six diseases combined, relative mortality risks were 21.5 compared with the general population and 3.5 compared with the Royal Navy. Mortality trend patterns varied between diseases, but reductions in mortality in British merchant shipping consistently lagged many years behind those in both the British general population and the Royal Navy. Merchant seamen were at far higher risk of death than probably any other occupational group of the population. Much of these excess risks came from exposure to infection in unhygienic and tropical ports, although some was a result of neglect of feasible preventative measures.

A British Strike in an African Port: The Mercantile Marine and Dominion Politics in Durban, 1925

The world-wide British merchant shipping industrial dispute of 1925 threatened to bring the commerce of the British Empire to a halt. Although it rapidly faded in Britain itself, the strike took off with remarkable effect in the ports of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, almost paralysing the southern hemisphere operations of the world's largest cargo and passenger fleet. Through exploring the course of the strike in Durban, South Africa, this article shows how this globalised British labour dispute brought out tensions within the politics of the empire, both between dominions and metropolis and between political factions within those dominions. The article analyses the strike from the perspective that the exercise of power within the empire was radically fragmented. It shows that the course of the struggle was shaped by intensely conflictual relationships between South Africa and imperial power-holders in London, by rivalries between political factions within the South African state and by regional divisions between the Pretoria government and Natal Province. Together, these tensions produced the state policies towards the strike that enabled it to last far longer in Durban than might initially have been predicted.

The Merchant Navy: A myth reviewed

It is often said, or strongly implied as cause and effect, that the title ‘Merchant Navy’ was formally granted to British merchant shipping by King George V for its efforts and sacrifices of 1914–1...

Fatal accidents and injuries among merchant seafarers worldwide

The British merchant fleet has expanded in recent years but it is not known whether this expansion has led to proportionate changes in mortality. To investigate mortality from accidents and injuries in British merchant shipping, to determine whether this has increased in recent years, to compare fatal accident rates across British industries and to review fatal accident rates in merchant shipping worldwide over the last 70 years. Examinations of marine accident investigation files, death registers and death inquiry files, national mortality statistics, worldwide surveys and review methodology. The main outcome measure was the fatal accident rate per 100 000 worker-years. Of 66 deaths in British shipping from 2003 to 2012, 49 were caused by accidents, which largely affected deck ratings. The fatal accident rate in British shipping increased by 4.7% per annum from 2003, although this was not significant (95% confidence interval: -5.1 to 15.6%). During 2003-12, the fatal accident rate in shipping (14.5 per 100 000) was 21 times that in the general British workforce, 4.7 times that in the construction industry and 13 times that in manufacturing. Of 20 merchant fleets worldwide with population-based fatal accident rates, most have shown large reductions over time. The expansion of the British merchant fleet in recent years does not appear to have had a major impact on fatal accidents. Further preventive measures should target fatalities during mooring and towing operations. Internationally, most shipping fleets have over time experienced large decreases in fatal accident rates.

Power, Authority and Communications: The Role of the Master and the Managing Owner in Nineteenth-Century British Merchant Shipping

This article examines the sources of power in the relationship between the managing owner and master of a ship. The role of the managing owner has been underrated by historians, while the master has typically been depicted as holding the balance of power, often with the assistance of maritime law. But the role of the shore-based managing owner was significant and complex. With the use of modern management theory it is possible to see that the relationship between the two key actors in the business of operating nineteenth-century British sailing vessels shifted in different circumstances

To Take Arms Across a Sea of Trouble: The “Lascar System,” Politics, and Agency in the 1920s

In the interwar period, a system for the movement of men, arms, and printed matter developed into a political network that in imperial sources came to be called the “lascar system.” Lascars were Indian seamen who worked for British and international merchant shipping companies and had contacts with trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and other politically active parties across the world—in particular in port towns such as Hamburg, Antwerp and Marseilles. They became key players in the politics of the interwar world, and especially in a still-colonised India, which was subject to various censorship regulations and a panoply of repressive legislation. A number of lascars became crucial in the emerging communist movement and in trade union politics. In a world of increasingly stringent border controls, restrictions on the movement of people, and paranoia about political radicalism and its ability to “infect” new areas, the lascars' mobility became an asset to political movements and a source of anxiety for states.Given this, it is surprising that the literature on lascars seldom, if ever, addresses the question of their political activities. This essay takes some steps in that direction, focusing on the 1920s, when the “lascar system” took shape. “Lascar” is of course a name given to a profession, not an identity or a political ideology; and yet the importance of this profession in the politics of the early twentieth century, and of the interwar period in particular, is far too important to ignore or treat as mere coincidence.

The English prize: the capture of the Westmorland, an episode of the grand tour

Laden with works of art acquired by young British travelers on the Grand Tour in Italy, the British merchant ship Westmorland sailed from the Italian port of Livorno before being captured by French naval vessels and escorted to Malaga in southern Spain. The artistic treasures on board were purchased by King Carlos III of Spain, and the majority were deposited in the collections of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. There they resided, unknown, until recent research, using original inventories that survive in the Academia's archives, identified the Westmorland's rich cargo. The English Prize reveals the gripping story of the ship's capture and the disposition of its artistic contents, which included Raphael Mengs's Perseus and Andromeda, Pompeo Batoni's portraits of Frances Bassett and Lord Lewisham, and watercolors by John Robert Cozens. This volume illuminates the cultural phenomenon of the Grand Tour and the young travelers who acquired the trove of books and art works on board the Westmorland but were never able to enjoy their purchases.

Making Coolies, (Un)making Workers: “Globalizing” Labour in the Late-19th and Early-20th Centuries

This paper explores the social relationships of wage labour formed or stabilized in British merchant shipping in the course of “off-shoring” employment in the late-19th century. It argues that Asian wage-workers were mobilized for employment on British merchant vessels as “coolies”, i.e. nominally free but mediated labouring subjects who could only be stabilized through legal, penal, social, debt, or other forms of coercion. Once introduced “coolie” relations were not confined to Indian crews. They also affected wage labour relations more generally in British shipping. While occurring against the backdrop of anti-colonial struggles, the seafaring coolie's transformation into maritime worker was closely mediated by employers and the colonial state and produced hybrid outcomes. The creation of the modern seafaring “coolie” and the nature and context of his transformation into a “worker” thus shed interesting light on wage labour relations in the modern and contemporary global economy.

The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856 (review)

Reviewed by: The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856 A. Hamish Ion The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854–1856. By John D. Grainger. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84383-354-3. Maps. Notes. Sources and bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 207. $90.00. The title is an attempt to attract readers. The book is about the Crimean War in the Pacific, which was certainly not the First Pacific War. John D. Grainger is writing here popular history and he writes fluidly, making good use of the British Admiralty records; but this book is of no interest to the specialist and even the general reader has to be skeptical about some of its claims about the consequences of Crimean War for the Pacific region. For instance, recent studies by Mitani Hiroshi and Michael R. Auslin on Japanese negotiations with the Western powers in the 1850s and 1860s would not back up the contention that it was British, French and Russian maritime activity in the waters around Japan during this [End Page 1298] war “which brought home to the Japanese government the real dangers of their isolation” (p. 188). Grainger’s book simply lacks the depth and breadth of poly-lingual sources featured in the well-written and interesting books and articles on the Russian push toward Japan and the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century by specialists like John Stephan and the late George Lensen. Grainger divides his book into nine chapters: The Royal Navy in the Pacific; the Pursuit to Petropavlovsk; Japan, China, the Amur River; Petropavlovsk Again; the Gulf of Tartary; the Sea of Okhotsk; the Amur Estuary; Plans, and lastly, Victims. Royal Navy operations begin with its Pacific Squadron searching with its French ally for two Russian warships known to be in the vast stretches of the north Pacific, which quickly leads to the abortive Anglo-French attack on Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The China Squadron subsequently searched the Sea of Okhotsk where British efforts were hampered by a lack of good maps and the pusillanimous caution of a Commodore. Ice meant that operations could only be conducted in that northerly Sea during a relatively short summer season, and the war ended before it could be taken to the Russian strongholds on the Amur River. Even if they were not spectacular, British actions were effective in preventing Russian warships from posing any danger to British merchant shipping and in avoiding a further deterioration of Anglo-American relations. Grainger points out the British were concerned about the possibility of United States involvement in the war (p. 64), and Russian posts in Alaska were treated as neutral for fear of giving offence to the Americans (p. 32). Within a few years of the end of the war the Russians had expanded southward at the expense of Imperial China to where Vladivostok now stands, and had sold Alaska to America, but the China Squadron barred any extension of Imperial Russia to Tsushima, Hokkaidô and northern Honshû. Despite its flaws, it is hoped this book will contribute to sparking further interest in things naval in the Pacific during a century that was marked by high imperialism and by high adventure. A. Hamish Ion Royal Military College of Canada Kingston, Ontario, Canada Copyright © 2008 Society for Military History