British Sailors Research Articles

‘Ghostlike’ seafarers and sailing ship nostalgia: the figure of the steamship lascar in the British imagination, c. 1880–1960

This article investigates British imaginations of the Asian and African seamen, known as lascars, during the steamship era and its immediate aftermath. The role of these seafarers was much debated by shipowners, marine officers, politicians, civil servants, trade unionists and others in Britain in these years. In this debate, lascar identity was a highly ‘slippery’ and contested one. There was a complicated relationship between ideologies and material interests in discourse about their role, with shipping companies and captains tending to support employment of lascars, and racial ideologues, British trade unionists and the Board of Trade opposing, or at least striving to limit, their inclusion in the labour force. Representations of the British sailor and the ‘lascar’ tended to be interdependent. The social agency of lascars shaped the way they were represented. The article proposes a periodisation of these struggles. It is suggested that an intense battle over the role of lascars at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth tended to produce a dominantly anti-lascar ideology. However, this did not actually result in an effective reduction in the role of the Indian seafarers in the British Merchant Navy. Changes in racial ideology and the political conjuncture led to a shift in policy towards the Asian and African seamen in the 1940s. But by then the end of the steamship and the coming of Indian independence were bringing the period of the ‘lascar’ presence on British ships to an end.

Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon)

Cranberry has been used for centuries as a source of food and for medicinal purposes. This herbal fruit would not have been mentioned in the Bible as it was not found in arid climates. It has been found in the northern regions of North America, Europe, and Asia, and goes by many names such as craneberry, and Sassamanash. Native Americans used the berry for indigestion, kidney disease, lung ailments, and in poultice form for cuts and abrasions. Europeans also used it for digestive problems, gall bladder attacks, blood disorders, and kidney stones, while New England settlers used it as a way to prevent scurvy at sea. Cranberries were used by sea farers much like the British sailors used limes to prevent scurvy. It was the high vitamin “C” content in the cranberries which was otherwise lacking in a sailors diet. Nutritionally cranberries contain several vitamins and minerals. They contain vitamin E (alpha tocopherol) and vitamin K, as well as being a good source of fiber, vitamin C and manganese.

The British in Pittsburgh: POWs in the War of 1812

Far from the Atlantic seaboard and the Canadian frontier,Pittsburgh was not expected to play a major role in the War of 1812. But it became involved in military affairs even before the start of the war, with Fort Fayette acting as a staging point for troops going down the Ohio River to more westerly posts, notably at Newport, Kentucky, opposite Cincinnati. After Congress declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, troops marched from Pittsburgh to posts along the Canadian frontier in northern Ohio and Michigan. For much of the war, too, Pittsburgh also played a little-known role as a prisoner-of-war (POW) depot for British soldiers and sailors.

Status across Borders: Roger Taney, Black British Subjects, and a Diplomatic Antecedent to the Dred Scott Decision

At the request of the U.S. State Department, Roger B. Taney wrote the following lines regarding the obligation of the U.S. president to honor the treaty rights of black British sailors: Yet this word [subject] cannot be regarded as having been used in that extensive sense by the parties to the contract. That unfortunate people [of the African races] came into the dominions of Great Britain not as aliens coming to settle among them & whose descendants would be free born British subjects, but as slaves; whose posterity it was then intended should always remain so. The privileges there granted to some of them, are rather favours than rights inherent in British subjects. … They are not to be intended to be included when the British people or British subjects are spoken of. … They have never been looked to or considered as forming any part of the body politic. Taney deduced that black Britons were not protected by existing Anglo-American treaties and that Great Britain had no power to compel the United States to guarantee their free entry and movement. Most noticeable about his lines is their uncanny resemblance to the text of the infamous Scott v. Sandford opinion, where Chief Justice Taney refuted both the existence and the possibility of African American citizenship and boldly enshrined the Jacksonian ideal of the white republic into the canons of constitutional law. Taney handed down the decision in Dred Scott's case in 1857, but he penned his opinion about black sailors' treaty rights in his capacity as Andrew Jackson's attorney general in 1832.

The Tropical Empire: Exotic Animals and Beastly Men in The Island of Doctor Moreau

IN THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU (1896), H. G. Wells spares none of his characters. If there are no fully human characters in this post-Darwinian novel, then there are also no heroes in this story of imperial collapse working against the grain of those standard adventure tales that had gained popularity in nineteenth-century England. Typically, such colonialist stories featured upper-class or aristocratic heroes bringing progress and civilization to their perceived animal-like primitive Others in the outposts of a growing empire. Unlike the idealized heroes of British adventure fiction, the upper-middle-class characters of this narrative are coded as degenerates, failing to establish productive relations with any of the non-European natives or the lower-class members of British in the tropics. In this analysis of which is often studied as a science fiction (1) work that stages a cross-species conflict between a vivisector and his grotesque Beast-Folk, I argue that the portrayal of British sailors in this narrative deserves more critical attention for the twinned purpose of understanding their class-inflected animalization and involvement in the overseas trade of exotic animals. Gothic studies critics of Moreau have produced thought-provoking commentaries on the racial and gendered implications of degeneration encoded here. arguments of Kelly Hurley in Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin-de-siecle (1996) and Cyndy Hendershot in Animal Within: Masculinity and the Gothic (1998) first drew my attention to the recurring topic of degeneration in the Gothic studies strand of Wells scholarship. Like Hurley, Hendershot has incisively examined the ways in which the first-person narrator, the scientist, and his assistant are all figured as decadent Englishmen, struggling to maintain their masculinity and imperial authority in a tropical outpost. Hurley and Hendershot offer useful insights on the treatment of race and gender in but their readings do not tie the central human-animal problematic to the critique of animal trade that is conveyed in the novel. By focusing on the representation of British sailors who are associated with such trade, I build on the analyses of these scholars. In what follows, my goal is to link the animalization of British sailors to the role played by them in the reification of exotic animals in the tropics. Initially, exotic animals of this story are not just objects of scientific research or aspects of an anarchic feminized nature. First and foremost, they are presented as trade goods. I argue that the novel employs animal representation paradoxically, both to critique the capture and commodification of exotic animals and to sustain alienating views about animals and human animality, and this is most clearly revealed in the portrayal of the representatives of British commerce and imperialism. Imperial Menagerie paucity of criticism on the narrative function of the sailors is surprising, given that the first quarter of the novel focuses exclusively on their encounters with the shipwrecked narrator Edward Prendick. opening five chapters urge us not to read the central setting of the story--an unnamed tropical island in the South Pacific--as a self-contained space. Most critics misread the novel in exactly this way. For example, in her 2003 article The Unholy Alliance of Science in Island of Doctor Roslynn Haynes claims that is clear from the outset that Moreau embodies several stock characteristics of the alchemist. Thus he lives in such rigorous seclusion that he even intends to deny the shipwrecked Prendick access to his island (itself a physical symbol of his isolation), and his work is conducted in the strictest secrecy in a locked laboratory (56). Haynes continues, Moreau, like Frankenstein, has cut himself off from the humanizing influences of society (57). main problem with this reading is that it conflates the island with the scientist inhabiting and governing that island. …

Physician to the fleet: the life and times of Thomas Trotter, 1760-1832.

Thomas Trotter, after studying medicine at Edinburgh, began his naval career as a surgeon's mate in 1779 and saw continuous service up to the peace of 1802, rising as a result of great abilities and the right patronage to become Physician to the Channel Fleet, and being present at the great battles of Dogger Bank in 1781 and the Glorious First of June in 1794. As Physician to the Channel Fleet, he was a major player in the conquest of scurvy and the control of typhus and smallpox in the navy. After the peace he settled in Newcastle where he produced pioneering work on alcoholism and neurosis, as a result of which he is regarded as one of the founders of the field of addiction studies. This book provides an intimate account of naval life in the great age of sail from the perspective of a surgeon, describing the impact of Enlightenment ideas and new medical techniques, and showing how improved health was a crucial factor in making possible the British fleet's great victories in this period. BRIAN VALE is a maritime historian, whose books include Independence or Death: British sailors and Brazilian Independence (Tauris 1996), A Frigate of King George, Life and Duty on a British Man-of-War (Tauris 2001) and The Audacious Admiral Cochrane (Conway 2004). GRIFFITH EDWARDS, Emeritus Professor at King's College, London, is one of the country's leading experts on addiction. His publications include Alchohol: the Ambiguous Molecule (Penguin 2000) and Matters of Substance (Penguin 2005).

<em>War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750––1850</em>, by Isaac Land

<em>War, Nationalism, and the British Sailor, 1750––1850</em>, by Isaac Land

Maritime Slavery

Maritime Slavery

Men of War: British Sailors and the Impressment Paradox

AbstractIn the long eighteenth century, the British Royal Navy established dominance of the seas with the widely despised forced labor system of impressment. Previous attempts at explaining this paradox have erred either in deemphasizing the devastating personal and communal costs of impressment or by stressing that the navy’s oppressive system of discipline left sailors with no choice but to serve admirably. In fact, sailors exercised their agency both by resisting British press-gangs and by serving to the best of their ability on naval vessels. The British navy created incentives that appealed to mariners’ professional self-interests and male gender aspirations. Through naval service, sailors regained some of their dignity and sense of manhood that capture by press-gangs had taken away.

From the Editors

From the Editors Julie Pfeiffer (bio) I spent last summer traveling with a group of graduate students in England. Our focus was "The Landscape of British Children's Literature" and our discussions ranged from thinking about how our physical presence in the landscape changes the imaginative landscape we inhabit while reading to investigating how particular aspects of landscape—shores, islands, gardens, underground railways, etc.—act symbolically in texts. It is perhaps not surprising that I now read the essays gathered in this volume with issues of place and space very much on my mind and with an old saying of my mother's, "where you sit defines the view," on my tongue. These essays lead me to reflect on the ways our interpretations are shaped by where we sit: both our physical location and the beliefs to which we lay claim. Like the well-known image of the old hag who is also a beautiful lady, these essays reveal that what we see first isn't all there is to see; shifting our focus reveals double images of character, theory, or genre. The nine articles and Varia piece gathered in Children's Literature, 38 are a tribute to the flexibility of vision of their authors. I'm delighted to imagine the many readers of this volume—each sitting in a different place around the world—joined for the moment in the act of expanding their view of children's literature and the world it inhabits. The volume opens with Andrew Loman's essay, "The Sea Cook's Wife: Evocations of Slavery in Treasure Island," and his claim that, read in historical context, this novel "dissolv[es] meaningful moral distinctions between pirate and good British sailor." Loman's carefully crafted analysis of the historical context of Treasure Island identifies two divergent readings of the novel. From one perspective, it is an imperial romance, with an adventure plot that obscures the origins of the treasure and avoids "the moral stringency of realism." However, the novel's references to the slave trade shine a spotlight on the human cost of the treasure hoard. Treasure Island must thus also be read as "anti-imperial critique." John Hutton begins his essay with the apparent commonplace that words and pictures work together in texts. However, in "Walter Crane and the Decorative Illustration of Books" Hutton helps us to see that this notion does not originate in late twentieth-century literary criticism, [End Page vii] but was usefully explored by Walter Crane in the nineteenth century. Hutton finds that for Crane, "[l]ayout, rather than literary theory, became the organizing principle of his analytical approach," and that Crane's "printer's vocabulary" leads to complex texts that encourage multiple readings. We move next from Britain to the United States, and from discussions of currency and printing presses to the sticky subject of the hungry child. In "Gastronomic Utopias: The Legacy of Political Hunger in African American Lore," Susan Honeyman explicates the dangerous attraction of molasses to draw our attention to the use of food as an oppressive tool. Placed in the context of a variety of gastronomic utopias, Honeyman's discussion of the Brer Rabbit tales shows that "[t]he similarities between the cultures of hunger depicted in African American folklore and children's literature in general are striking, suggesting hunger as a common political theme for marginalized groups." But Brer Rabbit resists oppression even as he helps us identify it; he thus serves as a model of strategies for resisting the pull toward community when that community ignores the needs of its least powerful members. Eric Tribunella takes us from the rural communities of gastronomic utopias to the city. Tribunella begins with Baudelaire's notion of the flâneur and makes the convincing case in "Children's Literature and the Child Flâneur" that child protagonists of urban fiction are usefully understood in light of this tradition. Their critical gaze and sense of wonder allow the adults around them (including the authors and readers of their stories) to better cope with the trials of modernity. While the child flâneur may struggle with exposure (his or her success depends, as Baudelaire says, on "remain[ing] hidden...

‘True British sailors’: A comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose [Journal of Archaeological Science Vol. 36, Issue 11

‘True British sailors’: A comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose [Journal of Archaeological Science Vol. 36, Issue 11

Mary Seacole: Self Taught Nurse and Heroine of the Crimean War

Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Grant in Kingston Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish army officer and her mother a free Jamaican black, (slavery was not fully abolished in Jamaica until 1838). Her mother ran a hotel, Blundell Hall, in Kingston and was a traditional healer. Her skill as a nurse was much appreciated, as many of her residents were disabled British soldiers and sailors. It was from her mother that Mary learned the art of patient care, and she also assisted at the local British army hospital.

‘True British sailors’: a comment on the origin of the men of the Mary Rose

Bell et al. (2009) have recently published an isotopic investigation of the origins of 18 men whose remains were found in the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship, which sank in 1545. They conclude that a high proportion of the ship's crew were foreigners and that this may have contributed to confusion on board ship and the sinking of the vessel. We have re-evaluated the data of Bell et al. and conclude that only one of the 18 sailors demonstrably spent his childhood outside the British Isles.

The Illusion of Freedom in South Africa: Post-colonialism, Exploitation and Identity Crisis in Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country

Colonization of Africa began in 1488 when the Portuguese explorer Bartolemeu Dias first sailed along the cost of South Africa and eventually arrived at the north of South Africa. Then the British sailors stopped briefly in the southwest of Africa on their way to India in the 1600s. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was established to expand trade relationship with colonies in Asia by entering into a fierce rivalry with Britain, and Jan van Riebeeck brought in 1652 three Dutch East India Company ships with around 100 people to establish a station, and these people, known as Afrikaners, were the first white settlers of South Africa. By the end of the seventeenth century, the white population, including Dutch, German, and French, increased considerably in South Africa by killing, driving out or enslaving the indigenous peoples, and then the slave trade started.

MORAL COMPETITION AND THE THRILL OF THE SPECTACULAR

At 10:15 on the night of 31 May 1903, the D–block of the recently completed Sita Ram Building in Bombay suddenly came down with a crash. Most of the building was unoccupied, but on the ground floor was a saloon bar, which over the past months had done a brisk trade with British soldiers and sailors. The customers of this bar comprised most of the dead and injured when the building collapsed.Since the bar stood across the road from the tomb of a Muslim saint, rumours spread that the disaster was the direct result of the insult to the holy man and implicitly of the transgression of Muslim space by the combined efforts of the Hindu bar–owner and his bibulous patrons. This short essay explores the moral tensions that found expression with the collapse of the Sita Ram Building through a comparison of its reportage in an English–language newspaper and an Urdu hagiography of the offended saint. At the same time, it draws attention to the neglected importance of colonial Bombay as a prime location of the early Muslim experience of globalising modernity.

True Blue and Black, Brown and Fair: prints of British sailors and their women during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Journal for Eighteenth-Century StudiesVolume 23, Issue 2 p. 135-152 True Blue and Black, Brown and Fair: prints of British sailors and their women during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars CINDY McCREERY, CINDY McCREERYSearch for more papers by this author CINDY McCREERY, CINDY McCREERYSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 October 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.2000.tb00583.xCitations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume23, Issue2September 2000Pages 135-152 RelatedInformation

Science without borders

Quantum information is a hot subject around the world, and many Iranian scientists and students are active or interested in the field; however, their mobility is constrained by financial and political considerations such as difficulties in obtaining visas. With those concerns in mind, Vahid Karimipour of Sharif University of Technology and I decided to plan a major international conference in Iran, capped at 100 participants, with a significant fraction of them coming from other countries. The first International Iran Conference on Quantum Information (IICQI) was held 7–10 September 2007. A successful international conference requires a local base of respected experts in the field, an effective local organizing committee, excellent conference facilities, financial support, and a critical mass of students and faculty in the region who would attend. Those basic requirements were met by having an enthusiastic, energetic team of organizers, but a conference in Iran posed unique challenges—preconceptions and politics—that also had to be faced. In the West, Iran is constantly in the news because of its nuclear program, the 2006 Iran-hosted conference that questioned the Holocaust, and the Iranian seizure of British sailors and marines shortly before the conference deadline, not to mention the seething insurgencies in the neighboring countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In addition, Iran and the US do not have diplomatic relations, although Americans can obtain visas to go to Iran. Despite those problems, Iran has hosted successful physics conferences—for example, one on strings and another on cosmology, both held last year. Also last year Iran was the host for the highly successful 38th International Physics Olympiad. Thus we were optimistic that our proposed conference would be successful. In my view, the complicated politics between Iran and the West is a compelling reason to support conferences in that country. Science is driven by a shared desire to discover the laws and nature of the universe in a way that transcends politics, local culture, race, creed, and gender. In a world divided, a scientific conference reminds us through our shared discourse that we are all human and all fundamentally the same on our journey of discovery. A scientific conference provides the opportunity for local participants to learn from, and be inspired by, foreign scientists who share their time and insights to globalize the scientific endeavor. My views are not universally shared, however. Science and technology are separated by a nebulous boundary. Some would argue that scientific discourse, at least in strategically important fields such as nuclear physics, quantum information, and nanotechnology, should be constrained so as not to support technological advancement in unfriendly nations and to prevent the export of intellectual capital. I believe, however, that the majority of physicists would accept sharing knowledge that is or will be published in openly available peer-reviewed scientific journals and proceedings; a scientific conference dedicated to discussing such openly available knowledge really should not be controversial. With those considerations in mind, Vahid and I planned the conference, greatly assisted by his student Laleh Memarzadeh Esfahani and a postdoctoral fellow in my group in Calgary, Ali Tayefeh Rezakhani, and with indispensable support and guidance from numerous other individuals. To minimize visa complications and to maximize the appeal of the location, the conference was held at Kish University on beautiful Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. The island is a “free zone,” which means that it does not require visitors to have visas issued in advance. Kish Island is easily reached via several daily

Good Jews Don’t: Historical and Philosophical Constructions of Idolatry

Naomi Janowitz G O OD J E WS D ON ’ T : H I S TO R I C A L A N D PH I LOS OPH IC A L C O N S T RUC T I O N S O F I D O L AT RY The first question British sailors asked the indigenous people they encoun- tered in Polynesia was, “Are you cannibals?” While the question would seem to be about the natives, it also reveals quite a bit about British interests. Gananath Obeyesekere has masterfully analyzed for us why the British were obsessed with “other people’s” cannibalistic tendencies. A small but famous set of stories circulated about British sailors who resorted to cannibalism in dire straits. Thus the question of whether or not the British behavior was morally acceptable was explored via an investiga- tion of “primitive” behavior. A universal human fear and fascination with the possibility that somewhere in the world human monsters consume human flesh also contributed to the British obsession. Obeyesekere con- cludes, “Polynesian cannibalism is constructed out of an extremely com- plex dialogue between Europeans and Polynesians, a dialogue that makes sense in relation to the history of contact and unequal power relations and the cultural values, fantasies and the common dark humanity they both share.” 1 The natives’ answers were part of this delicately constructed dialogue. Adopting the outsider’s view of themselves accrued a perverse power to Gananath Obeyesekere, “ ‘British Cannibals’: Contemplation of an Event in the Death and Resurrection of James Cook, Explorer,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1992): 650. c 2007 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.

The Pitkern-Norf’k language and education

This paper examines the role that educational policies and practices have played in weakening the Norf’k language, a contact language that developed among British sailors and their Tahitian entourage on Pitcairn Island in the late 18th century. It is argued that the education system was only one of several factors in the decline of Norf’k and that its projected revival will require more than just supportive educational measures.

Markets nervous, problems in Nigeria and troubles with spelling

This section summarizes downstream developments of the previous month. Exploration & Production are covered in 'Upstream Review'. The capture in late March of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines caused crude oil prices to rise sharply on fears of a worsening situation in the Persian Gulf. WTI rose by $2 a barrel to just over $66. Product markets went up as well as French dock workers went on strike in Marseilles, stranding oil tankers and forcing three nearby refineries to cut their runs. The dockers were protesting against a decision by Gaz de France to use its own staff to handle vessels at a new LNG terminal. The strike was eventually settled after 17 days. There was more trouble for foreign oil companies operating in Nigeria with further violence, kidnappings and damage to installations. Shell, which had some 475,000 bpd shut‐in at the beginning of March, was temporarily forced to cut production by a further 190,000 bpd when a pipeline was damaged. It was not immediately clear what had caused the problem. Around 700,000 bpd was reported shut‐in across the whole of Nigeria in mid‐March, including fields operated by ENI, Total and Chevron, as well as Shell, which has been hardest hit. Attempts to raise production in Nigeria are being hampered by the refusal of some oilfield service companies to work there. A meeting of OPEC ministers on 15th March in Vienna decided not to make any further cuts in production and to continue those previously agreed in Doha and Abuja. Angola attended the meeting for the first time as a full member but was not asked to join the cartel's quota system.