Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Timeline
- 1 Worlds Collide
- 2 Destination Uncertain
- 3 A Tar's Life
- 4 War under Sail
- 5 Blighty
- 6 A Question of Rank
- 7 From Sail to Steam
- 8 Global Conflict
- 9 Sailortown under Attack
- 10 The Second World War
- 11 After Empire
- 12 Epilogue
- Notes and References
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Sailortown under Attack
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Timeline
- 1 Worlds Collide
- 2 Destination Uncertain
- 3 A Tar's Life
- 4 War under Sail
- 5 Blighty
- 6 A Question of Rank
- 7 From Sail to Steam
- 8 Global Conflict
- 9 Sailortown under Attack
- 10 The Second World War
- 11 After Empire
- 12 Epilogue
- Notes and References
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The First World War had meant well-paid employment for black seamen, welcome recruits to the naval service. By the conclusion of hostilities, there were something in the region of 200,000 black people living in Britain, mostly in the ports. However, the favourable employment conditions for black seamen and their settled families were short-lived. Only a year after the war ended, they faced hostility once again from poor whites, for whom the promises of better conditions of ordinary life in Britain, ‘homes fit for heroes’, had been slow in being realized. Feelings ran high against black settlers who, wrongly in the case of the majority of Liverpool blacks, were considered aliens or at least latecomers. Some British-born Black seamen resented the fact that white foreign seamen were employed rather than recently demobilized indigenous blacks, a situation that prompted a black seaman from Cardiff to write to the Colonial Office on behalf of black seamen from all parts of the British Empire (the original grammar and punctuation have been retained):
We hardly beg to appeal to you for justice. We are seafaring men that has served this country faithfully in her past difficulties either in the service of His Britannic Majesty or in Mercantile Marine. The places of our birth are surely British possessions or protectorates and here in Great Britain which is the Capital of the British Empire we are badly treated by the British people. We do not want any favour all we want is fair play. Every morning we go down to shipping offices to find ourselves work so as to make an honest bread and are bluntly refused on account of our colour. Whereas foreigners of all nationality get the preference. This is not only in Cardiff but all throughout the Untied Kingdom. What is the British Motto? Are we not men and brothers whom Christ died for? […] Why take such filthy advantages of men who have done you no wrong? […] Is it because we are mere dogs which neither Bark nor bite? No sir, we are men that gives the British Empire little or no trouble […] We kindly ask to step before foreigners on any British ship.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Black SaltSeafarers of African Descent on British Ships, pp. 153 - 170Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012