Welsh Journals

JACK ASHORE: SEAMEN IN CARDIFF BEFORE 1914* THE National Amalgamated Union of Sailors and Firemen was formed on Tyneside in 1887; the next year, it spread to other major ports, including Cardiff. The development of this union has never been adequately placed within the context of the economy and society of the waterfront. Detailed, blow-by-blow accounts of strikes have taken precedence over an analysis of the social and economic structure into which the union was inserting itself.1 This is perhaps not surprising, for the seaman is in many ways a figure on the periphery of society, isolated in his own peculiar social milieu.2 As a union official said; the man on the shore doesn't bother much about the man on the sea The sailorman comes and goes. For brief spells he touches the fringes of the land that is his, comparatively seldom does he make his way through the sailortown which lines the edges of the sea; generally he doesn't even reach the centres of the big towns whose harbour his ship rides in-he isn't seen in the country beyond.3 The outsider had little real understanding of what went on within the sailortown, or how it functioned. And without knowing this, it is quite impossible to grasp the problems facing would-be organisers of the seamen. This articles takes Cardiff as a case-study in order to show the difficulties which the union encountered in establishing itself in sailortown. I. The introduction of a union did not lead to a simple conflict between masters and men, shipowners and seamen. For, in the words of Melville, on the waterfront were to be found a variety of land-sharks, land-rats, and other vermin, which make the My thanks are due to Dr. D. Bythell and Mr. R. C. Michie of the University of Durham, and to Mr. R. S. Craig of University College, London, for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. It was Mr. Craig who first gave me an interest in this subject. My views on crimping were clarified by discussions with Dr. A. F. Harding. 1 R. Brown, Waterfront Organisation in Hull, 1870-1900 (Hull, 1972), and E. L. Taplin, Liverpool Dockers and Seamen, 1870-1890 (Hull, 1974). The best study of waterfront unions is to be found in J. Lovell, Stevedores and Dockers. A Study of Trade Unionism in the Port of London, 1870-1914 (1969). Unfortunately, he does not deal with seamen. K. Little, Negroes in Britain. A Study of Racial Relations in English Society (1947), p. 43. a E. Tupper, Seamen's Torch. Life Story of Captain Tupper (1938), p. 23.