125Th Anniversay Edition
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Organized 1885 Official Organ of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific SPECIAL EDITION SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA March 6, 2010 Sailors Union of the Pacific 125th Anniversary history of the Sailors this was interpreted to permit mates. And if the seamen buckos themselves, under under Captain Robert K. AUnion of the Pacific, such punishment if in the rea- lodged a complaint against a the justifiable cause law Clarke, sailed from New York particularly one mark- sonable judgment of the mas- captain, the latter prepared a courts and juries consistently to San Francisco in 1873. The th ing its 125 anniversary, can- ter it was justifiable. bill of exceptions, filed bonds, approved the declaration of abridged description of the not begin without a preface: the But even had the law been and sailed away, but the poor accused persons that assaults voyage is as follows: conditions seamen worked un- less favorable to the master, it seaman, without money or upon seamen were justifiable, As soon as the Sunrise got der during the latter half of the would have been difficult for work, was told to wait two or or, at any rate, they were into the stream, the brutali- 19th century. the sailor to secure actual jus- three months until the court deemed such. ties upon the crew com- In Paul S. Taylors The Sail- menced, and did not end un- ors Union of the Pacific, pub- til she took a pilot off the lished in 1923, those conditions Golden Gate. They were are starkly described. knocked down, kicked, beaten At sea, the treatment ac- with rope ends, iron belaying corded the seaman was such as pins, tar buckets, staves, or is scarcely credible to the anything that came handy. landsman. Founded on the un- But the favorite punishment equal legal status of seamen of the captain and his mate and under the guise of disci- seems to have been the hor- pline as interpreted by the rible torture known as tricing courts, brutal treatment of sail- up, which consists of ironing ors aboard deep-water ships a man by the wrists, passing became flagrant and general. a rope around the irons, and By the law of 1835, which hoisting him up until his toes remained unchanged until the barely touch the deck. They passage of the White Act in were tortured on the Sunrise 1898, beating, wounding, im- in this way for six, eight and prisoning, withholding suitable ten hours for trivial offenses, food, and other punishments or for no offenses at all. inflicted by the master were ...Five men seem to have been punishable if without justifi- singled out for special cruel- able cause. Read conversely, ties. ... These men were mal- On the back of this photo a shaky hand wrote simply Shang Hai, 1927. Besides this early treated in every possible way- appearance of the emblematic SUP cap known later as the Lundeberg Stetson, it is the youth of these shipmates that is striking: even the eldest seems a teenager. That fact is a beaten and kicked until they function of organizing economics more than romantic wanderlust. Largely because of class- were a mass of bruises and consciousness, limited ports on the rugged U.S. West Coast, and the superior skill required discolored flesh, hung up by for the lumber schooner trade, the SUP was able to organize and negotiate agreements in the the wrists until their hands coastwise trades long before the international trades. As a result, the wages and conditions were black, kept without sleep for sailors in the coastwise trades were for many years far better than those for blue water and set to the hardest and sailors. And since the most senior members would tend to ship out under the best agreements, most impossible tasks. the common opportunity for new sailors was in ships sailing for foreign ports. Photo from the One...escaped from his tor- SUP archives. ture two days after the vessel left Sandy Hook, by going tice. To protect brutal mates, could hear his case. Under these conditions life overboard. A second one ... captains used to send them Nor was there any remedy on American deep-water ves- followed his example soon af- ashore so that they might es- against the owners of a vessel sels became well-nigh intoler- terwards; a third, a boy of cape as soon as the ship whose captain committed wil- able, and the number of na- about 17, found in the sea a dropped anchor and before the ful and malicious assaults on tive Americans who went to refuge on the morning of the seamen could leave ship to go the seamen. As such assaults sea grew steadily less. The 4th of Julythe anniversary of before the courts. Later the were regarded as without the abolition of flogging by fed- Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA (USPS 675-180) the great declaration of free- mates would quietly return, scope of the masters author- eral statute in 1850 merely dom and equality. perhaps under an alias, for the ity, the seaman was without changed the forms of punish- Both captain and mate were next voyage. Not until 1898 even a legal remedy against the ment practiced. convicted in this case, largely was it made the legal duty of owners who employed brutal Taylor provides two of many masters to surrender guilty masters. As against the examples: The ship Sunrise, continued on page 2 Page 2 WEST COAST SAILORS March 6, 2010 through the efforts of Henry George and his San Francisco Post. A British writer, Basil Lubbock, in his 1903 book Round the Horn Before the Mast, similarly describes the happenings aboard American ships: On some of the Yankee hellships the things that go on are almost incredible, and the captains have to be skilled surgeons to cope with the work of destruc- tion wrought by their mates. Legs and arms broken were considered nothing, ribs stamped in by heavy sea-boots had to mend as best they could, faces smashed like rotten apples by iron belaying pins had to get well or fear worse treatment, eyes closed up by a brawny mates fist had to see. There have been many instances of men triced up in the rigging, stripped, and then literally skinned alive with deck scrapers. Thus the reputation of American ships has got so bad that none but a real tough citizen, or a stolid long suffering Dutchman (as sailors call all Ger- mans, Swedes, Norwegians, or Russian Finns), will ship in them. These instances, which were brought vividly to the attention of the San Fran- cisco public, were representative in innumerable cases of cruelty with which the records of deep-water life were filled. In the coastwise trade, treatment was much better, but in deep-water vessels brutality was the rule. In defense of the conduct of ships officers, it was suggested that the vigor- ous use of fore was necessary to maintain discipline aboard ship, and to teach the luckless and incompetent shoemakers, clerks, and tailors who awoke from a drunken stupor to find themselves shanghaied aboard ship as able seamen. As explained in the San Francisco Alta of November 18, 1866, referring to the common practice of shanghaiing, ...consequently, dissatisfied men compose of ships company, who, by shirking their duty and frequently refusing to obey orders, bring upon themselves some of the punishment that we see so often spoken of as cruelty to seamen. Illustration by Quarters Gordon Grant The sailors quarters aboard ship were in the forecastle. In the very old ships the forecastle was located between decks. With a small opening onto the deck perhaps 36 inches square, the ventilation was exactly such as might be expected A bucko mate in action. in a narrow-necked bottle. When in stormy weather this opening was covered over, the analogy was complete even to the stopper. In ships built after the Civil War the forecastle was more likely to be above decks, which was a considerable captains were forced to pay the crimps for crews. This practice was known as improvement. Most persons are familiar with the descriptions of forecastles in the payment of blood money and was so named because drugged or knocked- the romantic tales of sea life. Here is a description in 1874 by a surgeon of the down men shanghaied aboard ship were frequently put aboard in an insensible United States Marine Hospital Service: condition, and sometimes covered with blood. No prison, certainly none of modern days, so wretched but life within its Advance Money walls is preferable, on the score of physical comfort, to the quarters and the The crimps thus took all the wages earned by the seamen on the incoming life of the sailor on the vast majority of merchant vessels. No gaol dietary so voyage, and by means of the advance or allotment note, mortgaged most of his meagre, no penal servitude so exacting, no exertion of authority so unre- outbound wages. If the seaman protested his indebtedness, or objected to ship- strained and brutal, no such utter want of care and forethought for health and ping as the boarding master ordered him, his clothes were held by the boarding life of convict or felon, as are the rule, and not the exception, for the man master for debt. This was a very effective club held over his head, for without before the mast, would be tolerated, if comprehended, by the community. money or clothes the sailor could not get very far. The laws allowing advance or At best the old-time sailors lot was a hard one.