Conference Agenda

In March of 1915, the Sailors Union of the Pacific (SUP) finally secured passage of the La Follette Seamen’s Act. My paper examines how the act sought to “keep the sea for the white race” by forcing Asian sailors out of the global maritime trade. It argues that the act was an ambitious attempt by a U.S. labor union to mobilize the imperial power of the United States against the interests of international shipping capital. If successful, the act would globalize Asiatic exclusion by extending it to the water’s edge of the Asian mainland, “protecting” white sailors in and beyond the United States from cheaper labor competition from lower wage imperial and colonial labor markets. The SUP justified their various efforts to insulate the maritime labor market from foreign competition by a broader and deeper belief about the role of merchant sailors in the history of empire—a view at odds with U.S. maritime policy that since 1884 had emphasized access to cheap labor. The union leadership's various tactics were particular examples of their larger ambition of amalgamating merchant sailors with the national interest by reimagining them as agents of empire, rather than a cheap, commodified, and dependent maritime proletariat. How and why white American sailors rejected cross racial solidarity in favor of an alignment with U.S. imperial power and the racial hierarchy it was built upon is a central theme of the paper. This overlaps with several of the conference themes but especially how an embrace of racial hierarchy over solidarity provided short term gains at the expense of longer term prosperity and security. Moreover, the specific efforts to exclude Asian sailors on any vessel bound for the United States were based on the SUP leadership’s attempts to make the skills of sailing synonymous with whiteness. Finally, the paper also demonstrates how a U.S. based labor union tried to regulate and eliminate their labor competition through emerging U.S. imperial power.

This paper concentrates on the crews who worked for the Peninsula and Orient Line (P&O) during the 1950s and early 1970s. These P&O crews traveled the world's oceans and seas including the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Their workplace practices were strictly regulated by maritime law which stipulated they were obliged by law to obey orders while at sea. These orders included guidelines on workplace attendance, whether waiting on tables, working in the galleys, in the engine rooms, cleaning passenger cabins, and working on the decks. Additionally, fines were imposed for crew members being insolent or abusive to the officer class, being drunk on duty, and, most importantly, for fraternizing with passengers. I would frame the paper with these regulations, and how they impacted behavior on board ship. While many passengers were elite members enjoying the round trip, many were migrants. Many of the migratory passengers were British, Italian, and Greek citizens emigrating to Australia. On the way back to England, these same ships once again carried elite passengers but also Indian and Arab students heading to English universities. In terms of gender, both men and women labored on these ocean liners. There was strict demarcation of work roles. As well as gender, race or national origin played a key role in the relations between crew members. British Whites dominated the officer class, and higher status job categories, such as engineers, head waiters, and deck leading hands. In the Engine rooms, Pakistani seafarers dominated, as did Indian Hindu deck workers. Because of their Christian religion, and their ability to handle meat, Indian Goans were extensively used in the galleys and as waiters/general stewards. On the Pacific voyages, Chinese crew members were also engaged in deck, galley, and engine rooms. How these multiple nationalities worked together would be the central theme of the paper. The paper would thus encapsulate many of the themes of the conference including regulation of work and discipline. In tandem with this regulatory framework, resistance by multinational and multiracial crews to shipboard discipline is also part of the daily life on board ship. Finally, the intersections of gender and racial hierarchies in this sailing world, provide a unique insight into how successful, or not, these seafarers were in creating alliances that could at least provide some form of control over working and social lives.