Nation on Board. Lynn Schler
under which the disobedience occurred.62
In the colonial era, crews were generally segregated, with blacks and whites occupying separate quarters. They often ate in separate areas, and African seamen complained that they were served poor-quality food compared to Europeans. This segregation was the result of a ship hierarchy based on the intersections of race and class biases. Thus, ship hierarchies drew clear distinctions between officers and the rank and file, and in most vessels, these distinctions also coincided with racial difference. Opportunity for advancement in the hierarchy was reserved for Europeans only, as representatives of seamen complained in 1959, “No African seamen . . . irrespective of their number of years are in responsible posts. We always serve in a subordinate role. The African seamen who do the same type of work as white crews cannot share equal advantages with them in the sphere of working conditions, after many years of contribution to the progress of the Companies.”63 White officers ate better food, lived in superior accommodations, and enjoyed unlimited rations of cigarettes and beer. The officers socialized in their own bar, which was better furnished than that of regular seamen. While hierarchies such as these were not explicitly racist, African seamen were keenly aware of the connections between race, class, and status on colonial ships. Seamen’s perceptions of discrimination touch upon these intersections; as one explained: “If you talk about maltreatment from the European officers, it was general. They prevented us from their quarters.”64
In ports of call, the situation was not better, and seamen’s missions were segregated by race. In times of illness and hospitalization, African seamen complained that shipping companies did not give the same treatment to blacks as to whites, as can be seen in the following complaint filed by seamen in 1958: “When an African seaman is stranded, due to no fault of their own, proper care is not taken of them. When Mr. J. Woin, deckboy in a cargo boat, was sick on December 3, 1958, he was discharged after seven days in Victoria hospital. The shipping master at Victoria gave him 3 newspapers to sleep on in the streets. This is a sample of the sort of action which makes cooperation sometimes absurd. We are not sure that the shipping master would serve 3 newspapers to any white crew for supper or sleeping pillows.”65
Nigerian seamen suffered racist attacks by white crews, but the racialized hierarchies on board ships meant that captains and officers would often side with European crews in times of conflict. The officers themselves were also accused of making racist remarks toward African crews. As seamen’s representatives complained in 1958, “We know of instances where officers have told African crews quite openly that they hate not only them but Africans on the whole.”66 European officers were known to abuse their power in requiring Africans to work overtime for them personally. For these types of jobs, the payment was usually in kind, but sometimes Africans were not paid at all. This could be left to the officer’s discretion, as one captain explained: “The chief steward may wish to have a storeroom cleared out, or have the inside of the storeroom alleyway painted. He would be paid in goods—in rice and biscuit. Likewise, the chief or second steward would have their laundry done for free or rather would pay the head washman in rice or biscuit.”67 The practice of asking African crews to do personal work for white officers was a source of great contention, as one seaman recalled: “It was a long story. That is why I said there was maltreatment by the white officers. The chief steward used to bring his car to the dock and he asked one of the black stewards to wash his car. We all resisted and refused to obey because the car in question was not the company’s car, but a personal one. If you want to wash your car, take it to the car wash and pay them. The steward wanted to wash his during the working hours and at free of charge too. We said, we weren’t doing that again.”68
African seamen were not always so empowered to resist the discriminatory practices of officers. This was painfully evident on the MV Egori, when, in 1958, the Nigerian crew complained bitterly of the racist attitudes of Captain Everall. After many reports of abuse, seamen in Lagos refused to sign articles with him, and a representative of the seamen went on board to investigate the matter. In a report to Elder Dempster, it was claimed that the entire crew complained of Everall’s “hatred and wickedness towards members of the African crew.” The crew was particularly angered by the captain’s demand that they work long hours of overtime, with no breaks, on the weekends. According to the report, the captain met with the seamen’s representative, and assured him that the seamen would cease to work from Saturdays at 1300 until Monday morning. The seamen were told of the promise and signed articles on the ship. But once at sea, the captain ordered them to work for the whole weekend. The seamen asked the captain about his promise, and, according to the report, “he turned round to ask them whether they have known of any Englishman who has kept his promise to a black man? They informed him that the man he was talking about happened to be their President. The captain then asked, he is a black man. Is he not?” They offered the captain to work all day Saturday to finish the tasks at hand so that they might have Sunday off. The captain agreed and they worked as hard as they could, finishing all the work by 1700. Yet, on Sunday, the captain called them up to start work again. The African seamen reported, “This man then said that Africans have been serving Englishmen for centuries and that he wants to inform them that the cities of Liverpool, Manchester and London were not only built by African slaves but by the profit made by selling them to the American planters. He continued to say that he would use them as he pleased and they were already committed by signing the Article.” The seamen refused to work, and the captain called in the police from Takoradi, Ghana, when they were in port. The men were arrested in Ghana, fined, and banned for over six months. At their trial, the local magistrate asked the captain whether or not the African crews were being paid for their overtime, and whether or not European crews were paid for overtime. The captain replied that only the Europeans were paid for overtime, and that this was the policy of ED Lines and he could not change it.69
The incident demonstrates the vulnerability of rank-and-file seamen to the abuses of power by European officers. Regular crew were also victims of abuses committed by the very few African seamen who rose to positions of power on board such as head stewards. Owning their positions of privilege to their proximity to the European officers, these headmen could not always be counted on to represent the needs of the rank-and-file seamen. Thus, on the MV Accra in 1959, seamen complained to their head steward, Joseph Akintayo, that there was not enough food being fed to the African crew. Akintayo did not pass this information on to the chief steward, and following a lack of action, the crew went directly to complain to the chief steward themselves. This breaking of rank infuriated Akintayo, and they reported, “He jumped from the cabin and abused all of us and came back after five minutes with porthole keys and broke the door of the cabin for we locked the door because he made a lot of noise after he had gone out. He used porthole keys, axes, and knives to chase us.” The problem was resolved only when the captain intervened. He reported to the shipping company that there was indeed not enough food for the African crews, and he arranged for more supplies.70
UNION ORGANIZING
Nigerian seamen did not remain passive in the face of what they perceived as unjust treatment. Colonial shipping companies had imagined that the Nigerians would be more easily exploited than the Kru because they were less organized than their Sierra Leonean counterparts, and they lacked the same experience in labor contract negotiating. What the colonial employers did not anticipate was the quick turnaround among the Lagos-based recruits from easily exploited and inexperienced manpower to agents of industrial discord and protest. Sir Alan Burns reported that two unions for seamen and shipping workers were already registered in Nigeria in 1942.71 In the early years, the seamen’s union was hardly a broad-based organization, with membership dropping to an all-time low of six in 1946. But the Nigerian Union of Seamen underwent reorganization in 1947. Following this spirit of revival was a swift climb in dues-paying membership, reaching 2,250 by 1953. The union’s declared objectives remained the same from the earliest years: to protect the interests of its members, regulate work hours and wages, ensure adequate accommodation for all seamen on vessels and ashore, to promote the general welfare of seamen, and to regulate relations between employers and employees.72
At first Elder Dempster attempted to avoid any recognition or contact with the organization. But suddenly, in 1948, in what appeared to be a stark turnaround, Elder Dempster conceded recognition