Seamen's Organizations and Social Protest in Europe,c.1300–1825

Abstract

The friend of Havelock Wilson, the founder of the National Union of Seamen, who once told him that true unity among seamen would never be achieved because seamen were like “a rope of sand”, washed away with every tide, would no longer be considered a sage. It was not only Wilson who, during his career as trade unionist, proved beyond any doubt that the “rope of sand” could indeed hold together. The seamen, too, had shown long before the rise of the new unions at the end of the nineteenth century that they possessed more cohesive power than Havelock's friend was prepared to credit them with – at least, if British employers are to be believed. One of the first occasions on which British employers appealed to the Combination Act of 1799 was during a labour dispute in December 1799, when coal merchants (through the intermediary of the Mayor of London) urged the Home Secretary to take action against an alleged combination of seamen in Shields. The Coal Trade Committee of 1800 blamed combinations of seamen for the high wages, which had reached an unprecedented level.

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