Nation on Board

Becoming Nigerian at Sea

Lynn Schler

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780821422175
• eBook ISBN: 9780821445594
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed menial tasks for low wages and endured discrimination as cheap labor, while countering hardships by nurturing social connections across the black diaspora. Poor employment conditions stirred these seamen to identify with the nationalist sentiment burgeoning in postwar Nigeria, while their travels broadened and invigorated their cultural identities.

Working for the Nigerian National Shipping Line, they encountered new forms of injustice and exploitation. When mismanagement, a lack of technical expertise, and pillaging by elites led to the NNSL's collapse in the early 1990s, seamen found themselves without prospects. Their disillusionment became a broader critique of corruption in postcolonial Nigeria.

In Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea, Lynn Schler traces the fate of these seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence. In so doing, she renews the case for labor history as a lens for understanding decolonization, and brings a vital transnational perspective to her subject. By placing the working-class experience at the fore, she complicates the dominant view of the decolonization process in Nigeria and elsewhere.

1

The Working Lives of Nigerian Seamen in the Colonial Era

THE ORIGINS OF NIGERIAN SEAFARING can be linked to a deeper history of African seafaring in the Atlantic World. The history of economic and political relations between Africa and the Western world was constructed largely by the traffic of ships, passengers, crews, and cargoes crossing the ocean. From the very beginning of international shipping between Africa, Europe, and the New World, Africans were employed to supplement crews on vessels arriving from Europe. This was usually necessary due to the high mortality rate among European seamen, who contracted malaria and yellow fever in large numbers. African recruits, readily available in ports throughout West Africa, provided labor as deckhands, cargo handlers, or translators at a much lower cost than seamen signed on in Europe. Thus, from the very start of seagoing trade between Africa and the West, European shipping companies became dependent upon African labor. African crews were a cheap alternative to European ratings, and shipping companies made continual efforts to maintain this source of labor at the lowest possible cost. For their part, African seamen employed in the transatlantic trade attempted to exploit the economic, social, and cultural opportunities that opened up to them through work on European vessels. This dynamic of mutual dependency, coupled with an attempt of all those involved to maximize opportunities, characterized the history of African seafaring in the Atlantic World from the slave trade throughout the colonial era and the era of decolonization. The entry of Nigerians into the history of African seafaring came only in World War II, but largely followed dynamics and patterns established centuries before.

Historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have argued that seafaring was empowering for black men and enabled them to overcome prejudices and social hierarchies structuring relations between Europeans and Africans in the era of the slave trade. Out on the open sea, ships brought multiracial crews together in tight quarters, and the collective work on board ships fostered a rare solidarity among black and white sailors that was not possible back in port. According to Jeffrey Bolster, race never fully disappeared on ships, but black seamen enjoyed membership in a deck-based camaraderie and egalitarianism that temporarily mitigated against racial divisions.¹ Seafaring was thus empowering for Africans, fostering a potent masculine identity. Walter Hawthorne has argued that this empowerment was evidenced on slave ships, where African seamen “were free to commit depraved acts on shackled women and men.”² The mobility and displacement that characterized the working lives of African seamen engendered the emergence of creolized and hybrid identities. In this world of the multiethnic “Atlantic proletariat” described by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker,³ black seamen exploited new solidarities and ultimately challenged relations of power throughout the Atlantic World.

Whether or not this positive assessment of black seamen’s early history is overly optimistic, there was a clear deterioration of their status on board colonial merchant vessels with the conversion to steamships from the 1870s onward. The technological innovations behind the transition from sailing to steam engines were accompanied by the replacement of traditional seamen’s work with the work of unskilled labor. Colonial subjects were now hired to fill lower-status positions on board, and a new industrial division of labor emerged. Following the conversion to steam engines, up to 50 percent of African crewmen were engaged in jobs not traditionally found on sailing ships: stoking the engine, housekeeping, and catering. Many seamen deprecated these new shipboard tasks as less than proper seafaring.⁴

The segregation of African crews into jobs that did not require seafaring skills or training largely erased the “rough equality”⁵ described on sailing ships. From the beginning of the twentieth century, labor hierarchies on board steamships were entrenched in colonial racial ideologies. It was argued that “coloured” men from the tropics were better suited for jobs such as firemen in the engine room, as they were naturally more capable than whites to handle the heat. “Coloured” seamen engaged in ports throughout the British Empire were paid considerably lower rates than white seamen, receiving one-third to one-fifth of a British seaman’s wage, and took on jobs perceived as menial, unskilled, and feminine.⁶ From the beginning of the twentieth century, the unraveling of British maritime dominance as a result of growing international competition only intensified the desire to cut costs by underpaying colonial seamen.⁷

Nigerian seamen, whose recruitment began during World War II, thus entered a world of shipping that had largely erased any kind of benefits enjoyed by black seamen in the Age of Sail. The working lives of Nigerian seamen in the late colonial era bore the political and ideological imprints of colonialism. Nigerian crews were employed on ships where race largely determined the division of labor and shipboard hierarchies. Difficult working conditions and discrimination ultimately led them to organize their own union, but this body had little success as an effective advocate for improving working conditions. Thus, Nigerian seamen shared a solidarity with colonial seamen recruited throughout the British Empire, united by a political and historical relationship of colonial subordination.⁸ This chapter will outline the beginnings of Nigerian seafaring on British vessels from the end of World War II. We will review the historical circumstances that led to widespread hiring in Lagos, the jobs that seamen performed and the working conditions on board colonial ships, problems of prejudice and discrimination that characterized the working lives of these seamen in the late colonial era, and the early efforts at organizing a Nigerian seamen’s union.

RECRUITING NIGERIANS: HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND

European vessels arriving in West Africa in the era of the slave trade were met by fleets of canoes manned by African mariners occupying the coastal regions. Historical records recount the respect and surprise of European seamen at the skillful handling of canoes that enabled Africans to navigate waterways that were impassable by European deep-sea ships.⁹ Certain groups stood out for their competence as mariners and began supplying European crews additional deckhands, navigators, and interpreters. In particular, the Kru, inhabitants of the Liberian coast, impressed the Europeans as expert boatmen, and by the eighteenth century became the main source of local recruits on European ships. Although originating from a heterogeneous collection of fisherman clans on the coast of Liberia, the seamen recruited from this region for work on foreign vessels were commonly identified by European merchants as “Kru.” This labeling took on official status by the Liberian government’s recognition of the Kru ethnic group in the nineteenth century.¹⁰ The emergence of the Kru social construct thus represents the earliest coalescing of African identities and social groupings around maritime employment. The Kru were employed on steamships as deckhands and stevedores moving cargo from ship to shore, and later as firemen and stokers on deep-sea steamships.¹¹ European shipping companies eventually became reliant on these African seamen, and most ships from Europe would stop in Freetown to pick up Kru coal handlers, deckhands, and firemen before continuing down the coast.¹²

The Kru in turn exploited this dependence. They controlled the supply of seamen through a system of labor recruitment based on a headman and his apprentices. Headmen acted as middlemen between seamen and their employers, recruiting laborers from the interior and negotiating terms of employment. Headmen decided who went to sea and for how long, took care of lodging and food, and represented their apprentices in any grievances. The system opened the door to many abuses, and the colonial administration received complaints that crewmen were forced to pay large bribes to headmen in order to get employment on ships. In some cases, in the initial period of employment, the headmen earned the wages of the young men in training and thus amassed considerable wealth and influence for themselves. Headmen took pains to develop personal relations with European captains, who would in turn give them preferential treatment in the process of recruitment. Shipping companies also paid headmen large sums for providing labor. The system was well entrenched by the beginning of the twentieth century, enabling the Kru to establish a near monopoly on the supply of seafaring labor until the Second World War. It was not only the headmen who benefited, and years of specialization and efficient organizing enabled the headmen to continually negotiate for improved terms of employment for all the African crew engaged in Freetown. This earned the Kru a position of relative prosperity, symbolized by the fact that Kru women were never allowed to work outside the home in petty trading or market work, as most other Freetown women did.¹³

Until the period following World War II, European shipping companies overwhelmingly favored this system of labor recruitment based in Freetown because it passed the responsibility for monitoring the labor supply, crew behavior, and work supervision onto the Kru headmen and away from them as employers. The preference for this arrangement substantiates Fred Cooper’s claim that European economic interests prior to World War II preferred to cast African labor in a tribal mold, and argued that even workers migrating to the city should remain subordinated to Native authorities. In proposing that labor remain linked to “a traditional African way of life,” employers and the colonial administration could avoid taking responsibility for masses of “detribalized” Africans.¹⁴ Likewise, rather than acknowledging the proletarianization of the Kru as laborers in a modern, industrialized economy, and thereby clearing the way for potential demands for workers’ rights and benefits, the system of headmen and apprentices enabled shipping companies to abdicate their responsibility for the newly born African working class. Within this model of preserving a premodern workforce, there was no room for trade unions, and British shipping companies, led by the Liverpool-based giant Elder Dempster, refused employment to union members up until World War II.¹⁵

From the end of the nineteenth century, the Elder Dempster company controlled the lion’s share of cargo, mail, and passenger shipping between the United Kingdom and the West African coast.¹⁶ Elder Dempster was founded by Alfred Jones, a one-time clerk who slowly rose to managerial positions in the African Steamship Company in Liverpool. Over the course of the years 1884–1891, Jones gradually orchestrated the merger of six smaller shipping companies to form what would ultimately be known as the Elder Dempster Lines.¹⁷ The shipping company was one of the largest in UK history and, in addition to operating hundreds of deep-sea vessels, also provided small-vessel services to transport cargo and passengers from inland, riverside bases to and between coastal ports. By the time of his death in 1909, Alfred Jones had led Elder Dempster in the establishment of an extensive and integrated transport and storage infrastructure throughout West Africa.¹⁸ The company held a monopoly for carrying mail and coal between the UK and West Africa, and, in addition to shipping, held large interests in banking, agriculture, and the trade in oil, coal, and cement.¹⁹ By 1925, Elder Dempster had a share of 85 percent of the West African Shipping Conference, which controlled all trade to and from West Africa.

Until the outbreak of World War II, Elder Dempster routinely recruited the Kru of Freetown as supplemental labor for their ships. But the war increased demands on the company, as their headquarters in the port cities of West Africa oversaw ship repairs, in addition to handling the increase in cargo activity associated with the war.²⁰ Janet Ewald has argued that in times of hardship, European shipping companies historically sought out fresh sources of “coloured” seamen to recruit throughout the maritime world, and tapped them to offset rising costs of labor.²¹ The acute need for seamen pushed Elder Dempster to begin hiring in Nigeria, where the company could enjoy several advantages. In Lagos, European shipping companies readily found ratings at much cheaper rates than in Freetown. The Nigerians were initially hired directly by representatives of the shipping companies, and came from a wide range of ethnic groups including Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, and Urhobo. The multiethnic Nigerians lacked the deep-rooted headman system for organizing seamen that the Kru had developed over decades. During the war, the shipping companies came to see this as an advantage. There were growing concerns that the Kru recruitment system had become increasingly corrupt with the additional demand for seamen. According to Diane Frost, the Trades Union Congress Colonial Advisory Committee received a complaint from Sierra Leone during the war concerning the increasing abuses and improprieties in the system of Kru recruitment. It was claimed that the practice of bribery intensified as a result of increasing demands for labor. Thus, Frost wrote, “the Wages Board was so disturbed by the amount of bribery and corruption characteristic of headmen recruitment that it was suggested the Labour Department should take over responsibility for it.”²² Following the war, it was decided that recruitment in the ports of West Africa would be under the control of the Port Labour Board rather than headmen. Bribes were no longer allowed, and shipping companies filled vacancies on board ships through official employment exchanges.

Elder Dempster’s move to hire in Lagos was thus designed to circumvent the highly organized and increasingly corrupt Kru establishment in Freetown. Shipping companies seized upon the opportunity to cut costs by hiring in Lagos, and Elder Dempster established a four-tiered pay scale during World War II: at the bottom were Nigerians recruited in Nigeria, then Africans recruited in Freetown, then Africans employed from Liverpool, and finally European seamen who were paid the National Maritime Board rates.²³ The discrimination Nigerians faced did not go unnoticed by seamen, as one recalled, “In the shipping world, we were the most poorly paid seamen.”²⁴ Sierra Leone officials complained to the Colonial Office that Elder Dempster’s new methods of recruiting “cheap labour” in Lagos were “deplorable,” and left many skilled seamen in Freetown without jobs.²⁵ Officials in Lagos, on the other hand, were highly supportive of the move. The 1942 governor of Nigeria, Sir Alan Burns, did not see any reason to protest the cheap wages, and instead expressed great enthusiasm for Elder Dempster’s new hiring policy. He wrote, “The development which has taken place is natural and inevitable and provides opportunities of employment for the more adventurous spirits in Nigerian which cannot well...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Working Lives of Nigerian Seamen in the Colonial Era
• 2. Seamen and the Cosmopolitan Imaginary
• 3. From Citizens of the World to Citizens of Nigeria
• 4. The Birth of the Nigerian National Shipping Line
• 5. Nigerianizing the Sea: Cultures of Work on NNSL Ships
• 6. Seamen in the Shadow of the NNSL Decline and Demise
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index