Note 562 — Chapter VII

Short-lived and turbulent combinations among seamen have existed at various periods for the past hundred years, notably between 1810 and 1825, on the north-east coast, where many sailors’ benefit clubs were also established. In 1851, again, a widespread national organisation of seamen is said to have existed, having twenty-five branches between Peterhead and London, and numbering 30,000 members. This appears to have been a loose federation of practically autonomous port Unions, which for some years kept up a vigorous agitation against obnoxious clauses in the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1851-54, and fought the sailors’ grievances in the law courts. In 1879 the existing North of England Sailors and Sea-going Firemen’s Friendly Association was established, but failed to maintain itself outside Sunderland. In 1887 its most vigorous member, J. Havelock Wilson, convinced that nothing but a national organisation would be effective, started the National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union, which his able and pertinacious “lobbying” made, for some years, an effective Parliamentary force.