The Working Class at Sea

Well, I wasn’t in the Royal Navy, but if their conditions were as bad as for Merchant Navy crew, it must have been rough.

On my first trip (1972) I must have been lucky in assuming that all the ship’s company including the skipper were working class.

After all, only the shipowners – prosperous as far as I could tell in pin-stripe suits with homes in Essex or the Wirral – did nothing.

Such naïveté came before understanding realities such as the division of labour, the role of power and class differences, etc. 

Remember that old joke?

What’s the difference between the middle class and the working class?

The former take a shower before work whilst the latter take a shower after work – or so it goes. 

But as we all know everyone showers at all times of the day.

Anyway, my first trip was aboard a tanker with little to shake me from my belief of an all working-class ship.

The skipper no doubt had plenty of paperwork and supervision to attend to, whilst the navigating officers plotted the course and maintained safety equipment. The AB’s were always busy on cargo watch or else chipping and painting, whilst the engineers, motormen, cooks and stewards had their manual work too.

Except for just one engineer, no-one seemed from a privileged public-school background although this one engineer, due to speaking with a slightly plummy voice, was soon known as ‘the toff.’

Despite this moniker though, he was indeed a nice guy – just a little quiet.

Some people’s perceptions of others can be unfair, I thought.

So after seven months on the tanker, I later joined companies such as Union Castle, P&O and RFA, realising that although all the ship’s company did work for a living, there was a strong apparatus of social distancing and privilege.

And the class system was plain to see in the officers’ superior living quarters. Okay, I understood hierarchy, privilege and power – parallels exist in boardrooms vs the factory floor – but I couldn’t understand the wide inequalities in living standards on this P&O vessel: of air-conditioned cabins for officers only; of a dining saloon where officers had steward service, and a well-stocked officers’ bar whilst crew had no bar at all and were allowed only four cans of beer per day.

This latter particularly rankled when I thought of several older crew members – all WW2 veterans (this was 1972, don’t forget) – denied a fifth beer whilst a first-trip officer cadet could theoretically drink his fill.

No wonder anyone would call this one advantage ‘unearned, exclusive and socially conferred.’

And as you can imagine, there was much simmering resentment from crew that P&O especially was one of the worst in the Merchant Navy for social apartheid. 

The crew reminded me that a certain second mate was ex-public school whilst a previous double-barrelled named chief officer was nicknamed Lord Snooty on account of his high-handed manner.

On this and I although I didn’t meet the bloke, I thought the description a bit misplaced because as I remembered of the Beano comic, Lord Snooty was a bit of an aristocratic outlaw – a likeable toff – who preferred playing with the working-class kids.

Whether true or not, Lord Snooty’s real comic persona is applied to anyone who the crew thinks have big ideas about themselves. Amazing stuff from a kid’s comic!

Let’s however excuse the lads their oversight and returning to the haughty second mate, he was overheard telling the cadet beyond the chart room curtain that he considered (quote) ‘Liverpool such an awful place.’ And of course, this uncalled for remark soon travelled round the ship boosting his unpopularity further!

But at this point the experience of sailing with ex-public schoolboys was a mixed bag.

Some were self-entitled upper-class twits, but many, many more were great blokes: sociable, friendly and helpful and it wasn’t until I related this observation ashore that the guy in question maintained that at public school pupils were guided to socialise and converse at all societal levels.

‘To not do so’ he added, ‘would betray the ideals of egalitarianism taught us.’

Hmmm! – that’s interesting, I thought.

Anyway, back at sea and by the seventies, newer vessels were built with single cabins and en-suite showers for all; by this time I understood that officers and petty officers who kidded themselves they weren’t working-class were instead victims of the shipowners’ old trick of ‘divide and rule’ , ie, give one group of workers something better than the other.

The result being that they potentially fight each other, not the employer.

Still, in earlier times differences were more marked and in Morris Beckman’s excellent WW2 autobiography Flying the Red Duster the author writes of the disciplinarian iron-fisted captain. But his real venom was directed at a swindling chief steward who, in his pursuit of cutting feeding costs  produced ‘inedible food at the officers’ saloon table’. (1)

However he notes even worse ‘ghastly slop’ was given to the foc’s’le crew. Why inferior food was given there he didn’t say.

I found that the Union Castle Line’s class distinction was as bad as P&O.

There was even social distancing between mates and engineers, the latter often looked down upon because of their manual jobs.

On the Pendennis Castle a shining example was on the South African coast when the entire engine crew was instructed to ‘wash our hands thoroughly after leaving the engine room.’

The reason being was that several Lord Snooty’s, using the deck handrails and resplendent in their tropical uniforms, were whingeing about getting black smudge marks on the white fabric. What a shame!

But it couldn’t have been worse than than the war years.

As Professor Tony Lane reports in The Merchant Seaman’s War: Tommy Power, a Liverpool AB on a Union Castle troopship was accused of a trivial offence of ‘skylarking’ in the mess room one night.

Whatever vague term skylarking was the master convened a makeshift court with proceedings to which Power said:

‘There was this little bastard giving us a lecture. You’d think we were at Liverpool Crown Court the way they were reading all sorts of charges out.’

(2)

We don’t know the type of punishment he received those years ago – today however, such arbitrary ‘justice’ would be illegal.

However, as the following pics denote class distinction was underlined by this contrast in standards of accommodation:

In the 1970’s there were similar class distinctions of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships. Indeed, even at time of writing, RFA officers work a 3 month on/off rota whilst ratings work 3 months on/2 off rota.

And as one insider and critic of the RFA’s class distinction confided one particular trip:

‘Some young entrants to the RFA colleges are rejects from an armed forces application – their high credentials from public schools aren’t matched by their academic work there.

So the RFA takes them instead.’

So, hurray! – that’s alright then – the country’s safe, I thought, but I didn’t sign on any more RFA ships. The first one – RFA Black Rover, a fleet tanker – was excellent due to a very progressive skipper who wanted to change the whole pro-establishment ethos. He made a point of addressing each crew member by first name; encouraged inter-departmental darts crib, and domino tournaments; secured extra welfare funding for gym equipment movies, etc and in general fostered a very happy ship.

But the second RFA reverted to type – that is to say, a quasi-military organisation in which personnel were strictly distanced according to rank. This one embraced all the sea-going establishment stuff which the Royal Navy-wannabes enjoyed.

It’s time to go, I concluded.

The notion that the shipboard hierarchical structure was there because it was dangerous work with little room for trial and error had limited validity in explaining why living standards  varied.

But as the years rolled on I became more philosophical about shipboard class distinctions because I knew shipowners promoted such distinction to reduce dissent over pay and conditions.

The Lord Snooty-types hardly went away, but I was equally aware of another phenomenon – that of some guys sympathetic to a ‘working-class’ mentality known as reverse snobbery.

It wasn’t hard to figure out: distance yourself from someone who has worked hard for their professional certificate because it’s ‘not for the likes of us.’

To me this was just as bad indeed.  Not for the likes of us?  Why not?

Why live a life of self-imposed limitations?

For in today’s Merchant Navy there is every opportunity to enable ratings to gain their certificate and I have sailed with sufficient captains and chief engineers who were ex-deck boys and motormen respectively.

Most turned out to be good officers too – they would be after knowing all the dodges!

But from whatever angle to class distinction, as more minority groups especially women and overseas entrants go to sea (and long may this continue), class distinction will continue to weaken.

With the result that life at sea is becoming much more tolerable with little difference in quality of accommodation but a huge improvement in feeding standards.

But after fifty years there are still lads and girls maintaining engines, cleaning, chipping and painting, preparing food, steering a course, plus the hundreds of other jobs aboard ship.

So despite whatever sociologists might argue about social stratification, I still maintain we’re all still working class out on that blue ocean.

REFERENCES

1) Beckmann, M ( 2011) Flying The Red Duster, p.68, Spellmount.

2) Lane, T. Prof, ( 2000) The Merchant Seaman’s War, p.170, Manchester University Press.