Belinda Bennett, first black woman cruisehip captain

Today a Southampton woman, Belinda Bennett, became the first black woman captain in the cruise industry. Captain of the Windstar, she joins the handful of pathbreakers who have become captains of cruise ships since 2007.
‘“Having been with Windstar for the past 11 years, I couldn’t be more honored to serve as Captain with such a respected and hard-working team,” said Bennett. “Earning this title has been a long and exciting professional journey.”’

Windstar wrote:
“We are thrilled to have appointed Belinda as Windstar’s first-ever female Captain and we understand may be the cruise industry’s first-ever black Captain,” said Hans Birkholz, Windstar Cruises’ chief executive officer.
“She has earned her spot at the helm and I’m excited to see her in action, guiding the crew and our guests on Wind Star through some of the world’s most incredible destinations for years to come.”
‘Hailing originally from St. Helena – a part of the British Overseas Territory, encompassing Ascension and Tristan da Cunha islands – Bennett naturally became immersed with life at sea, having started as a Deck Cadet at age 17 on her home island ship the RMS St. Helena.
‘Just four years later, she climbed the ranks as Third Officer and ultimately stayed on board for an additional five years, until departing in 2003 as Second Officer.
'Following a brief stretch as Chief Officer for the SS Delphine, a private charter yacht, and Isle of Man Steam Packet ferries, Bennett joined Windstar Cruises as Second Officer at the Port of Monaco in September 2005.
‘Bennett worked on a variety of Windstar Cruises ships over her 11-year career with the small ship luxury line, transitioning to chief officer and now captain.

KEY QUESTIONS
1. What did you want to be when you were little?
I wanted to be a marine biologist in my younger years. I guess I always had a passion for the sea!

2.What qualities must someone possess to become a good cruise ship captain?
You have to be a good communicator – able to both talk and listen. You also need to be visible to both guests and the crew.

3.What are your favorite ports-of-call and why?
I so love the Dalmatian coast. The Croatian coastline and ports are beautiful! And for anyone who has sailed with me, they know I have a particular affinity for Sorrento in Italy, where I have a personal traditional of buying Italian leather handbags. You’ll notice the word “handbags” is plural.
http://blog.windstarcruises.com/2016/03/diversity-sails-forward-introducing-captain-belinda-bennett-windstars-first-black-female-ships-master

BELINDA'S HISTORIC PREDECESSORS
An illustrated summary of the modern pioneering women captains can be found here:http://maritimeolympiad.com/women-at-sea.

But women captains on all sorts of ships do have an earlier history, from Betsy Miller in the 1860s. Tellingly, few were black or even mixed race until the last few years. (But that's as far as we know, from a western perspective. There will be other, African and Asian, stories.)
Want to know what it took to be a woman master in a man's world, in the past? Try my history book, From Cabin ‘Boys’ to Captains: 250 years of women at sea. www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/cabin-‘boys’-to-captains/9780752488783.

Women on sailing ships 1650-1850 / Black sailors

Through my Google Alerts system I've found an interesting web forum, with a subsection about women on sailing ships. Go to http://forum.sailingnavies.com, then go to 'Women at sea.' The site was mainly active 2003-2008, but it's still viable.

Some of the women discussed are cross-dressing sailors, some are wives of officers, two are mothers who gave birth at sea while their husbands were in Nelson's navy; Nelly Giles on HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of the Nile, 1798, and Louisa Phelan on HMS Swallow in June 1812.

They may have known the two women whom Thomas Maclise represented in his 1860s painting, The Death of Nelson. I was looking at it in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery last week.

I noticed that of the three 'nurses', the central one is a man. But he's looking very tender. I wondered if the artist gave some thought as to how prominent a woman should be - and decided against it.

The Walker website has an interesting article about how Maclise based his painting on real details of the Victory's complement in 1805. "The inclusion of two black people in the scene - a seaman in the centre of the painting and a cook to the left - was in part a matter of historical accuracy. The Victory's master book of 1805 refers to a small number of foreigners amongst crew members and mentioned that "some must have been Negroes � Two give Africa as their birthplace".

The black seaman plays a key role in the painting not just because he is in the centre, but because he points to Lord Nelson's assassin as well. The black seaman is not a symbol of "otherness" or difference of identity and culture; rather his presence serves to strengthen British identity.

Like other historical paintings, "The Death of Nelson" not only commemorates an important event, but also fulfils a didactic purpose: the representation of black people and women together with Lord Nelson suggests that Victorian society was a harmonious whole, despite its class divisions and inequalities.

In reality 19th century black sailors in British fleets were poorly treated. Although they usually worked in the lower ranks of the ship's company as cooks, deck hands or stewards, they were not slaves but free sailors. The hardship of living at sea meant that the life of a sailor was less attractive and for this reason black people were easily accepted.

It is believed that towards the end of the 19th century a quarter of all seamen in the merchant navy were black. Black people at sea were not isolated by their white shipmates, but mixed both in work and in leisure time. Black seamen from West Africa, the West Indies and the United States were a particularly common sight in Liverpool."
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=2&id=37

Asian seamen

Today I've decided to expand this blog to include race, as there is so little information available about black and Asian seafarers, and because I am so interested in how socially excluded groups get on in that exceptional space, the ship at sea.

I've just been scrolling through a Commonwealth War Grave Commission CD that lists Merchant Navy seafarers who died in WW2. There are hundreds, if not a few thousand, of 'Lascars'. It took me hours to get just through the section for those surnamed Abdul. Asian jobs included Tindall, Topas, Seacunny, Serang, Bhandary, Paniwallah, and Cassab.

If you search on-line bookstores like Amazon just using the search term 'Asian sailors' or 'Lascars' you may have found it hard to uncover any books on Asian seafarers on British ships. So I've just compiled an initial list (all other suggestions welcome), and posted a review of the most overlooked book: Sons of the Empire: Oral history from the Bangladshi seamen who serve on British ships during the 1939-45 War. Compiled and edited by Yousuf Choudury and published by the Sylheti Social History Group in Birmingham in 1995, it's now quite hard to find.

My review for Amazon said "This collection of interviews with 16 Bangladeshi seamen is so valuable, as very little information is available about the thousands of Asian men who worked on British ships. I've just been investigating the (unsung) numbers of them who died in WW2, and this book is great because it shows the human story behind the statistics. It's complete with photos of the men as they were in later life when settled in England. I particuarly liked seeing pictures of the white and Asian women they married, even though I'd have liked more text about such women."

Books on Black and Minority Ethnic Seamen include:

UK

Across Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers: Life stories of pioneer Sylhetti settlers in Britain, (no editor listed), Tower Hamlets Arts Project, London, 1987.

Yousuf Choudury (compiler and editor) Sons of the Empire: Oral history from the Bangladeshi seamen who serve on British ships during the 1939-45 War. and published by the Sylheti Social History Group in Birmingham in 1995.

Neil Evans, ‘Regulating the Reserve Army: Arabs, Blacks and the Local State in Cardiff, 1919-45’ in Race and Labour in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by Ken Lunn, Frank Cass, 1985, pp.68-115.

Michael H Fisher, Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600-1857, Permanent Black, 2005.

Laura Tabili, ‘We ask for British Justice’: Workers and Racial Justice in Late Imperial Britain, Cornell University Press, 1994.

Laura Tabili, ‘ “A Maritime Race”: Masculinity and the Racial Division of Labor in British Merchant Ships 1900-1939,’ in Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920, edited by Margaret S Creighton and Lisa Norling, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1996, pp 169-188

US
W Jeffrey Bolster, ‘ “Every Inch a Man”: Gender in the Lives of African American Seamen,’ in Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920, edited by Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1996, pp 189-203.

W Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, Harvard University Press, 1997.

Bernard C Nalty, The Long Passage to Korea: Black Sailors and the Integration of the U.S. Navy, Naval Historical Centre, 2003.

Martha S Putney, Black Sailors: Afro-American Merchant Seamen and Whalemen Prior to the Civil War (Contributions in Afro-American & African Studies), Greenwood Press, 1987

John Darrell Sherwood, Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet During the Vietnam War Era, New York University Press, 2007.

Adolph W Newton and Winston Eldridge, Better Than Good: A Black Sailor's War, 1943-1945, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. Naval Institute Press, 1999 (re WW2)