Elder Dempster - and its seawomen's history

One of the things that Liverpool shipping company Elder Dempster inadvertently did for women in the mid-twentieth century was that it gave them the chance to go to West-Africa and back, for free, as stewardesses.

Now the project Homeward Bound: A Liverpool-West Africa Heritage at Liverpool John Moores University has gathered the stories of 20 Elder Dempster seafarers, including their oral testimony. http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/elderdempster

The launch party on Friday (11 Nov) was a really great opportunity to not only meet the lively, joke-cracking elders of the company nicknamed Elder Shysters. We also enjoyed a West African band + story-telling presentation there, and heard the story of what the research process found.

Heritage Lottery-funded, this project was led by two key people Professor Nick White and Dr Ailbhe McDaid(pictured).

PROUD TO BE PART OF IT
I'm really pleased to have been involved in this project in several ways. I hope other shipping companies will follow suit while its veteran seafarers are still with us.

May Quinn, my great aunt, was one of the stewardesses (see picture of her against some of the scraps of fabric she worked with as a dressmaker after her retirement, in the 1950s). She sailed on the Apapa, which was where she met the steward she would marry, Bill Sullivan.

NOT ALOFT, BUT DUSTING THEIR WAY ROUND THE WORLD
It's because of May, really, that I came to be an historian of women's maritime pasts.

After her death I realised that stewardessing was the way adventurous working-class women managed to see the world for free. They dusted their way round it.

But no-one seemed to have written anything about these dynamic women, then. Someone should, I thought. Then I realised that person would have to be me. And so in the 1980s I started interviewing veteran stewardesses. And I went on, and wider...

You can read the stories of May, and of Julia Andrews (whose descendents I interviewed way back) via the link above.
To read about Liverpool JMU's version of the launch event see:
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/future-proofing-history#Find

But here today are pictures of the women, some of which will be eventually posted on Homeward Bound's website. Julia is pictured here with passengers in the late 1920s.

Her friend, another ED stewardess, name unknown, walks with a West African woven shopping basket.
Objects change countries. Seafarers were important transmitters of culture knowledge - of which souvenir objects are a material symbol.

The basket lid to the side of her photo is from my old and similar sewing basket. It may indicate the colours of her original basket: this material evidence that she had indeed ventured far away to the country that was called the White Man's Grave - and come back.

Elder Dempster - and its seawomen's history

One of the things that Liverpool shipping company Elder Dempster inadvertently did for women in the mid-twentieth century was that it gave them the chance to go to West-Africa and back, for free, as stewardesses.

Now the project Homeward Bound: A Liverpool-West Africa Heritage at Liverpool John Moores University has gathered the stories of 20 Elder Dempster seafarers, including their oral testimony.

The launch party on Friday (11 Nov) was a really great opportunity to not only meet the lively, joke-cracking elders of the company nicknamed Elder Shysters. We also enjoyed a West African band + story-telling presentation there, and heard the story of what the research process found.

Heritage Lottery-funded, this project was led by two key people Professor Nick White and Dr Ailbhe McDaid (pictured). (Sorry, I can't find a picture of Nick)
.

PROUD TO BE PART OF IT
I'm really pleased to have been involved in this project in several ways. I hope other shipping companies will follow suit while its veteran seafarers are still with us.


May Quinn, my great aunt, was one of the stewardesses (see picture of her against some of the scraps of fabric she worked with as a dressmaker after her retirement, in the 1950s). She sailed on the Apapa, which was where she met the steward she would marry, Bill Sullivan.

NOT ALOFT, BUT DUSTING THEIR WAY ROUND THE WORLD
It's because of May, really, that I came to be an historian of women's maritime pasts.

After her death I realised that stewardessing was the way adventurous working-class women managed to see the world for free. They dusted their way round it.

But no-one seemed to have written anything about these dynamic women, then. Someone should, I thought. Then I realised that person would have to be me. And so in the 1980s I started interviewing veteran stewardesses. And I went on, and wider...

You can read the stories of May, and of Julia Andrews (whose descendents I interviewed way back) via this link with Liverpool JMU.
https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/future-proofing-history#Find

But here today are pictures of the women, some of which will be eventually posted on Homeward Bound's website. Julia is pictured here with passengers in the late 1920s.

Her friend, another ED stewardess, name unknown, walks with a West African woven shopping basket.
Objects change countries. Seafarers were important transmitters of culture knowledge - of which souvenir objects are a material symbol.

The basket lid to the side of her photo is from my old and similar sewing basket. It may indicate the colours of her original basket: this material evidence that she had indeed ventured far away to the country that was called the White Man's Grave - and come back.

West African seafarers encounter British values 1960-80s.

Palm Oil and Small Chop by ex-seafarer John Goble, is a new autobiography that reveals much about the racialised British attitudes of seafarers sailing the West African coast in the late 20th century.

John Goble was a mate, chief officer, then a relieving master with Elder Dempster, (and later Palm Lines). His ports included Apapa, Takoradi, Dakar, Freetown, Port Gentil, Bathurst, and Pointe Noire. On the cusp of containerisation, he supervised cargoes from palm kernels to calabar beans, pigs’ snouts to missionaries’ generators.

I've just reviewed this funny, erudite, elegantly written book for the International Journal of Transport History. In it I write:

"This is a world where deck officers knew minutely when blind-eyes had to be turned. For example, Goble was pulled up by a smuggled Nigerian seafarer’s lady wearing a ship’s bath towel. ‘Oi, are you in charge ‘ere?… Well, there's no effin’ hot water again down aft’.

"Does he say ‘What are doing on board our ship?’ Not at all. He politely murmurs that he’ll get the engineer to see to it. Nor does he rise to her admonishing final shot: ‘… and dey were all on the 'effin repair list last trip an' all.’

"Ironically, it’s the thing that Goble writes about with most discomfort that will make it particularly important for future generations: race relations. Goble frequently acknowledges and apologises for the way white crew and officers – including himself - talked to and about Kru seamen (tellingly referred to as Krooboys) and disdained ‘nig-nog grub’."

So it is the horse's mouth - and can usefully be read along with Diane Frost’s insights into Kru seafarers' lives: Work and community among West African migrant workers since the nineteenth century, Liverpool University Press, 1999.



Details:Palm Oil and Small Chop is published by Whittles Publishing, Caithness, April 2011, paperback, ISBN978-1-84995 -011-4, 196pp incl 12pp of photos, no index. £16.99.