The gloryhole queens' heroes: US maritime union activism 1930-1955

LGBT+ seafarers in UK really have no maritime union heroes. I've looked hard. 

By contrast, in the US the National Union of Cooks and Stewards (known as the  MCS for short) had a number of out activists who were 'queens.' The term was less rude than 'queer'.

The main two heroes, who remain legends, were Frank McCormick (1891-1980) (right) and 'Mickey' Blair (1917-1997). Mickey and Frank were life partners too. And they both loved dressing up and performing as women when informal theatrical opportunities were on offer.

Frank was an official and on the MCS executive. Mickey (Stephen) was a rank-and-file activist. Both were stewards, who lived in ship's gloryholes (cramped dormitories), worked 90-hour weeks, and believed in justice. 

Both had been dismised for 'homosexuality'. In Frank's case the US Navy dumped him in the 1920s. 

Among the ships Frank and Mickey worked on were Matson Line passenger vessels from California. such as the Lurline (pictured). Matson ships were known to be sites of camp subculture. 

Matson, like some UK companies, liked having gay stewards because of their perceived “feminine touch". Also companies didn't want to employ black stewards. As heterosexual white stewards wouldn't work for the low pay on offer, so willing white GBT men provided employers with a solution.

UK similarities 

• The nearest UK equivalent to Frank and Mickey is an unnamed member of NUMAST. In July 1994 this person tried to start the support group, Shore Leave. They appealed via the union's journal. Nothing seems to have got off the ground.
• The UK's main ex-seafaring activist was Mick Belsten (pictured far right, below) (1934-90). A former P&O steward, Mick became a Gay Liberation Front media worker after he'd left the sea. GLF was influenced by some of its founders' visits to the US. If Mick did ever try to encourage his union to be more progressive his efforts don't appear in any National Union of Seaman records. Mick Belsten NUS GLF

Why no progressive LGBT+ heroes?

That lack of inspiring figures seems counter-intuitive when some ships - like theatres - were the most camp workplaces in the world, c1950-1985. Floating "queer heavens" were key sites of proud informal solidarity and education.

But in those times trade unions were not so supportive of DEI as they are today. Men who were tough resisters of homophobic oppression at sea might well have recognised that shore-based formal trade union activity wouldn't have been effectve or as satisfying as workplace change-making.    

Attacks on activists in US

In the US the MCS was totally different to the usual pattern. The union had thrived in the 1930s and in WW2, precisely because it was  indeed inclusive. Membership jumped threefold to 15,000 from Frank's starting time. 

Then a post-war and Cold War backlash began. The rationale was that 'fruits' were a threat to national security. Race was not the issue; 'moral decay' and 'Communism' was.

As a result, the new Port Security Act said the Coast Guard must officially screen seafarers joining ships: one by one, every trip.

In Los Angeles on Monday November 6th 1950, Mickey, Frank and some comrades were hit by the anti-gay hysteria besetting the nation. They walked up the gangway of the Matson Liner Lurline (nicknamed the Queer-line), ready to work their way to Hawaii.

But in all eighteen cooks and stewards were turned back including Mickey, although oddly not Frank. That might have been 20% of the catering workers aboard. 

The ensuing fight-back focused on 'The Lurline Eighteen' case became a cause celebre. Scotty Ballard, a gay black steward, (pictured) led the multiracial Seamen's Defence Committee, which worked in conjunction with the longshoremen and the MCS. 

Scotty and his gay white friend Ted (Riff-Raff) Rolfs, created leaflets, sent letters, and picketed the Coast Guard offices. 

But by January 1951 almost every leff-wing steward from US West Coast ships had been removed. Three quarters of them were African American. An unknown number of the screened-off people were gay. All were progressives.

It was the start of the end for the MCS. Like other left-wing US unions, it was defeated, not least by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. 

UK: different focus

In the UK the progressive activism was against right-wing rectionary policies, rather than against homophobia, which was not mentioned. Race continued to be a thorny matter, during and after WWII. 

Preparing for the 1967 Sexual Offences Act meant that the NUS had to speak about homosexuality. It was not progressive.  

By then a new breed of gay activist was emerging: not apologist or apolitical, but confrontational, libertarian, and aware of gender politics. Mick Belsten in London was challenging homophobia but not with maritime workplaces in mind. 

Seafaring had taught him a transferrable skill: how to organise and enjoy solidarity. He wasn't involved in shipping now in any way but because he had travelled so much he was able to enjoy thinking as an internationalist.

In the wider UK, it took until the 1970s for unions to start backing LGBT+ rights, including unfair dismissals. This was a time of new anti-racism activism too. The developments were asymetrical. 

At the weekly Gay Liberation Front meetings that Mick Belsten attended 200-300 were there. Though the radicalism in LGBT+ politics declined in the 1980s, in the 1990s uneven action for minority rights really took off, especially in local government and teachers' unions.

Interweaving strands

Over in the US Frank and Mickey were aware of the changed climate created by the 1969 Stonewall riots, just as Mick was in newly-pink London. 

Frank died in 1980, just before AIDS changed gay seafarers' views of their sexual safety in foreign ports. 

Mick was by then a very effective radical journalist. In 1990 he fell victim to an AIDS-related illness, just four years before the attempt to initiate the Shore Leave support group in 1994. 

Mickey died in 1997. He surely never knew about Shore Leave, but would have been happy to advise on tactics. 

He was always pressurising Allan Berube, his union's historian, to make sure the full story of the MCS was told. Allan did so, many times, before he died in 2007. His records are crucial to the world knowing just how extraordinary this maritime activism was. 

FAQs

How come a union in any country could be supportive of LGBT+ in those early days? It was a time of general progressive support for justice for marginalised people, including black workers. We'd call it intersectionality today. 

What Frank and Mickey do? On their ships and in union headquarters they oranised, challenged, supported. The union even had its own hiring hall, to bypass shipowners.

Were Mickey and Frank acclaimed in their lifetime? They were appreciated. This was not a union that went in for hero worship, or for making activists union presidents.

What did Mickey and Frank do when the union was demolished? They settled in Seattle and were still involved in gay community theatre.

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Are you looking for more information? Try:

Virtually: The Stephen R. Blair papers, including photo albums, can be seen at at the University of Washington Special Collections. This archive can be visited virtually, by appointment: Blair pics

On paper: see Allan Berube, My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community,and Labour History, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2011, Chapter 16.

Browsing: 

US. Waterfront Workers History Project, Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, Waterfront

UK. Roger Rosewell, The Seamen’s Struggle, Part II: The Fight for Reform, 1973, Minority_Movement

Caribbean maritime courage: quarter-master Lionel Licorish on the Vestris, 1928.

As part of  Black History Month I'm celebrating a maritime hero from Barbados, Lionel Licorish  (pictured) and the intersectional story of his rescue work in a shipwreck sometimes compared with that of the Titanic. 

You can see brief YouTube footage of him at  British Pathe, The Tragedy of the Vectris (1928).

There's a troubling racist pattern in the story of shipwrecks: white passengers denigrating 'cowardly' black seafarers in lifeboats, accusations of cowardice were common. 

The bitter xenophobia is shocking. And it’s noticeable that white British crew’s lack of courage seldom gets mentioned.

But the white-authored story of Lionel Licorish refutes the standard hostile narrative. This quarter-master became a hero in 1928 for rescuing 20 shipwrecked people from the Vestris off Norfolk, Virginia (pictured). 

Lionel is possibly the black crew member most acclaimed in maritime history for his courage. 

This blog entry adds genealogical and maritime labour information to the usual accounts of Lionel's feat, contextualising it. Women are also in the picture. 

 

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE VESTRIS? 

Erica Wheatley tells the story well and in full here. I won’t repeat all the outraged discussion of the unsatisfactory vessel and the chaos when abandoning ship, which lead to at least 108 of the 328 dying. 

The ensuing inquiry was critical and many sued. The ‘WomenandChildren first’ policy had yet again proved disastrous. All 13 children and 28 of the 37 (or 38)  women died. This was mainly because they weren’t dispersed but put in the same lifeboats, which then couldn’t be properly launched. TAt least one of those boats bashed into ship’s side as they were lowered, inhabitants were tipped into the sea. 

It's not known if Lionel brought in women. But wireless brought swift rescue from nearby vessels. Luckily the sea was warm too. 

The  passengers were very angry when they came ashore from the rescue ships. Often survivors deal with grief and shock by blaming. The disproportionately high survival rate of crew, by comparison to white children's fatalities, caused resentment. 

There were rumours of a 'Negro mutiny,' having happened too. It seems many race-related matters have been covered up.

WHO WAS ‘OUR HERO?

The Barbadian was serving on a Lamport & Holt ship heading from Hoboken to Rio de la Plata, South America. He was 23, only 5 feet 6 inches tall, and very unassuming.  

Born in the parish of St Lucy, Lionel's surname wasn’t a colour-related nickname. It wast derived from an English doctor after whom Licorish village had been named a century earlier.

Before Barbados became a tourist destination jobs were scarce.  At 15 Lionel became a merchant seafarer, initially on sailing schooners. He’d then switched to steam-propelled vessels c.1926. 

Often seamen choose not to learn to swim. But on small  islands boys commonly played in the sea, and Lionel had learnt swim. This enabled him to be such an effective rescuer on the Vestris.

He’d been working at sea for about seven years, previously on Lamport & Holt’s Voltaire and then made a number of trips on the Vestris, rising to Able-Bodied seaman status.

African-Caribbean men from Barbados (which was then the British West Indies) were 49% of the crew on the ship’s voyage the previous month. So it’s likely that the percentage was the same on this trip too. 

Barbadian men were the biggest national group aboard: others were Welsh, Scandinavian, Dutch and German, but not Lascars. White people had the higher-status jobs. Bajans were mainly doing engine room and catering jobs. Deck officers tended to be English.

One of the surviving stewardesses on Lionel's ship was Clara Gorn Ball (46) of New York (pictured). She was praised for swimming for 22 hours and hailed as the 'bravest woman in the world.'

MODEST TALE  

For at least three months afterwards public authorities in the US feted Lionel for saving lives.  

The Times said that when he spoke on the arranged tour, he did so with “an unvaried absence of exaggeration:”  He simply explained “I saved 20 passengers, all that I could, which I thought was my duty.” 

Boston’s Globe reported that Lionel had ‘no stage tricks’… [but]  tells of his heroism much as if he were making a report of everyday activities, and he looks very much embarrassed while facing his audiences.’

‘NEGRESS STEWARDESS’ REJECTED

The lesser--known story is that while a black man was rescuing white people, white people had refused to rescue a black woman from the Vestris  

The British United Press syndicated a story about a black stewardess (unnamed) who was initially rejected by those in a viable liifeboat. Very downplayed, the brief article quotes English passenger Mr EM Walcott as saying that he was floating in the water when a lifeboat came along. 

‘Some of the occupants were willing to take him on board, but not the negress stewardess’ who he was helping. ‘“I had to argue with them... but finally they agreed to take both of us on board.’” 

Survivors in lifeboats sometimes refused to take others on board, for fear of swamping. But usually men, not women, were refused. Is this Vestris story about racism trumping gendered chivalry? Or is it about status: passenger hostility towards a lowly worker?

BLAMING ‘NEGROES’

The main Vestris story, though, is the feel-good praising of this black seaman who went out and swam people back to the lifeboat he'd secured.

He was especially celebrated in the weeks after the event. New York mayor James J Walker publicly said to Lionel ' When you left that ship and reached out your hands to save someone else’s life, it is fair and reasonable to suppose that no one asked what race you belonged to ....That was as all right out there in the raging waters. That was fine when the ship was going down.' 

But initially 'negro' crew were villified. I’ve done some digging to see who complained about People of Colour 's (POC) behaviour. 

Image courtesy of Gare Maritime. Mrs Marion
Calvinl Batten.;un-named man; Mrs Blanche
Smith Devore with Speedway Lady.

One of the ten women survivors was Blanche Smith Devore. She was married to racing driver Earl, who was going with his racing partner Norman Batten to racetracks in Argentina. 

Both men were with their wives. Both men died. The Devore dog, Speedway Lady, was saved, as was oddly under-mentioned son Louis/ Billy.

In one version of the story Blanche said she was standing on deck with her husband when the crew began belatedly launching the life boats. 

‘Three negro members of the crew took charge and the lifeboats started away. The passengers pleaded to be taken on board and some were finally admitted. 

'Her husband stepped over the side to follow, when the negroes pushed him away. The water was full of drowning men.’ 

The Birmingham Post reported Blanche as saying ‘I begged the crew to go their assistance but they refused….The last time I saw Earl he was standing on the edge of the ship screaming for aid.’

The story shifted a lot. Sharks became included in the sensationalist versions. Earl’s arm was said to have been eaten by a shark. 

AND AFTERWARDS?

1928. Trail-blazing journalist Lorena Hicock (pictured) of the Associated Press agency covered the sinking. Her story was one of the first in the New York Times to carry a woman’s byline.

1929. Such was passenger alarm about whether to trust the company that in late 1929 Lamport & Holt had to discontinue the NY-South America run. However it switched to crusiing

1930. The London inquiry went on for 40 days, longer than the Titanic's inquiry, with which the sinking is compared.  

Possibly the celebration of Lionel's action was an orchestrated diversion from the concern that there had been much cowardice shown by people in lifeboats – an unknown number of whom were Barbadians – and at all the company negligence.

1930. Lionel went back to Barbados and married Carlene Hunt (pictured) (1912-2008) in 1930. It’s not clear how much he carried on sailing.  

In autumn  that year, 1930, the progressive campaigner Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn wrote a poem ‘Ballad of the Golden Hands of Lionel Licorish.’ See it here.

1933. Three years later Lionel lost his golden status when he was jailed for smuggling in British Guiana. Bangor [Maine} Daily News report has a gloating tone along the lines of how the mighty have fallen. 

I can’t find further news about prison or his being unable to get work afterwards. Smuggling was a common crime for seafarers, not least because opportunities were so temptingly to hand and gatekeepers colluded.

Late 1930s. Blanche Devore ‘was still bitter about the crew, and about the amount of hate mail she received as ‘the woman who saved her dog and abandoned her husband.'’’ 

1940. Lionel became the father of Sybil. By WW2 he was at sea again.

1942. In January  his unescorted cargo ship, TJ Harrison’s SS Traveller  (pictured) was hit twice by a German torpedo from U-106. East of Boston, all 52 people on board were killed. Some were Barbadians. The ship was carrying explosives.

1950s. Carlene and Sybil Licorish, who had lived in St James parish, Barbados, seemingly emigrated to Ottawa, Canada.

TODAY. Lionel’s life is commemorated at London’s Tower Hill memorial, along with other merchant seafarers.

Maritime union women pulling together: visible

Women in maritime trades unions and guilds. They're not very visible. That's what I keep finding out as I research seafaring women's history. 

What's the reality? What's just inadequate recording?

The lack of available information about gender in maritime history means it's good to be able to pick out a few highlights from Pulling Together, Nautilus International's history, which has just been published this week. See https://www.whittlespublishing.com/Pulling_Together. 

Pulling Together's author Andrew Linington (pictured) mentions the following items about women in this history. Since 1857 predecessor unions have included MNAOA and NUMAST :

HIGHLIGHTS

1933. Supporting the new  Watch Ashore (organising supportive women relatives of members)

1979. NUMAST establishes the Victoria Drummond Award for an outstanding contribution by a woman, boosting women's achivements at sea. (The first recipient is Sheila Edmundson, the first woman captain. Others are Rachel Dunn [2012], Barbara Campbell [2015], Helene Peter-Davies [2019].
2010. The Women's Forum begins, see pic.

2014. Union campaigns about cadet Akhona Geveza, who disappared overboard following her rape allegation

2016.  After working since 2002 at eliminating bullying and harassment at sea (which disproportionately affects women) Nautilus, ITF and the International Chamber of Shipping publish global guidance.

--

Many matters, of course, affect seafarers whatever their gender. The book is replete with evidence about how much the union has done.  

Other maritime unions

My knowledge of other unions, such as the National Union of Seamen (which was for ratings, and is now RMT), suggests that key milestones are when: 

•  the first woman joins a union executive (usually early 1980s. I think Sheila was on NUMAST's council. She was certainly active in union matters.
•  union has its first women's conference  (usually mid to-late 1980s. Women are so few in the maritime industry that a full 3-day conference would hardly have seemed appropriate)
• union campaigns on behalf of a woman member who's experienced major, and symptomatic, difficulty in the industry
• union appoints it first female general secretary (Brenda Dean of SOGAT was the first in UK in 1985).

The Captain's crucial partner

Spouses have played  a crucial part in the maritime unions community. They've been supportive 'members' while husbands were away at sea. Among their campaigns have been safety at sea and longer leaves, as the cartoon shows.

So it's important to mention the 1933 founding of The Watch Ashore by Dorothy Nelson-Ward, who was married to Philip, president of the Officers'  (Merchant Navy) Federation.  (page 59). 

See: 
# my blog about Dorothy: https://genderedseas.blogspot.com/2023/04/how-is-nelsons-daughter-connected-to.html.
# my article on seagoing wives in the union: 'Wives welcome ... with sewing kits,'https://www.academia.edu/10082043/Wives_welcome_with_sewing_kits

Key fragments known about UK women's maritime organised labour history generally are:

1775. In the Liverpool Seamen's Revolt a woman is among those imprisoned for  'aiding and abetting' the protestors. Crowds released her and others from jail. http://www.billhunterweb.org.uk/articles/seamens_revolt1775.htm

1913. A Cunard lady passenger tries to set up a Guild of Stewardesses. (Women are already allowed in the seamen's union NUS so the Guild may have been a ploy to set up a conservative body, pitting ladies against militant men) 

1917. Suffragist Adela Pankhurst Walsh, Emmeline Pankhurt's estranged daughter, is active in the  Seamen's Union of Australia. She was criticised, then embraced, by the British NUS for her activism.

1913. Southampton politician Emily Palmer (pictured) becomes treasurer of the British Seafarers' Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Palmer 

1953. The Queen honours Irene Combs, the Watch Ashore’s vice-president and treasurer,  for services to the Merchant Navy

1980. With the backing of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), Lucy Wallace, cinema projectionist, wins the very first maritime test case. Tribunal finds P&O had wrongfully discriminated against her.

1980s. Women join NUS executive

1988. UN agency International Maritime Organisation's gender programme begins. It's supported by unions, and continues today.

2013. International Labour Organisation brings out Working  Paper 298 on employing women in transport, which includes maritime

2022. International Day for Women in Maritime is instituted (May 18)

Pulling together matters

Not all human beings recognise how helpful a trades union can be. So there are also negative stories maritime labour I have glimpsed over the years. 

When  Aquitania seafarers struck in 1921 some stenographers were prepared to be strikebreakers. See pic of Cunard ladies standing by in the London EC headquarters. They signed up as 'volunteer helpers.' 

By contrast, the 'perspiring gang' of women supposed to be cleaning the ship emitted  'a running fire of comment' at the gents who'd laid down their pens to  scupper the solidarity. 

Reading more

• A brief history of UK maritime women breaking through into non- traditional jobs, including the first coastguard Sue Nelson, in https://www.nautilusint.org/en/news-insight/telegraph/sailing-past-sex-discrimination/
• UK women at sea. Pioneers are briefly discussed at https://www.maritimefoundation.uk/publications/mma-2016-brochure/women-at-sea/
• See the global and European story of formal challenges, in the ITF's Gender and Transport discussion paper, 2011, at https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/dp201111.pdf
• Canadian waterfront women: Linda Cullum, 'In Whose interest? Women Organizing on the Waterfront - St John's, Newfoundland, 1948' in Journal of Historical Sociology, 22.1, March 2009, pp108-44