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.

First ayah rescued from shipwreck, 1832

Nearly two hundred ago Ayah Carruthers (her own name is not recorded) was apparently the very first ayah rescued at sea by her English employer. 

Ayah Carruthers' employing family may have looked something like this picture. It's a representation created just seventeen 17 years earlier: Charles D'Oyley: A European Lady and Her Family, Attended by an Ayah, or Nurse (1815). 

Working for a mobile family was a mixed blessing for South Asian servants, including ayahs (nannies and maids). They found travel could be:

• an unusual adventure for a lowly woman, and an extrinsic perk of the job
• life-threatening, especially in the days of sailing ships.

But, when shipwrecks inevitably happened, being a woman did bring the chance of gallant rescue - even if she was brown or black. By contrast male 'native' servants were usually expected to look after themselves. 

All we know of this ayah now is that she was old, and rightly scared, in autumn 1832. She was probably from Calcutta (Kolkata), as she was accompanying Josephine and Matthew Carruthers from there to Tipperah (Tripura) in Bengal (Bangladesh). Matthew worked for the East India Company (EIC)

The party's terrible sea experience began just hours after they set off, the very evening  after the Carruthers were married in Calcutta Cathedral on 2 October. (St John's, pictured).

(Although grand the cathedral was already proving far too small for the burgeoning British population; plans were beginning for the current one.) 

Probably  Matthews' EIC colleagues attended the celebrations. That network is likely to have found him his servants too.

After the ceremony  Ayah Carruthers, plus at least one other woman servant and the newly-weds, began their 217-mile voyage. Perhaps Josephine had with her her trousseau.

Depending on conditions such a short coastal and river trip took several days. Sailing was far easier than going 1,025 miles over hilly terrain. 

We can imagine the ayah feeling many emotions ranging from excited or jittery about the journey and her relocation. This could have been her first sea trip. Or, as she was elderly, she might have been a veteran traveller.

It seems that she was going to be working in the home of  Civil Servant Matthew. He was already employed as Assistant to the Collector at Tipperah, a princely state newly under Rajah Krishna Kishor Manikya.

The Carruthers entourage was heading east-north-east. Unruly seas and wild elements entered the scene after four days of travelling, which had made them sea sick.

Disaster strikes

Today no-one today would know about this ayah involved in a routine relocation, except that she was one of the 'helpless female' characters in a talked-up drama:  an 'instance of preservation of life ... through the skill and intrepidity of a gentleman of the civil service, [which] deserves to be recorded,’ according to the Madras Courier and the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany.

The story was later immortalized in a Victorian compendium, Acts of Gallantry. 

Under headings such as 'Remarkable Preservation of Life During the Late Gale,' most versions record that: 

'On the 6th the pinnace was forced to anchor, and in the evening the gale came on with terrible violence. Mr Carruthers was dreadfully sick with the motion of the vessel.

'And Mrs Carruthers was lying on her couch suffering under an attack of fever, when the pinnace was blown over and drifted into the stream’ [which means the current].

‘Mr Carruthers caught his wife, and they fell into the water together. When he came up, he succeeded in grasping a part of the vessel, but was knocked off by a man falling upon him.

‘On coming up a second time he saw his wife struggling with her women, who were trying to save their lives at the expense of hers. Seizing her by the hair, and grasping one of the iron stanchions, he got into the wreck, Mrs Carruthers being nearly lifeless ...

'watching for a favourable opportunity, when near the shore, he directed Mrs. Carruthers to take off her flannel gown and cling to his waist ... they committed themselves to the stream, which carried them down many yards ...

'by dint of labour, in about half an hour, he had the delight of landing his wife upon the bank, though at night, without shelter, she nearly naked, the wind piercing cold, and the rain descending in torrents ; at length they procured some dry clothes and a fire from the natives.

'The ayah, or female attendant of Mrs Carruthers, still remained on the wreck, and Mr Carruthers plunged into the rapid and dangerous river a second time, and brought the poor old woman to shore. Six of the crew, and one of the women, were drowned.’

Pinnace budgerow (left)  on the Hooghly River, looking at the EIC
factory at Cossimbazar, c1800.

The tragic story is so unclear that we have to guess a lot. 

1.What vessel was carrying the Carruthers party? 

They were said to be in a pinnace. This is rather puzzling as a pinnace is just a  ship’s boat that acts as a small tender taking people to port. It seems unlikely that they would have been using a small boat for the entire voyage from Calcutta, round the upper Bay of Bengal. So maybe the reporter's use of the word 'pinnace' is anachronistic and refers to something like the independent vessel pictured.

2. Where exactly was the shipwreck?  

The article refers to a river, indicating the likelihood that the tragedy happened somewhere on the vast and tidal Meghna River. Three miles across, the estuary is a significant waterway and the start of an ancient route to significant Bengal towns.

The nearby shore is mentioned. Possibly - as they were in a small boat - the Carruthers were very near the port where they intended  to disembark for Tipperah. Chandpur, at the junction with the Padma River, is the most likely transport hub.   

Who was the ayah with?

Josephine's memsahib was born Josephine Parker and was 22. Little is known of her. But records shows a HM Parker was secretary of the Board of Customs, Salt and Opium. I'd place a small bet on his being Josephine's father.

By contrast EIC records reveal much about Matthew. He was 22 and on the rise. Having an ayah was normal after such a man married. 

Matthew was the Eton-educated second son of David and Mary Carruthers, of Bloomsbury Square, London. 

David seems to have been a wealthy merchant, involved in EIC internal politics and supported of free trade with China - a stance that was linked to opium trading politics. The extended Carruthers family of Dumfriesshire had long been involved in EIC India. 

In 1828-29 Matthew been trained as a writer (meaning administrator) at the East India Company College in Hailey, Hertfordshire. Later referred to as Haileybury, the college groomed bright 16 -18 year olds for elite careers In India.  (see picture below, right, of the college today).

Chris Hunt, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https:creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The subjects on his curriculum included Urdu (Hindustani) Bengali, and Marathi, as well as natural philosophy and the classics. 

All his education meant he understood not only the correct British Christian chivalry required when shipwrecked. He might well have been able to speak the ayah's language too. 

After leaving Hailey Matthew arrived in India in 1830. He'd have been familiar with Calcutta's Writers Building, (left of the Court House, the old  EIC headquarters, in this picture). EIC architecture showed such men their own significance in the social order, including in relation to humble ayahs.  

After gaining his feet in Dacca (Dhaka) Matthew had worked in Maimansinh (Mymensingh). It seems likely that the ayah, and maybe Josephine too, were going to this rural outpost for the first time, to set up the marital home.

Arriving on dry land

• Did the Carruthers forgive Josephine's 'women, who were trying to save their lives at the expense of hers' in primal terror? 
• Did the ayah express gratitude to her rescuer, but feel resentment at the way her employer had seemed to initially abandon his powerless protectee?
•  Did she curse the need for a job, which led to her potential drowning? 

Who knows. But she probably gained a materially comfortable life. Matthew's EIC career records show that he stayed in the area for six years after the shipwreck, including becoming acting civil judge in Tipperah. 

Back home in England David, Matthew's father, was making pro-Free Trade speeches,  arguing against EIC power. He was part of the pressure group that curbed the EIC with the 1833 Charter Act, and helped open up trade with China.  He briefly became MP for Kingston Upon Hull, in 1835, a little before William Wilberforce.  

in her local community the ayah would have accrued vicarious status from this elite family. She had time to recover from the traumatic voyage, and to network with ayahs in other British-India households. 

But perhaps EIC supporters there would have been hostile to her household because of David Carruther's part in the major 1833 row about the extending the EIC charter. Ironically it was written up in the same journal that praised his son's bravery: The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany. 

  

Next trips?

Matthew died in 1838, aged 27. This meant Josephine, the ayah, and any children, would have to leave. 

The odds are that Josephine married again within  a year, and took her ayah with her. 

Did they have the courage to travel again by sea? We can only guess: yes. These were indeed becoming mobile times for ayahs in the EIC's India. 

Neva shipwreck women commemorated in art

This month in Tasmania the loss of over 200 transported women is being commemorated as never before - through textile art, specifically seaweed garments as memorials. 
Hobart-based artist and psychiatrist Catherine Stringer has done some wonderful maritime art. 
And now she is remembering the convict  women, babies and children who died in the 1835 shipwreck of the Neva. Her show, Sea Stories, is  at the King Island Cultural Centre. https://kingisland.tas.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Artist-Statement-Sea-Stories.pdf

Skins and clothes

Catherine has put together here the Neva Reliquary and another sequence of art works: The Seal Woman.
She says: "The Neva Reliquary... is my personal response to this tragedy. The work was initiated during a residency at the King Island Cultural Centre in 2011, when I first started experimenting with making paper from the local kelp and subsequently other seaweeds. 
"I became increasingly drawn to the Neva story, feeling a connection with these women, particularly as many of them were mothers, like me, and moreover 28 of them shared my name, Catherine.
"I have developed and refined my papermaking techniques during the past five years to create these garments for selected Neva passengers. They are all made from seaweeds gathered from the Cape Wickham area.
" I have made a small size garment to represent each of the 28 Catherines, and life size garments for each of the Catherines who were children. 
"I have also made a cloak for the youngest convict, Ester Raw, who was only 14. She had been sentenced to seven years transportation for stealing a cloak.
"The six surviving women each have a Survivor’s Cape, which incorporate some shore plants as well as seaweeds.
"The Seal Woman series developed from {thinking about the story that a "woman could slip easily from seal to human form by removing her sealskin. One day her sealskin was stolen by a fisherman ...  She ended up marrying the fisherman...
"but she always yearned for the sea. After many years the woman found her sealskin and returned to the sea, where she had [a further] seven children. She was thereafter torn between two families, two worlds.
"The Neva story and the Seal Skin story are linked by similar themes - mothers and their
children, separation, loss, grief and transformation, and of course their connection with the
sea. 

The Neva - and Elizabeth Fry

Of the 241 people on board when the  three-masted barque which left Cork harbour for New South Wales all but 17 died. 
The small ship, owned by Moates, a Shadwell firm, had previously been used for carrying troops, meaning it would not be in a salubrious state. 
It was on its second convict voyage when it hit the submerged Harbinger Reef north of King Island, four months after setting forth. 
On May 13 1835  the ship sank and is now seen as the second-largest maritime disaster in Australian history. It's one of the worst convict ship disasters. 
The survival rate was 3 per cent for the convicts but 35 per cent for the crew  - which has to indicate malpractice and selfishness in evacuation procedures. There was no chivalry as with the famous Birkenhead Drill of 1852, two decades later, when the Women and Children First procedure was used.

It's common to assume that the disaster is barely known because it involved 'just convicts' and 'just women', allegedly many sex industry workers drunk on a broached barrel of rum.
Actually, If you know your history of women's penal reform, another explanation is more likely.  I suspect that the silence was diplomatic; the authorities didn't want any more public outcry at this major moment in policy on imprisonment. 
When the Neva sank prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (pictured left) had been pushing improvements for over two decades.
 She had:

• urged that transportation should be abolished
• inspected hundreds of convict ships
• founded the British Ladies' Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners in 1821
• visited women prisoners in Ireland  in 1827 
• actually been to the ship before, for its previous convict voyage, and offered the men comforts - probably bibles, blankets and eating utensils

Transportation was to be outlawed as a punishment  only two years later, in 1837. 
The Neva tragedy still reminds us today about the continuing burning issues such as: the morality of exporting unwanted people; under what conditions should people be imprisoned; and should imprisoned women, especially mothers, be treated more humanely?

 

Costa Concordia - saving women and children first, still?

Women and children have been prioritized in shipboard evacuations since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. And such prioritizing has been challenged by feminists for at least 100 years, including by suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst when the Titanic sank.
Gender does not confer intrinsic privileges, they argue. People should be given priority according to their need - which would mean older poorly people would be disembarked first.
And arguments that for the good of the race's future children and reproducers(women) should be saved don't wash in our over-populated times.

OLD RULES...
So it's rather interesting that at least one survivor of the Costa Concordia still expected the old rule to apply. And was shocked when it didn't.
Today's Daily Mirror reports that British retired policeman Edwin Gurd revealed men on board pushed past terrified women and children to get to the lifeboats first.
He said “My wife got on lifeboat No 17 and we got as many women and ­children on as possible.
'"But later there was quite a lot of panic from the men who were forcing their way onto the boats.
'"The men were stressed and panicking. They were pushing in front of women who should have got on first. There was a real danger of people being crushed.”'

... ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE BEST RULES
I found in researching women on the wartime seas that the generous and gallant practice of men standing by while women were allowed into lifeboats became established as the Birkenhead Drill. It's named after the iconic occasion when soldiers stood on parade on deck, to let women survive as HM Troopship Birkenhead sank off the coast of South Africa in February 1852; 55 men died.
However, in looking at many wartime evacuations of sinking ships I now wonder if the principle may have sometimes caused more loss of life. The first, hastily- launched lifeboats aren't necessarily the safest. Also a boat without sufficient people able to row and navigate had less chance of success.

It's not sensible to have a boat disproportionately full of:
# people who were untrained in those 'unfeminine' and adult skills
# mothers who may well have been too focused on helping children to also pay attention to what needed to be done on the boat. Sometimes it was urgent to row hard to avoid being sucked under as their big ship sank
# people, ie children, who were likely to be so distressed that they required extra attention and reduced morale
Each lifeboat needs a more balanced population, including trained seafarers.

MODERN IMPROVEMENTS
Today, when so many women get rowing practice in gyms, they might be far more of an asset than they were in the past.
Also, formerly, corsets hampered arm and back movements and caused the death of shipwrecked women in one 19C case. The tightness so high under their armpits stopped them reaching up to clutch at a spar from which they could have swung and so leaped to safety on the nearby rocks, dress reformers argued.


PIX: the ship yesterday, and ship's dancers Rose Metcalf and unnamed colleague.
See 'Costa Concordia cruise ship crash', by David Collins, Daily Mirror ,16/01/2012 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2012/01/16/costa-concordia-retired-british-cop-tells-how-men-pushed-their-way-past-women-and-children-to-reach-lifeboats-115875-23701453/#ixzz1jbkQVJDv