‘Malay’, ‘Ottoman’ or ‘Soudanese’ [sic] were employed, but how accurate these descriptive terms actually were is questionable. Fred Halliday has argued that the fluidity of identities in the reception and placing of Yemenis in the British colonial context accounts for one further striking characteristic of the Yemenis, namely their ‘invisibility’.13 He argues that the obvious reason for this was simply that there were not that many of them compared with South Asian Muslim settlers in Britain. He particularly notes that ‘most of the time there was some larger identity into which they could easily be assimilated. In most cases there was an element of validity in this inclusion – lascars, Muslims, Arabs being cases in point.’14 Richard Lawless’ work also confirms a degree of identity confusion with regards to the Yemeni settlers in South Shields, noting that ‘in the opinion of the people living in the district [East Holborn, South Shields] half of the Arabs were in fact Turks’15 and that ‘[t]he Chief Constable of South Shields admitted in 1917 that he did not know the difference between a Turk and an Arab!’.16
2.2 – The seamen’s registration certificate of Ali Mohamed (b.1902) issued from Cardiff and dated 1929.
Like other sailors from the east India regions of Bengal and Bihar and those Far Eastern sailors from Malacca and Sumatra, the Yemenis of Aden and Ta˓izz sought employment on merchant ships sailing to Britain. Humayun Ansari states that lascars were employed to overcome the maritime labour shortage created as a result of British seamen being inducted into the navy for war service against the French from the 1760s onwards and to address the reality that significant numbers of British seamen were ‘deserting’ at Indian ports.17 Ansari also attests to the horrific treatment of lascars at the hands of ship masters that ‘despite the better wages there is evidence that many of these Indian Muslim sailors were brutally treated on ships, which compelled many to try to escape such harrowing ordeals.’18 Apart from London, many Yemeni lascars settled in Cardiff and South Shields, with smaller communities in Liverpool, Hull and later Manchester. He notes that by the last quarter of the nineteenth century a significant proportion of the lascars in Cardiff originated from Yemen and Somalia with the vast majority (95%) concentrated in the dock area and a small number in the city centre and other working-class districts. By 1911, it was estimated that the lascar population of Cardiff numbered around 700.19 In Glasgow, a Sailor’s Home was established in 1857 to cater for the ever-growing number of lascars settling in the city. A report by the Sailor’s Home stated that by 1903 nearly one-third (approximately 5500) of the annual number of nightly borders were lascars:
Among these Lascars were Yemenis and Somalis who, from as early as the 1850s, were recruited on steamers as firemen and stokers. In the East End of London, apart from Indian Lascar communities, Yemeni and Somali seamen together with Ottoman Turks represented some of the earliest Muslim communities in Britain.20
Ansari, like Paul Dresch, claims that many Yemenis were drawn to working on ships after a series of droughts and famines occurred across the villages of the northern highlands of Yemen during the latter half of the nineteenth century.21 In the process, foreign remittances helped to support dependent families and for long periods prop up the ailing Yemeni economy. According to Joseph Salter’s record, the arrival of large numbers of lascars was becoming a common occurrence in the nineteenth century and by the 1890s with around 500 lascars arriving at London’s docks alone.22 Peter Fryer informs us that Asian and Arab lascars were present among the destitute Black populations of London as early as the 1780s. Salter was an Anglican priest and evangelical missionary who devoted the larger part of his life as a cleric prosyletizing among mostly Muslim, with some Hindu and fewer Buddhist, lascars coming to British port cities through imperial and entrepreneurial vessels. The cleric’s efforts produced two detailed contemporaneous published memoirs of his missionary efforts with the lascars. Salter’s detailed account of his missionary work amongst the poor and destitute lascars of the nineteenth century provides us with a fascinating and startling account of colonial lascars in British docklands. The result is a unique pair of descriptive and ethnographic documents on the plight of Oriental lascars living in horrendously deprived conditions at the height of imperial Victorian Britain. His work also confirms the ill-treatment of the lascars and he comments that, ‘In the 1850s Indian seamen, during their stay in Britain, were still enduring appalling conditions.’23 The lascars were usually herded into lodging houses, often between six to eight to a room, without bedding, chairs or tables. Lascars who fell ill would find themselves suffering in a hospital or a workhouse without any means of communicating their ailments due to language problems. Between 1856 and 1857, eight lascars died of cold and hunger on the streets of London and a coroner reported that he had dealt with over 40 similar cases in the past few years.24 Rozina Visram also attests that lascars were present in significant numbers by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, stating that:
Although no direct evidence of Lascars in the [East India Company barrack] premises for the period 1795–1814 is available, the fact that a bill was rushed through Parliament without debate in November 1813, to compel the Company to provide for lascars, suggests the Company’s own arrangements had failed. 25
LASCAR DESTITUTION AND CHRISTIAN MISSION
Missionaries became hypersensitive to the treatment that the colonial subjects were facing in the heart of the imperial metropolis and so Christian philanthropists established competing missions aimed specifically at aiding and proselytizing the stranded lascars. The Reverend Henry Venn, Secretary of the Church Mission Society, opened a ‘Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders in West Dock Road, Limehouse, catering for some 150 lascars. At the same time, the Reverend Joseph Salter was establishing his missionary works among the destitute lascars of Britain’s burgeoning industrial cities. The overwhelming majority of black people in Britain by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were lascars. Abandoned by steamers or attracted by the prospect of casual work, lascars had begun to settle around the docks at Cardiff by the early 1870s when Welsh coal was beginning to be exported rapidly around the globe as essential fuel for commercial steamers.26 By 1881, a sailor’s rest was established in the city to cater for the increasing presence of lascars working out of Cardiff, Newport and Barry. Fryer describes the plight of the lascars thus:
Having spent the small sums they had been paid-off with, having pawned any spare clothes or other belongings, destitute seamen tramped from port to port, desperate for work. Their quest was endless and almost hopeless. Help form compatriots and parish hand-outs kept them from starving, but they often went hungry.27
The Colonial Office would often repatriate unemployed lascars, usually as a result of the intervention of the church missions. However, although an act of Parliament was passed in 1814 decreeing that no ship with a lascar crew was permitted to leave shore without a bond for their support until they were returned home, in practice very little changed on the ground.28 In 1820, legislation had tried to limit the number of lascars present on British ships but the measures were short-lived as the growing demand for cheap labour in the maritime industry increased. An Act of Parliament in 1849 revised all existing restrictions and quotas, identifying all Oriental lascars (Asians, Arabs, Africans and Malays) as ‘British’ for the purposes of shipping. This relaxation of the law allowed ship owners to exploit an endless supply of cheap labour.29 By employing lascars, ship owners were able to keep their wage bills to a minimum by effectively hiring three lascars for the price of two European sailors.30 Further, lascars were known for their sobriety and were seen as ‘more manageable and amenable’ in comparison with European sailors. Sydney Collins has also noted that Yemeni lascars were particularly valued for their loyalty as hard working crew members, ‘They are reputed to be most obedient to their superiors, to cooperate as a work team, and to be willing to deputize for and indisposed workmate.’ He also recorded further that due to their loyalty,
