I couldn’t explain so many things to the children. When the last two children, though they are a bit big now, two years after he left, he came back and I was at the market at that time. They did not allow him to enter the house. He explained to them that he is their father but they told him they had no father. Even my sister who was living with me tried to explain but they refused. It was when their elder sister came back from school and welcomed him, saying, “Daddy welcome,” that they calmed down and allowed him to enter the house. After settling down, they asked him why he left for so long and he told them he went to look for garri [cassava flour] for them to eat. They objected and led him to the kitchen to show him buckets of garri, rice, beans and other foodstuffs and told him that mummy has provided them. When he went back to work after the holiday, he decided to send his pictures home so that the children can know him very well.57
For seamen’s wives and families, there was the additional hardship of worrying about their husbands in this risky line of work, and going long periods without hearing any news of their well-being or whereabouts. Ship work could be dangerous, and many accidents took place, particularly around loading and unloading cargo. Seamen also fell overboard and drowned, and many suffered chronic diseases such as kidney disease, heart failure, and tuberculosis.58 As F. J. Lindop explained, “Exposure to all weathers, overcrowding, inadequately ventilated accommodation, poor food and negligible medical provision aboard ship and a dissipated life ashore took a toll in health.”59 When accidents on ships were reported, wives and families were very worried, and they often had great difficulty in verifying which ships their husbands were on and if they were safe. Some of the women felt that a seaman’s line of work was not worth all the hardship. One said: “The work is a life-threatening job and there is very little money with all the risk involved. Is this a good job?”60 When asked if she would allow her son to become a seaman, another woman said, “Never. God will never allow a bad thing to happen to my children and family. Working as a seaman in this Nigeria is a bad thing.”61
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND VIOLENCE ON COLONIAL SHIPS
Nigerian seamen working on colonial ships often faced miserable working conditions, replete with racial discrimination and dehumanizing treatment. The archives abound with incidents of discrimination against black seamen on the part of both European crews and officers. Many black seamen suffered physical abuse, name-calling, and random punishments by the officers they served under, and group beatings or other violent attacks by white seamen. Often, these incidents would land black seamen in the hospital, but the majority suffered these abuses and remained on board, lacking any record or verifiable proof against those who perpetrated these crimes. African seamen who did seek justice usually came up against an uninterested or unconvinced captain, and when it was a case of a black seaman’s word against that of a white seaman, there was little hope that any justice would be served. In one letter of protest, seamen complained to the shipping company that the provocations led Africans to respond with violence for which they, and not the white crews, were ultimately punished:
The habit of several white seamen, as we said, is to collectively beat up on African crew. We protest against this, because it can lead to a situation where African Seamen can join forces to retaliate white seamen, leading to developments of unpleasant proportions. Captains do not call into evidence African crews to refute or say what leads to reports against them by white crews. . . . The mode of addressing them employed by white seamen borders on provocation. It is sometimes so appalling that they are confused or annoyed to point of disobedience and as soon as this happens, the report reaches the Captain divorced of the circumstances under which the disobedience occurred.62
In the colonial era, crews were generally segregated, with blacks and whites occupying separate quarters. They often ate in separate areas, and African seamen complained that they were served poor-quality food compared to Europeans. This segregation was the result of a ship hierarchy based on the intersections of race and class biases. Thus, ship hierarchies drew clear distinctions between officers and the rank and file, and in most vessels, these distinctions also coincided with racial difference. Opportunity for advancement in the hierarchy was reserved for Europeans only, as representatives of seamen complained in 1959, “No African seamen . . . irrespective of their number of years are in responsible posts. We always serve in a subordinate role. The African seamen who do the same type of work as white crews cannot share equal advantages with them in the sphere of working conditions, after many years of contribution to the progress of the Companies.”63 White officers ate better food, lived in superior accommodations, and enjoyed unlimited rations of cigarettes and beer. The officers socialized in their own bar, which was better furnished than that of regular seamen. While hierarchies such as these were not explicitly racist, African seamen were keenly aware of the connections between race, class, and status on colonial ships. Seamen’s perceptions of discrimination touch upon these intersections; as one explained: “If you talk about maltreatment from the European officers, it was general. They prevented us from their quarters.”64
In ports of call, the situation was not better, and seamen’s missions were segregated by race. In times of illness and hospitalization, African seamen complained that shipping companies did not give the same treatment to blacks as to whites, as can be seen in the following complaint filed by seamen in 1958: “When an African seaman is stranded, due to no fault of their own, proper care is not taken of them. When Mr. J. Woin, deckboy in a cargo boat, was sick on December 3, 1958, he was discharged after seven days in Victoria hospital. The shipping master at Victoria gave him 3 newspapers to sleep on in the streets. This is a sample of the sort of action which makes cooperation sometimes absurd. We are not sure that the shipping master would serve 3 newspapers to any white crew for supper or sleeping pillows.”65
Nigerian seamen suffered racist attacks by white crews, but the racialized hierarchies on board ships meant that captains and officers would often side with European crews in times of conflict. The officers themselves were also accused of making racist remarks toward African crews. As seamen’s representatives complained in 1958, “We know of instances where officers have told African crews quite openly that they hate not only them but Africans on the whole.”66 European officers were known to abuse their power in requiring Africans to work overtime for them personally. For these types of jobs, the payment was usually in kind, but sometimes Africans were not paid at all. This could be left to the officer’s discretion, as one captain explained: “The chief steward may wish to have a storeroom cleared out, or have the inside of the storeroom alleyway painted. He would be paid in goods—in rice and biscuit. Likewise, the chief or second steward would have their laundry done for free or rather would pay the head washman in rice or biscuit.”67 The practice of asking African crews to do personal work for white officers was a source of great contention, as one seaman recalled: “It was a long story. That is why I said there was maltreatment by the white officers. The chief steward used to bring his car to the dock and he asked one of the black stewards to wash his car. We all resisted and refused to obey because the car in question was not the company’s car, but a personal one. If you want to wash your car, take it to the car wash and pay them. The steward wanted to wash his during the working hours and at free of charge too. We said, we weren’t doing that again.”68
African seamen were not always so empowered to resist the discriminatory practices of officers. This was painfully evident on the MV Egori, when, in 1958, the Nigerian crew complained bitterly of the racist attitudes of Captain Everall. After many reports of abuse, seamen in Lagos refused to sign articles with him, and a representative of the seamen went on board to investigate the matter. In a report to Elder Dempster, it was claimed that the entire crew complained of Everall’s “hatred and wickedness towards members of the African crew.” The crew was particularly angered by the captain’s demand that they work long hours of overtime, with no breaks, on the weekends. According to the report, the captain met with the seamen’s representative, and assured him that the seamen would cease to work from Saturdays at 1300 until Monday morning. The seamen were told of the promise and signed articles on the ship. But once at sea, the captain ordered them to work for the whole weekend. The seamen asked the captain about
