The anti-crimps part 1

That is from Judith Fingard's Jack in Port (page 187). As you can see from the large text in bold italic, the act the handbill was making sailors aware of was called the Act for the Protection of Seamen from Crimps. However, when I read the smaller text above (click on the image to see it larger or read below) I begin to think that it wasn't protecting seamen at all:

IN consequence of the inconvenience to which Ship Owners are subjected by the Desertion of Seaman at Quebec, and the extortionate Wages demanded for the return to the United Kingdom; the Legislative Assembly of Canada have passed an act...

Ah yes, I love it when the government decides to protect me from receiving "extortionate" wages. That's really putting sailors' interests first. And it's worse than that for the act puts extra responsibilities on seamen and informs them that, should they fail to follow these provisions, they will be subject to "imprisonment and hard labour".

Who do you think the legislature was more likely to listen to: wealthy ship owners or poor sailors?

I'm not saying crimps like my ancestors were gentle and sweet men who never hurt anyone's feelings never mind used deceit, violence or extortion to get what they wanted. There is clear evidence that they did. But it is also clear that corrupt and unjust labour practices, a speciality of the 19th century, created an atmosphere in which they could thrive.

Wages on this side of the ocean were three to five times what they were in Britain. I would think that would give sailors a powerful economic incentive to desert. On top of which, they seem to have had very little recourse other than desertion when sailing masters, who had absolute authority at sea, abused them or failed to look out for their security or were just plain incompetent. It's not unreasonable to suspect that magistrates were biased favour of the ship owners and their captains. Finally, ships sailing between Canada and Britain were carrying mostly lumber and I've read that that task was reserved for ships at the end of their career. As a consequence, these boats were often run down and in poor repair; a sailor might well want to desert for fear of his life.

My suspicion is that those factors combined with rising standards of living in the 19th century made it increasingly difficult to find and retain sailors. The shipowners blind, as we all are, to the the ways in which their interests and the general moral truth diverged appealed to the British government which dutifully stepped in to "protect" sailors from crimps by protecting ship owners' interests. The colonial government in Canada, in turn, immediately stepped up and adopted the relevant provisions as their own.

Crimping had always been part of port life. The British government had long engaged in crimping itself through press gangs. Their crimping practices had been one of the prime causes of the War of 1812 (and, while they and many Canadians continue to insist that they won what was, in fact, an inconclusive war, the British gave up crimping after that war). What was changing in the 19th century was that wealth was increasing at a tremendous rate and the British and Canadian governments were doing everything they could to make sure that wealth did not trickle down to the poor. Not from lack of caring mind you; as we will see as we further explore the subject, wealthy ship owners and other concerned rich people were willing to do all sorts of charity for the poor. What they weren't willing to do was allow them to earn their way up because "down", as in firmly stuck in a lower class, was what they wanted to maintain for the poor.

As I keep repeating, crimps weren't nice guys and what they did was not only criminal but also often unfair, unkind and even evil. But the prohibitionist and class-maintenance  approach governments took to the problem actually created a sort of golden age of crimping in the last half of the 19th century.

I leave you with two thoughts:

1. Virtually everything we think we know about crimps comes from people who were opposed to them. Crimps themselves, being engaged in an illegal business, were hardly likely to document their business practices.
2. Suppose you were a dirt-poor Irishman who'd had to come across from Ireland, where your family and friends were dying like flies because of British law, in the hold of one of those leaky, old lumber ships. How much respect are you going to have for British law?

The ship owners were not the only people opposed to crimps. There were also the Protestant reformers. I'll discuss them next week.