This blog reproduces a paper/thread presented on 2 July 2020 at the Shaped by Steel Twitter Conference #SWOS20, organised through the Social Worlds of Steel project by Swansea University. Many thanks to the organisers, presenters and participants for a great conference!

Abstract
It is a paradox that thousands of monuments to UK steelmaking and manufacturing survive because of calamities and catastrophes. Around our shores, ships sunk c. 1850-1950 represent a crescendo of technological innovation and industrial production of critical importance to UK history in terms of economy, commerce and society. This extraordinary heritage is hardly recognised because it is underwater, yet it has little counterpart on land or amongst ships still floating: the built heritage of civil shipbuilding has largely been erased; there are no sizable cargo vessels of this period in preservation. Fortunately, advances in marine survey and imaging are making it easier to access and appreciate this heritage without getting wet. 

​Our increasingly digital world is making it easier to reconnect this steel on the seabed to documents, drawings, photographs and recollections that provide it with context and meaning. It is becoming possible to re-populate this maritime industrial heritage with the communities of shipbuilders, seafarers and travellers whose lives – and sometimes deaths – were entwined in these most complex of metal artefacts. In very few words, this presentation will outline the scale and character of the maritime industrial heritage lying just off UK shores and indicate avenues of recent research and engagement. Examples will be drawn mostly from the east coast of England, where direct links can be drawn between the industrial landscape that lies underwater and the men and women whose worlds were shaped by steel.

​Thread
Good afternoon! I’m Antony Firth and I’m going to tweet about ‘Steel on the Seabed’. I’ll be referencing work with @HistoricEngland @HE_Maritime @Honor_Frost @SouterNT @HeritageFundNE @CITiZAN @IoSIFCA @TynetoTees @ukchp. Many thanks to all & to organisers of #SWOS20!

​By ‘Steel on the Seabed’ I mean #shipwrecks from the period c. 1850-1950 – a period of numerous radical transformations in ships but also in the communities whose lives they touched. These historic steel artefacts within the marine environment still reverberate.

​In 1832 before most were even built, Lyell surmised ‘It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man [sic] will be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents’.

​(Charles Lyell, 1832, Principles of Geography p. 244 https://archive.org/details/Lyell1837jf09J-c/page/244/mode/2up)

​Ships are themselves social worlds of steel for the people who live, work and travel aboard. Plates, decks, boilers, engines and machinery are all shaped in steel to frame these floating worlds.

(see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1095-9270.12392; http://www.fjordr.com/fjordr-blog/hms-falmouth-a-town-class-light-cruiser-sunk-off-the-yorkshire-coast-in-the-first-world-war. #HMSFalmouth)

​Beyond their hulls, steel ships shaped the social worlds of shipbuilders, dock workers, merchants, passengers & their communities at scales from local to global. Ships were also central to the supply of ore & coal, and to the delivery of manufactured steel products.

​The fabrication and use of steel ships embodies so many lives: but the existence of most ships is fleeting. Their steel being eminently recyclable means that successful ships ended their careers in breakers’ yards.

​Our built environment contains numerous reminders of industrial and transport heritage. But – with few exceptions – historic ships are absent from today’s ports and coasts. Although central to the history of many UK communities, cargo steamships now seem extinct.

​​(There are many wonderful vessels in @NatHistShips’ registers but preservation has been necessarily selective, not representative. https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/the-registers/about-the-registers)

​But I’m going to argue that steel ships still form part of our historic landscapes and seascapes, if only we look beneath the surface. Thousands of ships were ‘saved’ from the breaker’s yard by the catastrophe of sinking.

​(see http://www.fjordr.comhttp://fjordr.com/uploads/3/4/3/0/34300844/firth_in_nt_views_issue_54_autumn_2017_-_online.pdf)

​Steel shipwrecks resonate as facets of UK maritime and industrial heritage, if we choose to make them chime. Fortunately, numerous radical transformations in our own age are enabling us to rediscover, visualise and understand this long-hidden heritage.

​Digital surveys, digitisation of collections and digital citizen science are turning underwater scrapyards back into meaningful places. Technologies are pushing us towards a national collection of extraordinary breadth and importance, if we want it.

(see https://skfb.ly/RICO; https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03635-5_12; #HMSFalmouth)

​Steel shipwrecks are a vital component of the heritage of so many UK communities. They offer a fascinating – and creative – point of entry for the public in rediscovering unseen aspects of UK history, and present numerous avenues for research.

​(see http://www.fjordr.com/fjordr-blog/the-spoken-word-as-virtual-reality-exploring-first-world-war-shipwrecks-through-creative-writing)

​C19th & C20th shipwrecks tend to be viewed through the prism of warfare – with good reason: #WWI & #WWII had important maritime dimensions & caused massive spikes in shipping losses. But the history of ships sunk in wartime is not limited to the history of war.

​(see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1095-9270.12113. #WarChannels)

​The brutal attrition of lives and tonnage enables insight too. Mines, torpedoes and shells sliced through steel but also cut a section through the history of mid-C19th to mid-C20th shipping.

​(see https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/national-importance-cargo-vessels-tees-pilot/)

The same is true of people whose lives were taken while serving aboard. Firemen Said & Hamid – buried in a Whitby churchyard – remind us of the global character of the mercantile marine and the largely forgotten story of Black and Asian seafarers in the UK.

​(see http://www.fjordr.com/fjordr-blog/the-worlds-war-on-the-east-coast; @PortPTUC http://porttowns.port.ac.uk/source-information/bame-seafarers-first-world-war/; https://www.gatewaysfww.org.uk/blog/bame-seafarers-first-world-war)

Steel lying on the seabed continues to embody the labour of shipbuilding communities especially on the Clyde and in the North East, including women who joined the workforce in wartime to carry out skilled and heavy marine engineering.

​(see https://www.pinterest.co.uk/FjordrInfo/ecwcs-female-workers-at-swan-hunter-wigham-richard/; https://www.pinterest.co.uk/FjordrInfo/ecwcs-one-of-the-tyne-shipbuilding-yards/)

There is a direct relationship between the expulsion of women from marine engineering at the end of #WWI and the formation of the Women’s Engineering Society in 1919 @WES1919 #INWED20 #ShapeTheWorld.

​(see https://blue-stocking.org.uk/2014/05/23/what-was-a-girl-to-do-rachel-parsons-1885-1956-engineer-and-feminist-campaigner/; https://www.pinterest.co.uk/FjordrInfo/ecwcs-armstrong-whitworth-elswick-newcastle/)

The landscape was also shaped by steel through women’s contribution to shipbuilding in other ways: Haverton Hill emergency shipyard on #Teesside was constructed in 1918-19 by women workers. The slips and basins they dug are still in use.

​(see https://goo.gl/maps/9GwFzXgN5Uz8ioxz9; https://www.pinterest.co.uk/FjordrInfo/ecwcs-female-workers-at-furness-shipyard-haverton-/; and courtesy of @TeessideArchive @steel_stories https://teessidearchives.wordpress.com/2019/03/08/international-womens-day-women-building-furness-shipyard-haverton-hill-c-1917/)

Today, steel shipwrecks continue to shape the marine environment and the livelihoods that depend upon it. As inadvertent artificial reefs, shipwrecks provide habitats that are important for nature conservation, sea angling, recreational diving & commercial fishing.

(see https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/research/fish-and-ships/; http://www.fjordr.comhttp://fjordr.com/uploads/3/4/3/0/34300844/hnces_-_dorset_stour_and_tyne_to_tees_marine_area_-_fjordr_240120b_with_covers.pdf)

Shipwrecks can also be navigational hazards, sources of pollution & last resting places of many who have ‘no grave but the sea’. We often fail to deal with these monuments in ways that recognise the multiple dimensions of their past and present.

(see https://honorfrostfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/BRIJ5800-Multiwreck-A4-Report-WEB-0419-UPDATE.pdf. #ManagingShipwrecks)

The ships that lie around UK shores – through their misfortune and our good luck – are a vital component of our industrial and maritime historic environment. Next time you look out from the coast, have a thought for the steel on the seabed.

​https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/ss-firth-106101

One of the primary deliverables of the HMS Falmouth project was a formal ‘Statement of Significance’ for the wreck, which can be downloaded here (also see Fjordr Downloads for many of these links). The Statement of Significance is based on a previously-developed biographical approach to the vessel structured around its Build, Use, Loss, Survival and Investigation (‘BULSI’).
 
The intention of the project was not just to provide a technical account, however, and the Statement of Significance was developed in tandem with a leaflet setting out Falmouth’s story that was distributed to the public via local Tourist Information Centres and other venues. The leaflet was prepared as a large fold-out broadsheet like those prepared by English Heritage for historic towns: there is a pdf version here and an online flip-book here. Historic England's own pages on HMS Falmouth can be found here.
​
​There were several particularly striking aspects of the work to unravel the significance of HMS Falmouth. First, the degree to which surviving documentary material was dispersed across official archives. The historical records – documents, drawings, photographs – have a symbiotic relationship to the physical remains of the ship; they complement rather than compete with each other. But, like the wreck, it is not enough that the historical documents simply exist; their contribution to the narrative needs active engagement. In the case of HMS Falmouth it is fantastic that so much documentation has survived, but even better that online catalogues enable the documents be reconnected to the ship from which they were severed.

Although there appear to be no detailed drawing of HMS Falmouth, those of one of its sisters – HMS Weymouth – survive in the collections of the Royal Museums Greenwich. There are ships logs and records of HMS Falmouth’s loss, casualties and salvage in the National Archives; photographs and personal accounts – including the papers of Vice Admiral Napier – in the Imperial War Museum (IWM); further personal accounts in the Liddle Collection, University of Leeds library; and further images and documents were made available through the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN).

​The second striking aspect of the project was the value of social media in gaining access to documentary material in private hands. Although insightful, many of the records in public archives are fairly bureaucratic in origin: official and quite sparse documents providing the minimum of information necessary to deliver the job in hand. More texture arises from personal accounts and photographs; and although some of these can be found in public archives, there is plainly a big resource still held in private hands. Email networks, Twitter and Facebook brought material about HMS Falmouth to light that would have remained disconnected had this project been carried out just a few years ago. As well as providing more texture, this privately-held material covers subjects that were not addressed, or were discarded, in official records. Amongst a variety of material, social media has enriched the project with the diary of Stoker Victor Rayson; the informal photographs of officers in the album of George Watson; and photographs of crew on deck watching the demise of SMS Mainz at the Battle of Heligoland Bight. Rather more randomly, ebay and other online auction sites have been a source of historic photographs of HMS Falmouth, including details of artefacts raised from the wreck in the past.

​One facet of Falmouth’s significance is its role at the Battle of Jutland, as the flagship of the Third Light Cruiser squadron. Falmouth was heavily engaged at several points during the engagement, and indeed Falmouth is the only substantial wreck of a Jutland veteran within English territorial waters. Falmouth’s Jutland connection brought the project into contact with further initiatives with a social media dimension. During the development of its 36 Hours: Jutland 1916 exhibition, the NMRN launched an interactive map to enable the public to record details of all RN crew who took part in the battle. The interactive map links the crew of HMS Falmouth together and – through the enormous efforts of the Jutland Crew List project -- to a specific community in IWM Lives of the First World War digital archive. The 36 Hours: Jutland 1916 exhibition also provided an opportunity to discuss HMS Falmouth in an archaeological perspective on Jutland in the exhibition catalogue.

​A third striking aspect of the project, again reflecting the influence of new technologies, has been the availability of photographs and video of the wreck from divers. I still have not dived HMS Falmouth myself, but even before the project started it was possible to gain a sense of the wreck from diver videos on YouTube (especially here​), and this has been considerably augmented by photographs, video and observations made by local divers and shared with this project. The relative ease of obtaining and sharing increasingly high-quality imagery of shipwrecks in often murky UK waters is revolutionary compared to underwater photography a decade or so ago. Not only does it make it easier to ‘see’ conditions on site from a distance office, it makes it much easier to convey to non-divers – the public onshore – what lies on the seabed and how it is significant.

​The expanding capacity to visualise wrecks on the seabed, and to use such visualisations in engaging with the public onshore, became a much larger element of the Historic England project than had been anticipated. Two sets of fortuitous circumstances came into alignment. First, the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) had commissioned a survey of an area not far from the wreck of HMS Falmouth for navigational purposes through their Civil Hydrography Programme. Through collaboration with Historic England, they were able to task their survey contractor to carry out a wreck investigation survey of HMS Falmouth using a multibeam echosounder, resulting in a high-resolution 3D bathymetric dataset of the wreck. Second, collaboration with the NMRN over the 36 Hours: Jutland 1916 exhibition helped in tracking down a builder’s model of HMS Falmouth in the IWM collections (MOD 22). Although probably built at the same time as the ship itself, the IWM model had been badly damaged when the IWM was bombed in WWII. Fortunately, the model was fully restored in 1979 by John R. Haynes but remained in store thereafter. Further collaboration led to Historic England’s Geospatial Imaging Team carrying out a laser scan and photogrammetric survey of the ship model whilst still in store, and the resulting 3D data was combined with the 3D data from the wreck to present a combined visualisation, juxtaposing the wreck with the original ship.

The visualisation of the wreck and ship provided an eye-catching image for a media release by Historic England to coincide with the centenary of Falmouth’s loss, accompanied by an interactive 3D model on Sketchfab. The media release prompted stories in many major national and regional newspapers, including the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Yorkshire Post. The Sketchfab model has received over 21,700 views. The process of developing the visualisation of HMS Falmouth has been outlined in an article for Historic England Research and its implications for public access and research are discussed in more detail in a chapter of a book​ on 3D recording and interpretation. 

​Another fascinating dimension of HMS Falmouth’s story is the survival of its Steam Cutter, SC26. The Steam Cutter was HMS Falmouth’s principal boat, of lightweight construction and powered by a small steam engine. The Steam Cutter is understood to have been armed and would have been used when boarding and examining suspect vessels, which was part of Falmouth’s wartime role in the North Sea. In fact, it was probably the steam cutter that is referred to in Falmouth’s log while examining vessels on 5th August 1914, the first day after war was declared: ‘the after fall of seaboat carried away … 3 men overboard, one picked up’ (ADM 53/41442). The two men who were so sadly lost, Leading Seaman Wilson and Able Seaman Green, are probably the UK’s first operational casualties of the First World War.
 
After HMS Falmouth was abandoned in August 1916, the Steam Cutter is understood to have been amongst the boats salved by the trawler Buckingham some 20 miles off Flamborough Head and towed to Immingham (ADM 116/1508). After being issued to other RN ships, SC26 was sold into private hands but survived until bought by a charity for restoration in 2013. SC26 – which is on the National Register of Historic Vessels – was transferred to the International Boatbuilding Training College (ITBC) in Boathouse 4, Portsmouth on 16th August 2016, just four days before the centenary of Falmouth sinking. SC26 is being restored as part of the Memorial Fleet of Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust; in due course, perhaps SC26 might even steam over the remains of the ship from which it was saved?

he Historic England project on the significance of HMS Falmouth sought to address the future management of the wreck by creating a cycle of understanding, valuing, caring and enjoying, referred to as the ‘heritage cycle’. Understanding the significance of HMS Falmouth would encourage people to value the site, to care for it, to enjoy it, and then to want to understand more. This cycle does not depend on designation under, for example, the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973; so although the project demonstrated the wreck was of sufficient archaeological and historic significance to warrant designation, this was not the anticipated outcome. However, in a separate initiative, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) chose to include the wreck of HMS Falmouth amongst a tranche of vessels to be designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, which is administered by MOD. Consequently, the wreck of HMS Falmouth became a ‘Protected Place’ on 3rd March 2017. Twelve men were killed in the course of Falmouth's loss, including eight men in No. 3 stokehold when a torpedo struck and were not recovered. It is still entirely legal to visit the site by diving, for example, but it is an offence to tamper, damage, remove, unearth etc. the remains of the wreck.
 
My own work on HMS Falmouth is coming to an end, at least for the time being. There is still much that could be done, particularly in assessing the condition of the wreck, in researching documentary records, and in increasing access to Falmouth's story. In the meantime, I was very pleased that the project received a Certificate of Recognition in the Historic England Angel Awards in November 2017. An article on HMS Falmouth and its significance has been published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. I will also continue to welcome enquiries about HMS Falmouth, especially relating to privately-held material such as documents and photographs that add such richness to Falmouth’s story. Please feel free to get in touch via info@fjordr.com. My profound gratitude goes out to the many people who have helped bring the forgotten story of HMS Falmouth back to life.

A webinar about HMS Falmouth, presented in April 2020 as part of the Nautical Archaeology Society's CovED talks, is available on ​YouTube.

Conventionally, maritime archaeology concerns itself with recording and interpreting the material remains of shipwrecks on the seabed, often blending the physical evidence with documentary sources to develop narratives that make sense of the cottered threads. Technology is intrinsic to marine archaeology: a discipline borne of diving equipment that enables people to survive under water and driven increasingly by methods of remote sensing that build up a picture from the surface of what lies beneath. Revolutions in survey technology – bathymetry, geophysics, photogrammetry and position-fixing – are enabling researchers and the public to immerse themselves in 3D models and virtual reality without stepping into the water.
 
These technological developments are remarkable and stand to change our understanding and appreciation of history so long obscured. But technology is not the only means through which people can explore marine archaeology. Words written and spoken often sit alongside video, photographs and 3D models, and marine archaeology has some captivating authors. But not many instances spring to mind of marine archaeologists expressing their findings in poetry. Equally, not all audiences are gripped by the often-technical accounts of ships and shipwrecks with which archaeologists seem most comfortable.
 
I’ve been working with a poet, Winston Plowes, to see how we might bridge the gap between technical and creative accounts of the story of the War Channels in the First World War. This first example of Winston's writing relates to the loss of the Madame Renee off Scarborough, in which Iwai Sutoe was one of ten killed:
 
In His Mother’s Arms
by Winston Plowes
 
From Thames to Tyne that day in ‘18
he tended every stroke of her
up the eastern channel.
 
Till UB-30, languid in the bay
roused and spat its charge.
Torpedoed her side with a single strike
from that clear calm crescent.
 
Madame Rene broken backed
rocked him down like a mother.
6000 miles as the whale sings
from his home in Japan.
 
She drifted still, and now
all 500 tons of her lay sleeping
with Sutoe in her arms.
 
A buoy still floats above their heads
permanently tethered.
Marking the dreams of Kobe.
 
   Coddled by this sea.
      Crossing off the years.
         Osaka Bay still listening.
 
The War Poets of the First World War are embedded in cultural life and school curricula, reflecting a creative engagement with the conflict as it was still being fought that continues with each reading over a hundred years after. The poems about the First World War that are best known are those prompted by the land war, especially the Western Front. However, poetry was also written about the war at sea and there were many examples published at the time, sometimes in poetry collections but commonly in other books and magazines. For example, there is a whole section on ‘The Sea Affair’ in The Muse in Arms, a collection by E.B. Osbourn of war poems published in 1917. Equally, Rudyard Kipling published a collection of poems and accompanying prose in 1915 called The Fringes of the Fleet about the activities of the Royal Navy on the east coast. The poems were subsequently set to music by Edward Elgar and attracted large audiences when performed. The poems are, perhaps, rather romantic and patriotic for current tastes but they still provide perspectives on the war at sea that chime in a different way to archaeological accounts.
 
One of Kipling’s poems in The Fringes of the Fleet, Submarines II (or Tin Fish), captures a sense of the war on the east coast:
 
The ships destroy us above
And ensnare us beneath.
We arise, we lie down, and we move
In the belly of Death.
 
The ships have a thousand eyes
To mark where we come …
And the mirth of a seaport dies
When our blow gets home.
 
The accompanying text makes it plain that Kipling is writing about British submarines, but it is also an apt description of the work of German U-boats on the east coast, of their difficulties in avoiding RN vessels, and of the consequences of a successful strike on east coast communities. Perhaps the ambiguity – even an equivalence – of submarine warfare on each side was in Kipling’s mind.
 
There are, therefore, echoes of poetry addressing the First World War at sea whilst it was still fought amongst our own use of poetry to explore wrecks of that conflict which still lie on the seabed. Blending past and present, Winston and I ran a creative writing workshop with the National Trust at The Word in South Shields as part of a HLF project in September 2017. Also blending our methods, the parallels between our different ways of seeing, archaeological and poetic, have been as interesting as the results:  Winston turning over scallop shells in his hands as a prompt to words in the same way I might turn over an artefact to identify its age and use. Our workshop also involved a walk along the banks of the Tyne, each taking different clues from our surroundings to interpret a wartime landscape that is much changed but still present.
 
We will be continuing our undersea explorations of the north east's maritime past at a further workshop with the National Trust at Souter Lighthouse on Wednesday 16th May – details here. Please come and join us!

The wreck and the gravestone remind us not only of a largely forgotten aspect of the war at sea in 1914-18, they remind us of the forgotten amongst the forgotten – of the role of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) seafarers around Britain’s coast. The two men washed ashore from SS Hercules were named A. Said and A. Hamid, both Firemen (stokers); the grave register initially refers to ‘2 Unknown Bodies (Arabs)’ but this is crossed out and replaced with their names. Unfortunately, there are no other details of these men in the online database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC): no ages, no next of kin; just name and rank. 

The centenary of the First World War has seen a welcome if belated focus on the role of BAME individuals in the conflict, especially as serving soldiers and in labour corps. Very little attention, however, has been directed towards BAME seafarers. Indeed, they are not the focus of my own work for Historic England, which is addressing the overall conflict between merchant shipping and U-boats on England’s east coast. But instances of BAME seafarers have come up time and again during this work and I have struggled to find a context within which to place these instances. This article is, therefore, my attempt to pull together some primary and secondary sources that might eventually give shape to a specific study, and some specific recognition.
 
The role of BAME seafarers in east coast shipping first caught my attention through the casualties associated with SS Audax, sunk off Staithes in September 1918 after being torpedoed. The CWGC database lists Ghaus Muhammed, Donkeyman, and Muhammad Abdul, Fireman, together with Second Engineer Gustav Johansson. As was often the case, their bodies were not recovered and they are commemorated on memorials rather than in graves. Gustav Johansson is commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial alongside thousands of other casualties from the Mercantile Marine. Ghaus Muhammed and Muhammed Abdul are attributed to the Indian Merchant Service and are commemorated in Mumbai on the Bombay 1914-1918 Memorial. Gustav Johansson is recorded as aged 26 with his next of kin, and that he was born in Sweden; there are no such details for Ghaus Muhammed and Muhammed Abdul. It seemed to me remarkable that these three were commemorated separately and so far from the place where they served and died. The wreck of the SS Audax still lies off the coast of North Yorkshire, amongst hundreds of other merchant ships sunk by enemy action in the First World War.

It is not hard to find other instances of BAME seafarers amongst the casualties of the East Coast War Channels. One of the earlier losses is the SS Elterwater, sunk by mines laid by the German cruiser SMS Kolberg during the Scarborough Raid in December 1914. These mines killed more people than the infamous shelling of the town, Elterwater being one of over a dozen ships sunk or damaged. Hamid Husam, Hasan Ahmed (both Firemen) and Qaid Naib (Donkeyman) are all listed by CWGC as having died on 16 December aboard SS Elterwater. All three are attributed to the Indian Merchant Service and are commemorated in Mumbai.
 
There are 1,708 members of the Indian Merchant Service commemorated on the Bombay 1914-1918 Memorial in Mumbai and a further 498 from the Royal Indian Marine, the Royal Navy and the Mercantile Marine Reserve. Although ship names are recorded, it is not possible (without a great deal of cross-referencing) to say where in the world they were lost. My point here is to underline that they were not all sunk in long distance or oceanic trades; as the examples above demonstrate, members of the Indian Merchant Service were also serving in Britain’s coastwise trade between UK ports and across to the Continent, and were lost just off the English coast.
 
There should be no surprise in this. The UK’s Mercantile Marine in the First World War was diverse with perhaps 30% being ‘foreign’. Names and places of birth, where recorded, are inadequate proxies for gauging overall diversity. However, even these details show that casualties listed in the CWGC database for east coast wrecks encompassed seafarers from around the world. As with Gustav Johansson on the Audax, Scandinavian origins are not unusual. On the SS Rio Colorado, mined just off the Tyne in March 1917, one of those lost was Fireman Ali Abdullah of the Indian Merchant Service, commemorated in Mumbai. Deaths amongst his colleagues included Firemen from Belgium and Denmark and a Spanish Donkeyman, plus Able Seamen from Norway and Sweden. As well as seafarers from England and Scotland, the casualties from SS Hercules referred to above included Able Seamen C. Kylimbas and J. Kayopolos, who is recorded as being born in Greece. The seven casualties recorded from SS Madame Renee, torpedoed off Scarborough in August 1918, were mostly from South Shields, plus Hull and Cardiff, but also included Donkeyman Iwai Sutoe born in Kobe, Japan. The SS Clan MacVey made it down the east coast from Newcastle en route for Falmouth and Port Said, but was torpedoed off Dorset: Firemen and Trimmers Ah Pow, Ah San, Ah Yong, Kah Ling and Kee Ching are all attributed to the Mercantile Marine and are commemorated on the Hong Kong Memorial (there is no next of kin information); Second Engineer Jon Hogg and Fifth Engineer Officer Alexander Fraser are also attributed to the Mercantile Marine but are commemorated at Tower Hill.

It is worth noting that as well as Firemen Hamid and Said of the Mercantile Marine buried in Whitby (and the men from the UK and Greece), the casualties of the SS Hercules also included Firemen Abdul Ali and A. Salim of the Indian Merchant Service whose bodies were not recovered and are commemorated in Mumbai. This suggests that these four Firemen were employed by different services. However, it is not clear how a distinction was drawn between Mercantile Marine and Indian Merchant Service in this case, or how this might relate to whether casualties were commemorated at Tower Hill or in Mumbai (or in Hong Kong for those with Chinese names; but Tower Hill for Japanese like Iwai Sutoe). Research by John Siblon indicates that during the 1920s the Imperial War Graves Commission sought to separate seafarers onto different memorials, so that only white British and European sailors would be commemorated in London (Siblon 2016 pp. 10-11). It is possible that 'Indian Merchant Service' is a post hoc attribution to give effect to this policy, though it appears to have been applied inconsistently in practice.
 
Another monument of direct relevance is the Lascar War Memorial in Kolkata, which was ‘erected by the shipping companies and mercantile community of Calcutta to the memory of 896 seamen of Bengal Assam & Upper India who lost their lives in the service of the British Empire in the Great War of 1914-1918’. ‘Lascar’ is also a term used in the CWGC database, but as a ‘rank’; only 347 casualties are recorded with the attribution ‘Lascar’ from the First World War, split between the Royal Indian Marine and the Indian Merchant Service and predominantly commemorated in Mumbai. 'Lascar' in the CWGC database does not equate to 'Lascar' for the purposes of the Kolkata memorial, or with broader historical uses of that term. First World War casualties included far more Asian seafarers than are referred to as Lascars in the CWGC database, with many Asian casualties having specific ranks. Irrespective, there is little sense that the casualties commemorated in Kolkata – whether termed Lascars or not – included men who died in UK waters.
 
As is apparent from the examples above, Asian and particularly Muslim seafarers were often employed in stokeholds and engine rooms, as Firemen, Trimmers, Donkeymen and so on. Trimmers moved coal around the stokeholds to keep the ship balanced (trimmed); Donkeymen tended the auxiliary ‘donkey’ boilers used to power ships’ machinery such as winches and capstans. These were amongst the worst roles on a steamship as they were physically demanding in the heat and coal dust of the machinery spaces. Roles were often allotted on racial and ethnic ‘principles'. As Woodman points out of the pre-WWI British Indian Steam Navigation Company, ‘it was practice to have Hindu sailors on deck, Muslim ratings in the engine room, and to recruit cooks and stewards from Catholic and Portuguese Goa’ (Woodman 2010 p. 152). Lane makes a similar point about liner companies when writing about the Second World War: ‘black ratings worked as firemen and cooks and stewards. The ABs [Able Seamen] were white’; but he also goes on to note of tramp companies (more typical of the east coast) that ‘there were those who engaged Arab-speaking firemen, European ABs and ethnically heterogenous cooks and stewards – and others whose crews were heterogeneous in all departments’ (Lane 1990 p. 157).
 
The engine room was not only the worst place to work, it was probably the most dangerous given the character of warfare on the east coast. Mines and torpedoes – the main weapons used against merchant ships for much of the war – exploded without warning below the waterline. If not killed or maimed by the explosion and its immediate consequences amongst the high-pressure boilers, steam pipes and furnaces, staff in the engine room would have to contend with flooding and the difficulty of escaping up through the decks from the bottom of the ship. Generally speaking, if you escaped from a ship on the east coast you had a good chance of survival because of the number of vessels in the War Channels – other merchant ships, fishing boats, minesweepers and patrol craft – that could help with rescues; but engine room staff suffered. Although the working conditions and wartime hazards of the machinery spaces applied to engine room staff of all backgrounds on the east coast, it seems likely that casualties among BAME seafarers were disproportionately higher than their overall employment because of the roles in which they were employed.

The greatest loss of life amongst BAME seafarers in UK waters in the First World War probably accompanied the sinking of the SS Maloja in February 1916. The Maloja hit a mine laid by a U-boat between Dover and Folkestone, in the Dover Sector. Unlike most of the ships lost in the War Channels, the Maloja was a Peninsula and Oriental (P&O) passenger liner en route from London to Bombay. The ship was travelling at 17 knots when it hit the mine; the engines were put full astern immediately but then could not be stopped as the engine room flooded. The vessel continued full astern while it sank, making it very difficult for rescuing ships to approach. Although many were saved, 44 men, women and children were lost amongst the passengers; the CWGC lists a further 81 casualties from the crew, 63 of whom are attributed to the Indian Merchant Service and are commemorated in Mumbai. No other information such as age, next of kin or place of birth is provided except rank – which indicates engine room staff but other roles also. A memorial in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Dover, commemorates the last resting place of 22 Lascars killed in the sinking of the Maloja; the memorial has recently been restored by P&O Heritage after a campaign by a local resident. The remains of the Maloja are still prominent on the seabed just two miles offshore. The wreck of the hospital ship Anglia lies about two miles further out. Also sunk by a mine, the Anglia has recently been designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986; no equivalent protection has been offered to the wreck of the Maloja.

Despite the individual tragedies of each vessel lost off the east coast in the First World War, most ships navigated the War Channels successfully. The number of vessels sunk by enemy action or any other cause is tiny compared to the number of shipping movements in 1914-1918. Equally, the number of individuals killed is a tiny fraction of those who served, including those injured or wounded but also many more who suffered no outward effects – traversing a deadly battlefield in the unforgiving conditions of coastal trade under the threat of sudden explosion at any minute.
 
The wrecks of ships that were sunk and still rest on the seabed today represent not just their own circumstances but also the thousands of ships that survived the War Channels. Paradoxically, these lucky vessels would end their days in the breakers yard; virtually none have been preserved so it is wrecks on the seabed that provide their lasting heritage. Similarly, the casualties amongst BAME seafarers on the east coast represent many more who survived but of whom there is now little trace: those who lost their lives point to a far greater number of BAME seafarers working in the East Coast War Channels.
 
Some sense of this can be obtained from records of seafarers rather than of casualties, though it is difficult to relate them to a particular theatre such as the East Coast War Channels. Crew lists – especially the digitised 1915 crew lists – can be searched for individual vessels to examine the composition of their crews. Izzy Mohammed of the Connected Histories project pointed me towards the crew list of the SS Dumfries, torpedoed off Trevose Head, north Cornwall in May 1915. Two men died – Habibullah Umrullah and Rajab Ali Sonia Ghazi, both commemorated in Mumbai – but the rest of the crew survived. The crew list shows that 34 of the crew of 67 were recorded as being born in Bangladesh (notably Chittagong and Sylhet) and India (e.g. Lucknow, Tripura and Midnapore) and were subsequently transferred to the SS Sutherland at Middlesbrough. Unfortunately, the Sutherland was itself sunk by a U-boat the following January in the Mediterranean, returning from Bombay to Hull. A fireman, Ali Ghulam Haidar, was lost but the rest of the crew survived.
 
The 1915 crew list dataset can also be searched as a whole for place of birth: a search shows 4,836 listed crew recorded as having Aden in Yemen as their birthplace, for example – though it should be noted that there is likely to be duplication from people being named on multiple crew lists in the course of 1915. Similarly, it is possible to search the online record for the Mercantile Marine Medal held by The National Archives (BT351/1) for place of birth. This comprises 157,425 records for seafarers who were given this award: 1,269 recipients are recorded with Aden as a place of birth, in comparison to 2,005 for South Shields and 2,957 for Hull, for example. Not all of these recipients or listed crew served on the east coast, but these figures give a sense of the overall diversity which provides context to the individual casualties referred to above.
 
The crew lists and Mercantile Marine Medal records also indicate the presence of Black seafarers. Again the proxy is imperfect (it does not help in identifying Black seafarers born in the UK, for example) but 511 recipients of the Mercantile Marine Medal give their place of birth as Jamaica, 133 as Trinidad, 255 as West Indies and so on. Direct relationships with the east coast depend, as above, on relating individuals to specific ships. For example, the crew list of the George Royle sunk off Cromer in January 1915 (in a storm rather than due to enemy action) includes C. Roberts from the West Indies amongst other crew from Italy, Finland, Netherlands, Lisbon, Romania, Serbia and the UK.
 
A more direct example of a Black seafarer on the east coast is William Savory, a fisherman from Grimsby born in Barbados. He was aboard the trawler Seti when it was attacked by German surface vessels far off the coast of Yorkshire on 26th August 1914, within the first month of the war. He and other members of the crew were captured and taken to Germany where they were allowed to be abused by civilians. Savory recounted that he was kicked and called a ‘Black pig of a mine-layer’. Savory and his companions were transferred by rail from Wilhelmshaven to Emden: ‘I was pulled out at every station for exhibition and was spat at …’ (The National Archives, FO 383/156). His account focuses on the harsh treatment of the fishermen until he was repatriated in November 1915.
 
Tomas Termote’s book on the U-boats of the Flanders flotilla includes a photograph of a captured Black seafarer with five Irish seamen on the conning tower of UC-26, which served between September 1916 and April 1917 on the east coast and in the English Channel. Unfortunately, there is no further information to indicate his vessel or circumstances (Termote 2017 p. 305).
 
Another example of a Black seafarer on the east coast is presented in an account of First World War minesweeping published as Swept Channels by ‘Taffrail’ (Taprell Dorling). He recounts the story of ‘a very old coloured gentleman from the West Indies with curly white hair who belonged to the Jamaican RNR [Royal Naval Reserve]’ serving on the minesweeping sloop HMS Alyssum. The account is presented as a humorous incident but concerns correspondence between the Black seafarer’s wife and the Commanding Officer at Grimsby where ‘she, being white, had some difficulty finding accommodation because of her dusky offspring’ (Taprell Dorling 1935 p. 127).
 
These few references indicate both the presence of Black seafarers on England’s east coast in the First World War and also the presence of racist attitudes; though some degree of integration is also implied amongst crews that were often diverse, especially in the Mercantile Marine. Understanding the experience of BAME seafarers beyond citing these instances is difficult because, as commented above, they seem largely forgotten in a theatre of the war that has itself been little studied.
 
Some context is presented by Stephen Bourne’s book, Black Poppies, covering the role of Black servicemen and the wider Black community in 1914-1919 (Bourne 2014). Black Poppies includes on the cover a photograph of Marcus Bailey – born in Barbados – in his uniform from HMS Chester. Bourne also details the race riots in 1919 that focused on BAME seafaring communities in UK port towns. A detailed biography of Marcus Bailey has recently been published online by Ian Broad as part of the African Stories in Hull & East Yorkshire project. Marcus Bailey is also discussed in Ray Costello’s Black Salt, covering the huge history of Black seafarers on British ships from the Sixteenth Century to the present (Costello 2012). Costello also presents the loss of the SS Mendi off the Isle of Wight in February 1917, a tragedy which also features as the principal account of Black seafarers in the First World War in David Olusoga’s The World’s War (Olusoga 2014 pp. 269-272).
 
The sinking of the Mendi resulted in one of the greatest losses of life in a single shipwreck around the coast of the UK in the First World War. The CWGC database records the names of 616 men of the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC) who died on 21st February 1917 when the Mendi was rammed accidentally by the Darro. These men were troops in transit across the sea rather than seafarers so although tragic, their loss does not provide much insight into the experience of BAME seafarers around the UK. As Gribble and Scott explain, the Mendi's crew of 89 included at least 25 Africans mainly from Sierra Leone, Benin and Nigeria working as deckhands, fireman, trimmers and in the galley (Gribble and Scott 2017 pp. 83-84), reflecting the Mendi's pre-war career for the British and African Steam Navigation Company on West African routes. However, the 30 members of crew who died when the Mendi sank are not named in the CWGC database or on their memorials. This lack of acknowledgement, even though they died in the same circumstances as the SANLC troops, arises because the Mendi was lost as a result of collision, which counted as ‘maritime peril’ rather than enemy action. One of the iniquities of the commemoration of those who died at sea in the First World War is that members of the Mercantile Marine and other civilian services are not remembered as ‘war dead’ unless as a direct result of enemy action, irrespective of whether their deaths were exacerbated by wartime conditions; but service personnel are commemorated whatever the cause of death. It is an unfortunate twist in a tragic story that the Mendi’s crew –  including BAME seafarers – have not received as much attention as the SANLC troops that they died alongside.
 
I have tried here to draw together some strands indicating the role of BAME seafarers on vessels traversing the east coast of England in the First World War. Some of my examples are from other areas of UK coastal waters and it is certain that many more instances can be brought to light: the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales ( RCAHMW) has highlighted West African seafarers lost on the Falaba and the Apapa off the coast of Wales; Historic England has flagged diverse crews on Sir Francis, Empress and Polesley and casualties from the Indian Merchant Service on the Medina, for example. My case is not only that BAME seafarers deserve to be remembered, but that any account of the First World War at sea which does not address the diversity of seafarers is partial and incomplete. The role of BAME seafarers in UK waters during the First World War warrants attention as well as commemoration because of the relationship between seafaring and the development of BAME communities in the UK – such as the Yemeni community in South Shields – but also to shine a light onto the experience of seafaring itself in the First World War (to compare with Lane’s chapter on ‘Sons of Empire’ in the Second World War (Lane 1990), for example). As an archaeologist, however, my concern is also for the physical remains of the World’s War on the East Coast, both in the wrecks of individual ships and in the assemblage of wrecks that marks this battlefield as a whole. If you want to see a monument to BAME seafaring in the First World War you don’t have to travel as far as Mumbai or Hong Kong. Give some thought to the wrecks that lie just off our coast, and look out to sea.

References
Bourne, S., 2014, Black Poppies: Britain's Black community and the Great War. Stroud: History Press.
Costello, R., 2012, Black Salt: seafarers of African descent on British ships. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Gribble, J. and Scott, G., 2017, We Die Like Brothers: the sinking of the SS Mendi. Swindon: Historic England.
Lane, T., 1990, The Merchant Seamen's War. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Olusoga, D., 2014, The World's War: forgotten soldiers of empire. London: Head of Zeus.
Siblon, J., 2016, 'Negotiating Hierarchy and Memory: African and Caribbean troops from former British colonies in London's imperial spaces'. The London Journal 2016, 1-14. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03058034.2016.1213548.
Termote, T., 2016, War Beneath the Waves: U-boat Flottilla Flandern 1915-1918. London: Uniform.
Woodman, R., 2010, More Days, More Dollars: the universal bucket chain 1885-1920. Stroud: History Press.

Further resources
Black Salt Exhibition
British Library
Imperial War Museum
Marcus Bailey - African Stories in Hull & East Yorkshire

This article reflects discussion with a great many people over the last couple of years, for which I am very grateful. I hope to develop a collaborative initiative on BAME seafaring in the First World War and I would welcome comments via info@fjordr.com.

I first became interested in Motor Launches in the course of my work for Historic England on the War Channels as a result of an intriguing title in the Naval Military Press catalogue: ‘Hounding the Hun from the Seas’. This is a ripping yarn published in 1919 about the origins and actions of the Motor Launches. It prompted me to search around the web and I quickly found Jeffrey Charles’ excellent website about the ‘Movies’, which provides a great deal of background information. This site also referenced the remains of a ML in a boatyard in Isleworth, noting that the vessel ‘was now a total wreck. At some point, during a housekeeping day, I expect her remains will be pulled out and hauled to the tip’. The accompanying photos had been taken in 2009. The question was, had this unique vessel been entirely lost?
 
A little more online searching suggested that if it still survived, the remains of the ML were located behind a covered pontoon. I dropped a line to colleagues at the Thames Discovery Programme (TDP) based at MOLA and asked if they could have a look if they happened to be passing.
 
The good news came back that ML 286 did still survive, though in poor condition. TDP arranged to carry out some recording with volunteers from their Foreshore Recording & Observation Group (aka FROGs) and I was able to visit myself on 5 June 2015. TDP has returned to carry out further recording by volunteers in 2016 and 2017 and are close to having a full record of the visible remains. I was again able to join them with Stephen Fisher of the Spitfires of the Sea website, which sets out the importance of the ML’s in the industrialisation of vessel manufacture in the First World War.
 
A further interesting dimension of the ML story is the imagery of them held in the collections of the Imperial War Museum. This includes many historic photographs of MLs in UK waters and in other theatres, but it also includes sketches and paintings of MLs by a range of war artists. I’ve collected some of these together on Pinterest here. I was especially taken by the sketches of day to day activity on an ML, including quite detailed portraits of the crew and their surroundings. As well as providing insight into the everyday conduct of the First World War at sea, these sketches show the identifiable – though unnamed – faces of ratings as well as officers. Typically, the imagery of the First World War at Sea focusses on vessels and officers – there seem to be relatively few images of ‘ordinary’ seamen, especially compared to images of solders: Jack is much less visible than Tommy in our histories of the First World War.
 
One of the war artists responsible for the imagery has a particularly close relationship to the MLs. Geoffrey Allfree commanded MLs as well as illustrated them; and sadly he died with almost all his crew while commanding ML 247 when it was caught in a storm off Clodgy Point, St. Ives on 29 September 1918. Remarkably, research by TDP volunteers has demonstrated that Geoffrey Allfree was the first commander
of ML 286, adding to the significance of its remains at Isleworth.
 
Although the term ‘Motor Launch’ might imply a utility or service craft for harbour work or as tenders to bigger ships, they were designed from the start as fighting vessels – specifically as ‘submarine chasers’. The intention was that numerous fast boats would be able to chase down and attack U-boats. 550 were made using new production line techniques in the United States and assembled in Canada before being shipped over to the UK. They were armed with a 3-pounder gun and were capable of 19 knots. They were subsequently equipped with depth charges and performed a very wide range of roles both in UK waters and further afield.
 
There are various references to MLs in the East Coast War Channels, including in the regular escorting of convoys.  For example, a telegram in May 1918 reports a steamer in a southbound convoy being blown up off Roker Lighthouse, Sunderland, prompting the accompanying MLs to fire and drop depth charges in the vicinity. In August 1918, ML 403 was dispatched to make safe a spent German torpedo – presumably fired by a U-boat – that had been spotted in Runswick Bay, Yorkshire. Unfortunately, the torpedo exploded while being disarmed; there was just one survivor.
 
MLs also took part in some major actions, notably the raids on the German-held ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge in spring 1918. These audacious raids involved sinking blockships in the main shipping channels to prevent their use by U-boats; ML’s were used in the thick of the fighting to recover the men from the blockships. Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions aboard ML 282 in the Zeebrugge raid, and ML 254 and ML 276 in the second Ostend raid.
 
After the war, many MLs were stripped of their guns and fast engines and sold off to become motor yachts. ML 286 became Cordon Rouge and subsequently Eothen. As Eothen, ML 286 saw action once again, as one of the Little Ships at Dunkirk that transferred soldiers from the beaches to the waiting ships.
 
Although they were not used by the Royal Navy in the Second World War, there is a direct line between the MLs and the small fighting vessels of the Coastal Forces. Motor Anti-Submarine Boats (MASB or MA/SB) were introduced with a similar role to MLs, but U-boats did not prove to be a menace in UK coastal waters for most of the Second World War. Rather, it was Germany’s fast torpedo boats – E-boats or more properly S-boats – that had to be countered; and the MASBs evolved into increasingly powerful Motor Gun Boats (MGBs).
 
The remains of ML 286 in Isleworth are – as far as we know – all that remains of the First World War MLs. These remains are highly significant on several counts, yet they are clearly very degraded. Restoration of such decayed timber is unlikely to be practical, and conservation for the longer term of the remains in their current condition would be difficult and costly. Nonetheless, a variety of solutions can be contemplated that would help safeguard the history of this vessel and what it represents, and which could bring its story to a wider audience.

Suzanne Marie Taylor presents a detailed account of ML 286 – 'A Little Ship with a big anniversary' – on YouTube in May 2020 as part of the Nautical Archaeology Society's CovED programme.
 
Further reading:
Lieutenant M P S (RNVR), 1919, Hounding the Hun from the Sea: a tale of the British MLs on the High Seas. Naval Military Press.
Maxwell, Gordon S., 1920, The Motor Launch Patrol. London: Dent.

The conflict over the East Coast War Channels largely took place quite close inshore, within the 12-mile limit of today’s UK territorial waters. In contrast, the Dover Sector reaches right across from England to the Continental shore: it is hardly possible to make sense of the Dover Sector in either the First or Second World War by looking only at what happened in English waters; and the significance of the heritage sites – such as ship- and aircraft wrecks – derives in part from activities and events in the waters of the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Accordingly, the boundaries of the Dover Sector project are, in the north east, a line from North Foreland to Westkapelle in the Netherlands and, in the south west, a line from Dungeness to Le Touquet. The Continental coast included in the project area encompasses the Western Scheldt, Zeebrugge, Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne and Etaples – names that resonate as much as Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate.

The project is focussing on the surviving remains of the First and Second World War in the Dover Sector, especially those that fall within the remit of Historic England’s advice. As well as sites in the marine area, the project is also addressing sites on land whose primary role was related to the war at sea, such as the infrastructure of wireless, coastguard and air stations.

Of course, these conflicts did not keep to neat geographical or thematic boundaries, but the intention is to help place individual heritage assets within their wider landscapes, and to show how these landscapes related to each other and changed over time, within and between the two wars. There are some key commonalities between the war at sea in the Dover Sector in the First and Second World War; but also some important contrasts.

As well as looking at heritage sites and landscapes, the Dover Sector project is seeking to raise public awareness of the war at sea in the First World War in particular, to coincide with the current centenary. As a result, Fjordr is working with the CBA’s Home Front Legacy project, CITiZAN and other national and local organisations to draw attention to the First World War at sea and to encourage people to get involved in recording archaeological sites.

The results of the Dover Sector project will be made available in a report online and other material. Please watch this space and look out for #DoverSector on Twitter.