Naval officers bent upon learning something of the merchant marine would do well to learn first something of what a merchant seaman is. Anybody’s definition of a Merchant seaman will generally evoke concepts abstracted from Chaucer through Conrad to Colin Glencannon, the hilarious and fictional Scottish chief engineer created by the late Guy Gilpatrick. Naval officers need not feel remiss; they share with Admiralty Courts this inability to define precisely a merchant seaman. For the merchant mariner defies stereotyping, since his ranks include everyone from the ship’s master to the hairdresser in the ship’s beauty salon in a luxury finer.
The history of the merchant mariner has been interlaced with navies since the inception of the latter. Yet, while Admiral Mahan Seated the merchant service as the raison d'être for navies, today it appears that U. S. dipping stands to serve the U. S. Navy in the projection of American foreign policy. Whatever the nexus, it is important that the naval officer has an appreciation of what a Merchant mariner is and represents. As in the Past, the future of both are bound by the sea, whether in passing ships, the Military Sea transportation Service, merchant marine logistic support to the Fleet, or possibly in the Navy’s statutory obligation, under R. S. 1433, to act as Consul in the affairs of U. S. seamen where there is no resident consul.
As a group, seamen have certain characteristics acquired through the history of their labor and the evolution of seaman’s law. The Coincidence of seafaring and the law of seamen is at least as old as the Code of Hammurabi. The ancient world of Babylonia regulated the seaman as a chattel slave, and even in the late Middle Ages. Maritime law evolved in the form of codes based upon customs, traditions, and the practices of merchants in the trade-centers of the European and Eastern Mediterranean littoral. Generally. a particular code bore the name of the city practicing that code, e.g., Tables of Amalfi and the Consulado del Mare of Barcelona in the Mediterranean area; Laws of Visby in Northern Europe; Laws of Oleron in Western Europe and England.
The chronological development of the various codes is not certain and they vary in particulars; nevertheless, there is a striking similarity in the character of the codes that is attributed to the diffusion of practices along the trade routes fostered by the Crusades, war, and the peripatetic merchant. The similarity is found in the principles governing the relationship between the master and crew, their obligations one to another, and their joint responsibility to the ship and cargo. Imprisonment and forfeiture of wages were the inevitable consequences should the seaman depart from his contract with the ship owner for whatever reason. Thus, seamen could be compelled to sail unseaworthy ships or to work under conditions of oppression through the deceit or guile of the shipowner. These precepts of punishment passed to American maritime law from the Laws of Oleron through British law and the colonial courts of Admiralty. Ultimately, “involuntary servitude” became the keystone of the American seaman’s struggle for a legal status that would unbolt the door to the social and economic benefits enjoyed by his fellow citizens ashore.
In spite of a war to free slaves, the American seaman carried the burden of involuntary servitude until late in the 19th century when he declared his own war. The first battle—the one he dared not lose—was to secure the right to leave a ship in a safe port without arrest for desertion, and the right to bargain over his wages. With these rights, the seaman would then be free to exercise initiative for his betterment.
The fight for freeman status promised to be a tough one. The traditional contract between master/shipowner and seaman had to be broken, for it was based on the premise that harsh punishment was necessary to preserve the master’s authority and safeguard the success of a voyage during the eras of isolation and sail-speed communications. Inevitably, the mantle of leadership of the seamen fell on Andrew Furuseth.
Furuseth, a Norwegian by birth and a deep-water sailorman, arrived on the maritime labor scene at the birthing stages of seamen’s unions in San Francisco, 1885. Intellectual and foremast sailor, he soon became an elected, as well as a spiritual leader, in the mariners’ fight for emancipation. Furuseth turned to a program of legislative reform. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had made general maritime law the exclusive province of the Federal government and successive acts provided for the punishment of seamen and the allotment of their wages to “first creditors.” Implementation of these laws by crimps, among other land-sharks, in conspiracy with unscrupulous ship masters, kept the seaman locked in a bondage he found next to impossible to escape. To reform the impositions made possible by law, Furuseth began by promoting the passage of the Maguire Act of February 1895. This act succeeded in freeing the seaman of the imprisonment penalty for deserting a vessel in the coastwise trade and prohibited allotment of wages in that trade. It also showed a fine regard for the sensibilities of seamen by exempting their clothing from attachment. The Maguire Act was immediately followed by a test in the Supreme Court: the Arago case (Robertson v. Baldwin) (1897).
In May 1895, certain seamen signed articles at San Francisco for a foreign voyage m the barkentine Arago. The description of the voyage, as set forth in the Articles, provided for a coastwise run before the Arago departed the United States for Valparaiso, Chile. While on the coasting run, the aforementioned seamen, dissatisfied with conditions on board the Arago, quit the ship at Astoria, Oregon. The men were arrested, placed in irons and returned to San Francisco for trial. The defense of the men was based on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution; which forbids involuntary servitude. In a decision rendered on 25 January 1897, the Supreme Court determined that the Arago’s coastwise passage was but one leg of a foreign voyage; therefore, the Maguire Act did not apply. Finally, the majority opinion exempted seamen from the Thirteenth Amendment and fell on the ancient sea codes to sustain its findings.
In face of legislation upon the subject desertion and absence without leave, which was in force in this country for more than sixty years before the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted and similar legislation abroad from time immemorial, it cannot be open to doubt that the provisions against involuntary servitude was never intended to apply to their contracts.
The seamen were dismayed by the decision which the San Francisco Examiner so adequately described: “According to the highest tribunal which can pass on the matter, the difference between a deep-water sailor and a slave is $15 per month.”
There was some hope for the future in the one dissenting opinion of Justice John Harland, which augured future legislative sympathy and which was realized by some legal gains in following acts. But for 20 years, it required the zealotry of Furuseth to pressure the legislature for the seaman’s act that would once and for all emancipate the sailor. As is of ten the story, success was made possible by tragedy. The Titanic disaster of 1912 shocked nation and Congress to action in maritime affairs and in 1915, Senator Robert La Follette sponsored the bill that tied safety at sea and the emancipation of seamen together in the Seaman’s Act of 1915.
La Follette sent a wire to the Sailors Union of the Pacific as follows:
As you meet to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of your organization I rejoice that in the Providence of God I am permitted at last to hail you as free men under the Constitution of our country. The Fourth of March, 1915, is your emancipation day. The act approved by President Wilson makes America sacred soil and the Thirteenth Amendment finally becomes a covenant of refuge for the seamen of the world. In the years to come, as you commemorate this great event, you should dedicate a part of the service to the memory of Andrew Furuseth. Except for his intelligent, courageous and unswerving devotion to your cause for twenty-one years you would be bondsmen instead of free men today.
Freedom for the sailor was guaranteed under Sections 7 and 4 of the Act, which respectively granted: the right to leave his vessel in any safe port, foreign or domestic, without penalty of imprisonment, and the right to draw one-half wages earned in any port of loading or discharge.
His own man now, the seaman enjoyed increased prosperity and living conditions, enlivened by the pressures of World War for I his services. Unfortunately, the prosperity was short-lived. Following an ill-advised strike in 1921, that brought the unions to impotency, the 1920s were years of shipping depression that negated the effects of the Seaman’s Act by driving both living conditions and wages down, down, down. The Depression was relieved by the National Inustrial Recovery Act of 1933. This Act—guaranteeing all workers the right to organize, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing and free from interference, coercion, or intimidation of their employers—excited the dormant seaman’s unions to action, and in 1934, the West Coast seamen “hit the bricks” in a violent bloodletting strike that is still commemorated annually by the rank and file.
Revival of the unions in 1934 was followed by years of waterfront chaos marked by sporadic strikes, internecine warfare, and the advent of new unions. For the unions it was a testing period for survival as they searched for stability and organization to consolidate their newly found power. World War II ended this tenuous period for maritime unions by bringing an unparalleled demand for shipping and seamen. The war brought tragedies, but it also introduced an era of wage increases, improved working standards, and better living conditions that, abetted by the effective power of collective bargaining, have continued to the present. In fact, the beneficence of collective bargaining under established unionism has dampened any need for further legislation on behalf of the seaman.
If the seaman resented having to fight to abolish the punishment provided by law, he could not complain of the concomitant legal patronage that has made him the “Ward of the Admiralty.” Much of society and law still think of the seaman as described by Richard Henry Dana’s daughter in her reminiscences of her father:
In writing the story, he had been filled with a desire to enlighten the public about the real situation, so hard and often so unjust, of the seamen in our merchant marine. Certain details of the life he had suppressed as inartistic, repulsive to readers, and not greatly affecting the sailors—grown callous in their vagrant life—such as the loathsome sanitary conditions, the vermin infested wood, the beetles they picked from their clothing, the bedbugs they skimmed from their mugs of tea and bowls of stew, the habits of men drawn largely from the slums and by-ways of humanity, and from whom there was no escape, no privacy, day or night.
Dana’s no longer valid description nonetheless continues to compel Congress to guard every aspect of the sailor’s labor life. The legislature, much guided by the ancient codes, has made the seaman possibly the most statutorily regulated workman on the labor front. It is not within the limits of this article to attempt to discuss seaman’s law in any detail other than to indicate its scope. The application of seaman’s law begins when the seaman signs articles for a voyage and it includes, inter alia: the particulars of voyage engagement and discharge; payment of wages; matters of discipline; diet; sanitation and living quarters; hours of labor; right to suit in rem, based upon a maritime lien; right to cause the seaworthiness of a vessel to be determined; maintenance and cure; privilege of suit in a Federal Court without fees for filing or posting of security for cost of suit.
Obviously, the seamen of Dana’s day no more resemble contemporary seamen than yesterday’s freighter resembles today’s. Most of today’s seamen are militant union men who find their esprit de corps in the union and are strongly aware of the benefits gained through unionism under the tough and astute leadership of men produced from within their ranks. Today’s unions have the respectability of established institutions providing health, welfare, training, and pension programs unimagined by seamen a generation ago. The union offers stability to the sailor’s life and in many ways has supplanted the church and those concerned elements of society that sought to ease the burden of his vocation in yesteryear. Yet, though many of them are homeowners and taxpayers, concerned with college tuition for their children, their instinct for survival will not let them forget their canvasback forebears. Memories of “bucko” mates and brutal punishment, execrable living conditions, and dockside exploitation die hard. Images of the way things are and recollections of the way things were influence the attitude of today’s seaman and often foster a Pyrrhonic attitude toward organizations other than his own—e.g-, the military.
No discussion of merchant seamen can avoid the sometimes sensitive relations between the seaman and the military. The function is most prevalent in time of war. Yet, even in peacetime, unfortunate situations are usually further aggravated by the absence of anyone on the scene with jurisdiction over, or knowledge of, the seamen. No attempt will be made here to find fault other than to suggest that there exists an opportunity for better liaison between the military and the seamen, possibly by assignment of officers with intimate knowledge of the maritime industry to work with union representatives.
The future of the seaman, as always, is marred by the uncertainty of steady employment The bitter pill of automation threatens to decimate his ranks, although it remains only a supposition. The speed, size, and technology of newer ships may only require an adaptation to new working patterns and skills. Certainly his future enmeshed with that of the U. S. Navy, firm as Admiral Thomas H. Moorer has pointed out, the reduction of U. S. bases overseas under the burgeoning nationalism of new states will force future U. S. operations abroad to depend on mobile seaborne bases. It is inconceivable that such operations will be possible without the support of a viable merchant marine manned by the sine qua non American seaman.