Non-European communities

Arrival did not always mean permanent settlement. A sailor might spend weeks or months in Britain waiting for another voyage, return regularly throughout his working life, or leave seafaring and settle ashore. Lodging houses, businesses and families gradually turned these movements into established communities.

Lascars: overseas sailors working on British ships

Lascars were sailors recruited mainly from the Indian subcontinent. The East India Company had employed them in small numbers since the seventeenth century. Over time, the term broadened to include sailors from other backgrounds, including Chinese and East African men. It did not describe one nationality or religion.

British ships recruited lascars partly because they needed replacement crews. Some British sailors died or deserted in India. During wartime, the Royal Navy also drew sailors away from merchant shipping. During the Napoleonic Wars, the number of lascars employed on British ships rose from 224 in 1803 to 1,336 in 1813.

Many came from coastal areas such as Gujarat and Malabar in western India and the area now called Bangladesh. As demand increased, recruiters also sought men inland, including in Punjab. The prospect of a regular income encouraged men to take this work.

Lascars worked as deckhands, cooks and other crew members. The growth of steamships during the nineteenth century created further jobs feeding coal into furnaces. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 strengthened shipping connections between Britain and Asia and increased demand for their labour.

Unequal work and the growth of Indian communities

Shipping companies benefited from employing lascars because they paid them less than European sailors. Lascars worked under contracts called Asiatic Articles, which set different pay and conditions from European Articles. Engine-room work was exhausting and dangerously hot. Employers claimed that Asian sailors were better suited to the heat, but this was a racist justification for allocating difficult work to poorly paid crews.

Hardship could continue after a ship reached Britain. Sailors sometimes waited months for a return voyage without proper accommodation from their employers. Some became destitute. Concern among Christian missionaries helped lead to the establishment of the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders in London’s East End in 1856.

Other lascars deserted because of low pay or harsh treatment. Some hoped to sign on under European Articles, which could double or treble their wages. Small Indian working-class communities developed in London, Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow.

Settlers found different ways to earn a living. Some continued sailing; others sold goods, performed music or opened lodging houses, cafés and curry houses serving fellow sailors. Some married local English or Irish women and raised families. These relationships helped root communities in Britain, although couples could face racist abuse.

Indian sailors therefore contributed both to Britain’s overseas economy and to life ashore. Their labour carried goods and passengers across imperial trading routes, while their businesses and families became part of British port neighbourhoods.

Chinese communities in Liverpool and Limehouse

Chinese settlement was also closely connected to shipping. Trade between Liverpool and China helped a Chinese community develop in Liverpool from the 1850s. Chinese communities also formed around London’s docks and in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay.

British companies recruited Chinese seamen in China’s treaty ports, where foreign powers had gained trading rights. Some could be employed for less than half the wage of a British seaman. Sailors who left their ships and settled opened lodging houses, provision shops, cafés and laundries. These businesses served visiting crews as well as residents, linking permanent settlement to continuing maritime trade.

By 1890, two small Chinese communities could be distinguished in East London. Men from Shanghai lived around Pennyfields, Amoy Place and Ming Street. Migrants from Guangzhou, also known as Canton, and southern China lived around Limehouse Causeway. These local differences show that Chinese migrants did not form one uniform group.

Language difficulties and hostility from British seamen contributed to separation from surrounding communities. Racist ‘Yellow Peril’ ideas portrayed Chinese people as dangerous or untrustworthy. Britain’s victories in the Opium Wars of 1839–42 and 1856–60 intensified suspicions that Chinese migrants might seek revenge. These were prejudiced fears rather than evidence of migrants’ intentions.

Despite such hostility, Chinese businesses became established features of dockside life. Limehouse’s community remained small and depended heavily on the sailors using the port; it was not the same as today’s Chinatown in London’s West End.

African seafarers and settlement in Liverpool

African migration likewise grew through Britain’s maritime connections. After Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807, trade in goods between Britain and West Africa expanded. British industries imported materials such as timber and palm oil, which was used in soap and candle manufacture, while manufactured goods were exported to Africa.

During the 1860s and 1870s, steam increasingly replaced sail on these routes. Steamships were less dependent on winds and could make faster, more frequent journeys. They also required workers for hot, dirty engine-room jobs.

From the 1880s, Liverpool companies such as Elder Dempster increasingly recruited West African sailors. One reason was that British crew members became ill or died from diseases such as malaria and yellow fever on West African voyages. Companies also sought the financial advantages of lower wages. African crews received inferior provisions, while captains and officers remained white British. As with lascars, employers used racist claims about tolerance of heat to justify unequal treatment.

Recruits included Gambians, men from the Gold Coast, now Ghana, and Sierra Leoneans. Kru sailors provide a particularly clear example of migration in stages. Originally from Liberia, some moved to Freetown in Sierra Leone to find work aboard ships. Some then travelled to Liverpool and eventually settled there: they were ‘twice migrants’.

Sailors stayed in hostels and boarding houses near the docks in Toxteth, south Liverpool. Higher wages for voyages beginning in Britain, opportunities for work ashore, better living standards and relationships with local women encouraged some to remain. Others continued moving between Liverpool and West Africa. Somali sailors were also recruited from the mid-nineteenth century, showing that African seafaring migration extended beyond West Africa.

Small communities with an important impact

Indian, Chinese and African communities had different origins, but shipping connected their experiences. Imperial expansion and industrial demand brought sailors to Britain; unequal employment and racism shaped their lives; and work, businesses and family relationships encouraged settlement.

These communities were small, but their significance was greater than their size. Their labour supported Britain’s merchant fleet, and their settlement helped make port cities places where people from many backgrounds lived and worked together long before twentieth-century mass migration.