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the urban is again evoked in the steamer's characterisation as a ‘small town’, a description which is employed here in relation to its industrial means of propulsion. Like the plan, descriptions of steamship space relied upon certain omissions. The actual labour conditions of the engine and boiler rooms are absent from this description. As will become clear, the steamer could be characterised as a well-ordered reproduction of exclusive land-based spaces only through both discursive and material processes of discipline and exclusion
shovelled coal in the ship's boilers – yet the passengers’ separation from the productive processes of steamship mobility which facilitated the ship's production as a domestic space also meant that their experience of this labour was infrequent. What passenger cognisance there was of the crew's circumstances could be rationalised through ideological claims regarding the corporeal naturalness of shipboard labour conditions. Robert Bowne Minturn travelled from Bombay to Suez on the Ganges in 1857. In the Red Sea, he writes, ‘the weather is so intensely
harsh physical punishment, an unending routine of gruelling and uncompensated physical labour, constant surveillance by owners and overseers, and a very low material standard of living. Of course, the majority of enslaved African-Americans endured these forms of abuse, but many ‘free’ labourers in both historical and contemporary contexts experienced or are experiencing labour
labour, would also assist in reducing the opportunities to drift into unfree labour conditions. Taken together, Palmer, Lethem, and Willis believed that a well-regulated pilgrimage would benefit colonial political and economic interests while simultaneously mitigating some of the worst conditions and outcomes that West African pilgrims faced on their
employment of indigenous sailors on USSCo. steamers equally objectionable. Although trading from Australia or New Zealand into the Pacific could not be classed as coasting, in these trades it became the norm to maintain coasting labour conditions and, hence, white labour. In 1884 the USSCo. removed all Islander labour from ships trading between Auckland and islands in the Pacific. The
colonization’. 37 In stark contrast to international accusations of slavery-like recruitment and labour conditions, the official narrative was thus one about the civilising nature of work and the exemplary conditions in which it took place among an estimated 66,000 people transferred from Angola to São Tomé between 1876 and 1904. 38 Work, like religion – which was invoked in other contexts – embodied the transforming nature of the
, reciprocating engines and other mechanisms were often described for their technical wonder, it was unusual to read of the living and working conditions of the men who built and operated these vessels, or to see crew members in the photographs and posters of ships which instead emphasised mechanical size and scale. 37 This deflected attention from less than salutary labour conditions on board, particularly in
blunders year after year as we do’. 56 Indigenous workers also influenced the course of this developing industry through demands for improved labour conditions. From the early 1900s, the USSCo., rather than the colonial state, met increasing demands for travel and food allowances to and from Suva and provided housing for men during their employment in town. In 1911 translated
Kong’s labour conditions attracted the periodic attention of social reformers and manufacturing interests in Britain. In the mid-1960s, Elsie Elliott’s campaigns included visits to London to encourage parliamentary intervention. 57 David Clayton has shown that British governmental pressure was crucial in pushing the adoption of the eight-hour day for female workers in the late 1960s, and London
freedoms. In the steam age, sailors began to forge more regular and stable connections to family, mixed more often with non-seafarers and had the opportunity to compare their labour conditions more directly with workers ashore. As a result, she argues, they challenged the stereotype of the wayward, drunk, irresponsible seafarer and opposed increased state regulation of wage