STRANDED ASIATIC AND AFRICAN SAILORS.
[To the Editor of the SeacTATon.]
SIR,—Some years ago—I think in 1915—I noticed in the daily papers a paragraph to the effect that the Annual Meeting for the Strangers' Home for Asiatics and Africans had been held at the Mansion House. Since then I have heard of no other similar meeting, and the latest annual report which I have seen is dated 1917. It would be lamentable were se useful an institution to languish for want of public support. That its work is continuing I know, having been in the habit of visiting it from time to time, and sometimes getting valuable linguistic help from East Africans temporarily stranded there. (I may add that I have found these men—firemen and deck- hands—usually very intelligent and always well-behaved.)
But the fact of their being stranded there—sometimes for months together—raises another point, which the Home is unable to touch. These men are paid off on their arrival at a British port, and often find it difficult to get another berth owing to captains being unwilling—perhaps unable—to ship coloured men, even as firemen or stokers. It is next to impos- sible for them, . however willing, to find other employment when there are already so many seeking work. They live on their pay till that is exhausted and then have to live on credit- or charity, if that be obtainable—till a ship is available. One man now at the Strangers' Home was paid off at Cardiff on April 251.h, and I have known other's there much longer. Naturally the funds of the institution cannot support such a drain indefinitely.
Surely it seems only right that captains who engage hands in a tropical port should let them sign on for the return voyage —if not to their own country, at least to some port within reach of it—such as Aden or Bombay in the case of Zanzibar or Mombasa men. It may be urged that British ships want to employ only British men ; but, apart from the injustice to the men themselves, it will be far worse for this country in the end if they are ultimately to come on the rates, or drift into the underworld of crime. And this, from what I know of the men—the Africans, at any rate—would be nothing less than the gratuitous manufacture of criminals.—I am, Sir, &c., A. WERNER.
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