One invisible part of the early maritime history of Australia is the role of Chinese seamen.
For many European sailors, the Chinese were seen as a threat to their livelihood
We continue our feature on maritime heritage links with China, common around Australian ports in the Victorian era were Chinese seamen working on vessels in the South East Asia and China trade.
The Chinese had long undertaken deep sea voyages, but with the arrival of European ships, Chinese junks were driven from the sea. By 1826, one paper noted the arrival in Antwerp of a Chinese owned ship with a Chinese crew as “remarkable”. In 1848 Captain Kellett sailed a Chinese coastal junk to Britain, to charge admission on it as a curio. The crew were told where they were going only after they had lost sight of land. The “odd looking crew” became part of the exhibit.
The Chinese people continued to be seafarers, but in other people’s vessels as more lowly members of the crew.
From white settlement we had a close relationship with the British East India Company. Their fleet often relied on Indian, and sometime Chinese, crewmen. Ships trading in tea, often traversed the globe via Australia, or brought supplies of tea here. Immigrant ships from China were also frequent visitors in the 1850s to 1870s. In the later nineteenth and early 20th century, Chinese crew were commonly encountered on trading steamers, particularly vessels operating from Hong Kong and Singapore.
Chinese crewmembers were not an uncommon sight in Australian harbours, but Chinese crews are almost never mentioned in the news. All the shipping intelligence was focussed on the exploits of the European officers. Chinese crew members get a mention when there was some mishap, or the unfortunate seamen landed in court.
The records for Chinese seamen are sparse until the gold rush, when regular European crews were deserting for the goldfields, leaving a fleet of sailing ships rotting away at anchor in Port Phillip Bay. By 1853, shipping agents were advertising the availability of Chinese crews in the Argus. In December 1853 the owner of the Newcastle lighter “Arthur” was selling his vessel with its Chinese crew of three, who worked for only 4 shillings a week and were under contract for five years.
While cheap, shipowners also saw them as politically untrustworthy with newspapers labelling any political turmoil in China as “piracy”, “rebellion” and “rioting”. Chinese crewmen were seen as potentially mutinous, although a survey of the news shows little Chinese involvement in violence against their captains in Australian waters. More common are reports of actions by Water Police attempting to round up “deserters” and actions in court by seamen for the recovery of unpaid wages. This hints at the treatment and working conditions being often poor and exploitative, as they were for many European seamen too.
It seems that Chinese crewmen generally complied with contracts scrupulously, but it wasn’t always reciprocated, “Captain Atkinson, of the ship Ralph Thomson, appeared on summons at the suit of one of his Chinamen, Amoy, who demanded his wages and his discharge”. The newspaper was dismissive, “After the ceremony of breaking the plate upon taking the oath [Australian courts allowed this traditional Chinese oath making ritual], … which is too notoriously the main feature of these Chinese seamen’s complaints. Mr. Brenan dismissed the case, making it, however, a proviso that Amoy should not be taken to any European port without his free consent”. This condition rather suggests that he was being illegally held against his contract terms.
When there was crew trouble it got a lot of space in a news column. In 1855, the “Tremalga” was at Eden with a Chinese crew and passengers. She wasn’t a happy ship. The captain was only said to have been “troubled by insubordination” and there is almost no detail about the grievances. Three of the crew ran away and were recaptured by police. Then police had to go on board to quell a “riot”. It obviously wasn’t much of a riot as the three arrested ringleaders were released the next day on a promise of good behaviour.
It is more likely that Chinese crews were relatively quiet, deferential and industrious. In 1851, an unusual remark (because it is so positive), notes “with pleasure”, the Chinese crew of the “Randall” in the pit of a Port Adelaide theatre, “all in neat uniforms, and evidently enjoying the performance”, the paper noted “their quiet behaviour and clean dresses”.
Shipowners were beginning to see them as a handy way to cut costs and stay competitive. Fellow seamen generally saw the Chinese workers as a threat to their wages and conditions. In 1869, British seamen petitioned the government, complaining about foreign sailors now making up to 25% of the crews of British ships. By 1878, there was a strike by AUSN Coy seamen to thwart plans to increasingly use Chinese crews on ships in Australian waters. This issue drew a crowd of 2000 to a public meeting in Brisbane as White Australia sentiment began to rise in the country.
A few months later, the whole 29 man Chinese crew, (mainly firemen, carpenters and sailors) of the AUSN Coy steamer “Watonga” went on strike and were arrested when they refused to work. The captain had been holding back three months of wages, when the rest of the crew were paid monthly. They also complained about poor food. In the end the crew accepted being fired in return for release of their back wages.
In the end it all got too difficult and the company acceded to public demands and removed Chinese crews, damaging the company’s finances in the process. As the number of Chinese in Australia shrank, thanks to anti-Chinese legislation, if anything the commentary got even more shrill.
On the other side of the ledger, shipowners looked at it in purely financial terms. Their early reticence to employ Chinese seamen had completely disappeared, at least for menial work. One captain proclaimed in 1908 that “the Chinaman is more efficient than the Britisher, especially in the stokehold”. It was grimy and exhausting work that Europeans hated doing anyway.
In 1910 the “Strathness” put in to Adelaide and the Chinese firemen all deserted, claiming the second officer had kicked a Chinese fireman, Pun Yan, to death and that the other officers had quickly buried him at sea to hide it. The evidence made it pretty clear that Pun Yan had been beaten. The European officers rejected the evidence of the Chinese sailors and said that he had refused to work and was ill and may have died of disease instead. On the officer’s own admission he had beaten a man with a piece of wood, who was probably weak with illness, for shirking work. The officer involved was found not guilty.
By 1925, Chinese sailors had their own union and were busy with regular complaints about food and wages. They struck for wage parity at the same time as British seamen. Sometimes they walked off vessels en masse and started to look and sound more like our own seaman’s union.
However, it wasn’t to be until the end of the White Australia policy that it became unfashionable to lampoon the contributions of non-Europeans. Now we can review what little is left of our Chinese-linked maritime history. It isn’t much, because Europeans rarely recorded Chinese names that they could not pronounce, and if they did, they could not spell them consistently. Individual seamen are largely lost to time. Group photos of the crew on the quarterdeck seem to conspicuously exclude Chinese crew. What we have in a few instances are their bones, abandoned on the seabed when they went down with their ships.
Next part of the story we will follow the wreck of the “Fido” off the Gold Coast, and what became of her Chinese crew.
Stop the Boats! – Wreck of the Fido
It was big news when, on 18 July 1907, the new Norwegian steamer “Fido” stranded off Tweed Heads and was wrecked. Landing with the crew were nine Chinese firemen. She lay inconveniently on the border between Queensland and NSW. The Europeans landed on the south side of the river in NSW and were allowed to stay, while the Chinese crossed over to the north side of the Tweed where they were immediately taken in to custody by Queensland police. One wonders if the captain put them over the river and across a State boundary to evade the costs of dealing with them. He claims he was frightened that he could not control them in the present conditions. At no time did they show any sign of misconduct or attempt to “abscond”. Captain Larsen wasn’t a sentimental man, he had shot his favoured pet dog after the wreck, fearing he would have to pay fifty pounds for landing the animal. The dog had earlier saved his wife and child from a fatal cabin fire by banging on the cabin door.
The newspaper arrived hungry for news of misbehaviour by the Chinese crew, ” Asked as to the behaviour of the Chinese members of the crew when the order was made to lower down the boats, seaman O’Brien said, ” It was alright, they were a bit frightened, but kept quiet. We saw to that,” he added.
Commonwealth immigration officials were quickly contacted about deportation, to enforce the ‘White Australia’ policy which was at this time still a new policy for the relatively small Federal government in Melbourne (Canberra wasn’t chosen as the capital until the following year).
According to the International Consular Regulations, the European members of the crew of a Norwegian ship had an unrestricted claim to be sent home. O Brien was a British subject, so in a British colony he was entitled to maintenance, but only if he is destitute and it was to be deducted from back wages. The captain would have recovered the ship’s cash box and he was a part owner of the ship, but must have refused wages because O’Brien unsuccessfully asked the Norwegian Consul for his backpay before being put up in a Brisbane YMCA instead.
The papers reported, “Pending the removal of the Chinese, they are being treated by the local responsible authorities with the consideration usually extended to shipwrecked sailors”. Since that was usually nothing, the statement was probably true. In fact, the Chinese were put up in a barn, fingerprinted and watched all day by the police. The “care” of these non-European aliens was at the shipowner’s cost and Captain Larsen was “very indignant” at having to pay. He stated that it was “outrageous” that a person in his unfortunate position should have to bear this responsibility. The crew were owed 4 months back pay. They were taken to Sydney and deported on 10 August. I suspect without any money.
Afterwards, Diver Malden was sent from Sydney to the wreck. New machinery was recovered but the engines were too big for local resale and were blown up instead to recover the brasswork for scrap. By May of the following year a storm had completely flattened the exposed wreck.
Today the shallow reef south of Cook Island, Tweed Heads, is locally referred to as Fido Reef. SCUBA divers regularly visit the remains. The flattened wreck of the Fido rests on the southern edge of the reef. The wreck is encrusted in green algae, with a few sponges. The clear outline of the wreck is discernible among a tangle of partly sanded over steel plates. The area is usually subject to moderate currents. The nearby reef offers parallel crevices and short sandy filled gutters. There are overhangs and low tunnels. The occasional grey nurse shark can be found. She is now such a popular tourist dive that she has probably made more money as a tourist wreck than she ever earned as a steamer.
Photo Gold Coast Dive Adventures