Centre for Port and Maritime History news
West Africa Seafarer Journeys: The Liverpool (Dis)Connection
A historical study of skilled seafarer migration to Liverpool by ethnic minorities
Co-researchers, Dr Emma Roberts and Dr Edmund Chilaka, of the Centre for Port and Maritime History, won an APSS QR grant last year to study the cultural affinities of West African seafarers who migrated to the UK in large numbers after the Second World War. This followed the liner service operations of Elder Dempster Line between various African ports and European metropolises. More than 4,000 seafarers joined the carrier’s workforce and sailed around the world, in addition to other seamen employed by the emergent carriers from decolonized nations of the region, namely, Black Star Line of Ghana and the Nigerian National Shipping Line. They resided mostly in Liverpool. The study’s trace of this economic migration so far has uncovered interesting social dynamics about the adaptation patterns of the nuclear families they started in Liverpool as they struggled to settle down and naturalize in a society more sophisticated than their Motherlands.
The aim of the study is to understand the cultural affinities of the first-generation West African migrant seafarer families and the impact of such affinities (if any) on their second and future generations born in the UK, on the one hand, and municipal authorities’ policymaking lenses for integrating ethnic minority communities, on the other. The objectives include interrogating socio-cultural adaptation, divided loyalty, perceived social inequalities, the problems of motherhood and wifehood in ethnic seafarer families, the seeming disconnection of their youths from parental cultures and the Motherland through acculturation and peer pressure despite fluctuating citizenship fulfilment and a sense of belonging challenged by perceptions of racism. The study juxtaposed the problems against targeted municipal inclusion policies such as the Liverpool City Region’s £3.2m fund for racial equality in 2021, the Mayor Joanne Anderson’s ‘New Equality Strategy’ of 2022, and even the British Council’s “internationalism” concept, to decipher ultimate conclusions of wellbeing and migrant satisfaction indices.
By applying oral histories, archival data and secondary sources, the researchers’ findings identified known occupational hazards such as the absentee-husband syndrome but revealed hitherto unknown aspects of deferred spousal emotional satisfaction, forced abstinence and impact on seafarer marital relations vis-à-vis infidelity, divorce, and family instability, decision-making patterns that force the near-constant morphing of the ‘strong-mother’ personality at the home fronts of most mariners, and ethnic minority feminine idiosyncrasies for navigating the First World race relations terrains. Furthermore, the impact of the husband’s occupational conditions on child rearing, motherhood, and wifehood in West African seafarer families, as also in other ethnic minority communities, were significant to warrant a call to action in favour of further dedicated studies.
However, West Africa’s ethnic seafarer communities in Liverpool were also famous for other achievements, including historical breakthroughs such as the formation of cultural associations for bonding and civic maintenance of their growing diasporas, such as the Igbo, Yoruba, Ghana, or Kenya community associations, to mention a few. The Igbo Cultural Association Liverpool (ICAL), for example, was registered in 1938, powered by the Liverpool-resident Igbo seamen employed by Elder Dempster Line. In 1944, it made the ground-breaking purchase of a cultural centre, The Igbo House, wholly financed by personal contributions and without any recourse to public funds.
The ICAL maintained an open house that welcomed all Africans, Black, and Caribbean nationals as an alternate meeting place against the rampant racial discrimination at white pubs around the city. Other ethnic groups had meeting places as well. Yet, the Nigerian Community Association (NCA) was also floated in 1974 to embrace Nigerians from all ethnic groups and was equally facilitated by seafarers who formed the single largest professional group. In a repeat of the happenstance where seafarers of Igbo extraction facilitated the purchase of the ‘Igbo House’ in 1944, it was the seafarers of the NCA who contributed much of the funds for the purchase of a pancultural ‘Nigeria Centre’, complemented by a contribution from the European Regional Development Fund. The Centre was commissioned by the Nigerian High Commissioner to the UK, Chief Bola Ajibola (SAN), in 2001.
The ongoing study is proceeding with oral interviews and archival/library research to fully interrogate the role of the seafarers, mothers and wives of seafarers, their kith and kins, friends and associates, and municipal authorities in solving the social and economic problems faced by the first generation of the migrants in sociocultural adaptation and how their succeeding generations are continuing with life in the UK as their parents face retirement and pensionable life either in the country or back in the Motherlands. The major dissemination outlet of the research will be publication of a peer-reviewed article in a tier-1 journal of the maritime, culture, or migration segment of the industry. The study was funded by a 2024 QR Grant of the APSS Research Unit.
First-generation seafarers, family members, friends and LJMU co-researchers pose for a group photograph at the Crawford House Community Centre during the project’s public engagement meeting