Historical Rules

[vic mcclymont]

Whilst carrying out research came across this rule.

When a ship is reported missing the wages of the crew are paid to the Board of Trade by the ships owners after a reasonable time has elapsed when the ship should have ordinarily reached her port of destination. The wages are calculated up to and 24 hours after the ship was last seen or reported by passing ships. If, however, there is reason to believe that the ship was afloat after that date the wages must be paid until the date of the supposed floundering.
GLENBURN departed San Francisco in 1905 all was reported as well by passing ships sometime after her departure, but was never seen again.
The wages for the crew were calculated and paid according to the above rule, about 3 months later part of one her boats was picked up in the English Channel, and as there is reason to believe that she must have been afloat long after she was “spoken to” her owners have been called on to pay additional wages for two months and seventeen days.
All crew signing articles are required to furnish the owners with an address, the BOT will trace relatives and ensure that any monies due are paid to them.

regards
Vic

[Keith at Tregenna]

'Discharged at Sea' meant the voyage contract was closed because the ship had been sunk by enemy action or lost. Until a new law was passed in May 1941 this meant that a seaman's pay was stopped from the time of the sinking until he signed a new voyage contract ashore.

The 'Essential Work Order for the Merchant Navy' (EWOMN) came into effect in May 1941. Once the new law was in effect, the men should have had more security of pay. though I do recall hearing that no one seemed to have told the seamen.

K.

[Captain Kong]

The POOL FISHER sank in a storm off the Isle of Wight on the night of 5/6 November 1979.

When I attended the Admiralty Court of Inquiry, I met a young lady who had heard there was an Inquiry going on, No one had told her, just saw it in a news paper,
Her husband went down with the ship. 12 Months before, this was November 1980,
I took her for a drink and then for Dinner in the Hotel in Blackpool where the Inquiry was being held.
She told me a sad tale. When her husband died she was pregnant with her third baby, he was born three months later.
The man`s wages were stopped the day the ship sank, she was even waiting for the wages he had earned, They were buying a house overlooking the Menai Straits, but because of No Money could not pay the mortgage and was evicted, she was then put into a two bed room council flat. with three children.
The ship owners dont give a damn.

Brian

[j.sabourn]

#1... Also Vic the crew can hold a ship to account for non payment of wages, that is if they can find a lawyer willing to take up their case. The ship can be sold to pay off its creditors and by law the crew have the first lien on the monies owing to them. The only person who doesn’t have a lien on the ship was the master. I have been in a two company ship ownership and heard this was done in Montreal by a Yugoslav crew at the time. This is only one of the reasons why most tramp ship companies had their ships registered as different companies , to avoid the legalities of having other ships sold to pay the debts of the non earners. A credible owner has. Only one option when it comes to costs if he wants to keep a well run ship as regards insurance etc. and that is control of wages and food, which the incredible ones did so. There are still many ships today running around with slave labour by normal conditions, the law of supply and demand with the reduction of manning fitted in very nicely thank you to the shipowners wishes. JWS

[Rob Stafford]

When I first went to sea, there were still a lot of the old-timers on board who had gone through the war. They told me that yes, if the ship went down, your wages came to a screeching halt, BUT if the chief-steward had managed to save the accounts books ( which quite a few tried to do), The seamen would still be help to account to pay for any slops or whatever they had purchased for said Chief Steward if/when they were rescued. The men that told me this, also said that it wasn't unusual for those books to be thrown out of the lifeboat by the crew there. If the Chief Steward put on a blue or insisted on hanging on to his books, that was fine, the lifeboat was lightened a little more. This is, of course, hearsay, but I heard it from different men on different ships.

[Doc Vernon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...f_World_War_II

Until May 1941 merchant seamen sailing aboard British vessels attacked and sunk by enemy action received no pay (wages) from the moment that their ship sank. If the seaman was fortunate to survive the sinking only to spend days or weeks in an open lifeboat hoping for rescue, it was regarded as "non-working time" and the seaman was not paid for that time because their employer, the shipping company who had owned the lost vessel, no longer required their services