Post by KG on Aug 30, 2013 11:45:51 GMT
The Indian sailors recruited by Britain's merchant navy died in their thousands during two world wars. Most of them weren't even commemorated at all.
Limehouse, London: a few hundred yards down Commercial Road to one of London's strangest pieces of architecture, a cross between a castle and a Gothic cathedral built of insipid pale brick, which calls itself the Mission. A foundation stone indicates that construction began in 1923; another stone lists the name of architects; nothing suggests that this was once the Empire Memorial Hostel, built for sailors who were between ships and had nowhere to stay, and designed in a quasi-religious style to commemorate the merchant seaman "of all races across the British Empire" who died in the first world war. More than 17,000 lost their lives, of which 6,600 are believed to be lascars – non-European sailors – from India. Most of these almost certainly came from one district, Sylhet, where the middlemen of British shipping companies customarily recruited engine-room crews – the stokers and coal trimmers working far below decks, who when a torpedo struck had the slimmest chance of survival. Similar figures probably applied to the second world war for a British merchant fleet in which 50,000 out of 190,000 seamen were lascars, but the sad fact is that nobody knows for certain. In the record of a ship's sinking, an official might note "five natives killed", but only the Europeans are identified as individuals.
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Limehouse, London: a few hundred yards down Commercial Road to one of London's strangest pieces of architecture, a cross between a castle and a Gothic cathedral built of insipid pale brick, which calls itself the Mission. A foundation stone indicates that construction began in 1923; another stone lists the name of architects; nothing suggests that this was once the Empire Memorial Hostel, built for sailors who were between ships and had nowhere to stay, and designed in a quasi-religious style to commemorate the merchant seaman "of all races across the British Empire" who died in the first world war. More than 17,000 lost their lives, of which 6,600 are believed to be lascars – non-European sailors – from India. Most of these almost certainly came from one district, Sylhet, where the middlemen of British shipping companies customarily recruited engine-room crews – the stokers and coal trimmers working far below decks, who when a torpedo struck had the slimmest chance of survival. Similar figures probably applied to the second world war for a British merchant fleet in which 50,000 out of 190,000 seamen were lascars, but the sad fact is that nobody knows for certain. In the record of a ship's sinking, an official might note "five natives killed", but only the Europeans are identified as individuals.
LINK