Episcopal Floating Church (1825-45)

Destitute Sailors' Asylum (1827-19??)

Sailors' Home (1835-1974)

This trio of institutions was created to serve the needs of the growing number of mariners working out of the Port of London. Captain R.J. Elliot was the prime mover, and worked tirelessly for the cause. His memorial in St Paul's Church, in gothic tabernacle style, reads

To Robert James Elliot, died 1849: deeply imbued with a sense of the evils which beset the social condition of the seamen during his sojourning on shore, more fearful than the direst perils of the great deep, he devoted his time, his energy and his substance to their removal; the Sailors House [sic] and the Destitute Sailors Asylum were founded through his exertion and remain the memorials to his unremitting and anxious care; the last labour of love in which declining health permitted him share was the erection of this church to the honour and glory of God for the Seamen's special use.

Charles Gribble, the first minister of St Paul Dock Street and chaplain to the institutions, wrote The Naval Officer: a new creature in Christ Jesus, exemplified in the living and dying of Captain Robert James Elliot, R.N. (Nisbet 1849).

Each institution had a separate committee of the great and the good, but membership overlapped and their reports were presented together at meetings held in Sackville Street W1. The chaplains were approved and licensed by the Bishop of London. From time to time there was tension between the three bodies, and unclarity over spiritual and pastoral responsibility. The minute books are held at the National Maritime Museum.

A full account of both Anglican and free church initiatives (including the nondenominational Ark) is given in Roald Kverndal's Seamen's Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth (1986), which can be read online. His father-in-law was pastor of the Norwegian Seamen's Church, and he worked in the shipping industry before becoming a seafarers' chaplain. He brings the story to the present day in The Way of the Sea: The changing shape of mission in the seafaring world (2008). Alston Kennerley, a research associate at the University of Plymouth, produced his doctoral thesis (1989, unpublished - available at the Mission to Seafarers) on 'British Seamen's Missions and Sailors' Homes: Voluntary Welfare Provision for Serving Seafarers, 1815-1970', based on minute books and other records. He has written specifically about local provisions in 'The Sailors' Home, London, and Seamen's Welfare, 1829-1974' in Maritime Mission Studies vol.1 (Spring 1998), pages 24-56, and drew the plan above of the various institutions. See also this site about church ships (en français!)

Things have come full circle, for the nearby parish of St Anne Limehouse now runs St Peter's Barge, a floating church in West India Quay to minister to those who live and work in Canary Wharf.

EPISCOPAL FLOATING CHURCH

In July 1825 a meeting was held at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate, presided over by the Lord Mayor, to consider the best means to promote the spiritual welfare of the seamen and their families. The London Episcopal Floating Church Society was created, and a chaplain was appointed, assisted by two sailors, to visit the seafarers afloat between London Bridge and the Pool, and their families on shore. A suitable boat was provided, and two seamen engaged to assist the chaplain. The Admiralty provided the ship Brazen, an ex sloop-of-war, as a 'floating church'; it was adapted to acommodate 500 hearers and moored by Rotherhithe parish church. The first service was held on Good Friday, 24 March 1829. It capsized in 1832 (with no loss of life) and after repairs was moved in 1834 to a new location in the Admiralty Tier off the Tower of London. A room was also hired at Wapping, for services and a Sunday School. King George IV became a patron, contributing £50 a year – a commitment continued by William IV and (for a time) Queen Victoria. 

The first permanent chaplain (1829-30) was the redoubtable James Hough. Ordained in Carlisle in 1814, and inspired by meeting Charles Simeon the following year, he had worked as a missionary in India from 1816-22, as chaplain to the English garrison at Palayamkottai (writing A Reply to the Letters of the Abbé Dubois on the State of Christianity in India in1822) and again in 1824-26, as Chaplain to the East India Company at Madras. On his return in 1829 he published Letters on the Climate, Inhabitants, Productions &c of the Neilgherries, or Blue Mountains of Coimbatoor, South India.  But attendances on board the Floating Church were poor, and constant exposure to the river undermined his health, so he moved to become Perpetual Curate of Ham, where among his further writings were The Protestant Missions Vindicated (1837), The Missionary Vade Mecum (1842) and, between 1839-45, a large four-volume History of Christianity in India, from the Commencement of the Christian Era. A fifth volume, published posthumously (he died in 1847), includes this biographical sketch.  Parts of this monumental work remain in print.

His successor in late 1830, on a salary of £200 a year, was John Davis, who had been curate of Chesterfield. He also found conditions too strenuous for his health, and failed to increase attendance - he issued an ultimatum to 'the Seamen of the Port of London' ending I cannot, my dear brethren, preach without a congregation. Eventually he turned instead to prison work. In 1839 he became Chaplain of the Debtors' Prison, and in 1843 the Ordinary (= Chaplain) of Newgate, remaining there 22 years until his death in 1865, aged 65. Here he was much in the public eye, more than once mocked by Punch for his robust opinions on criminal justice; here are some extracts from his writings that give the flavour of the man. 

Neville Jones was the next chaplain, in post from 1835(?) before becoming the first minister of St Mark Whitechapel.

His successor (1839-42) at the Floating Church and Sailors' Home (but not, it seems, the Asylum) was Sir William Dunbar, the sixth Baronet Dunbar of Durn, whose family home was in Aberdeen. He had read law at Oxford. Attendances at the Floating Church did not increase in his time. He resigned to become minister of St Paul's Chapel, Aberdeen, where he became part of the 'Drummondite' controversy. Like the Revd D.T.K. Drummond in Edinburgh, a fellow Church of England minister and Church Missionary Society secretary, he refused to use the Scottish liturgy, regarding it as too high church, and rejected the authority of the Bishop of Aberdeen*. The bishop excommunicated him, and Dunbar sued for libel, winning £2000 damages [Scottish Court of Session, Sir W. Dunbar v Right Rev. W. Skinner, 1849]. This caused much comment in the church press. After a few years back in London he became rector of Walwyn's Castle near Haverfordwest, and then of Dummer, Hampshire, where he died in 1881. In later years he took a keen interest in spiritualism, and was a member of the committee of the Langham Place lectures.

Alphonsus (aka Alphonse) William Henry Rose, a graduate of St John's College Cambridge, briefly followed Dunbar in 1842, and shared his stance; later that year he became temporary curate-in-charge of St Mary Inverurie for some months, corresponding with Bishop Skinner about the use of the 'Scotch communion office' there and incurring his wrath for decling to attend a Christmas eucharist using this rite. He had previously been incumbent of Lower Darwen, publishing sermons preached in various local churches, including one to a 'fashionable' congregation in Blackburn (Fraser's Magazine for 1839 showed its true colours by adding only think of a fashionable congregation in a manufacturing town!) Against a background of Chartism, it included these words about wealth:

He came to the Floating Church via St John Waterloo, and became chairman of the Tower Hamlets Protestant Association (see Trinity Episcopal Chapel), a committee member of the evangelical journal The Churchman: a magazine in defence of the Church and Constitution [not to be confused with a later journal of the same name], active in the Naval and Military Bible Society (founded 1780) and also a member of the Camden Society (precursor of the Royal Historical Society). A sermon preached in Tunbridge Wells in 1843 was reviewed as one of the most profound, and at the same time most splendidly eloquent, that we ever remember to have read (though his choice of an obscure publisher - that of The Churchman! - was deemed likely to do him damage). By 1844 he was in Glossop, and was prosecuted for an assault on Martha Thornley, aged 11. Perhaps because of that, in 1846 he visited Sydenham (now Owen Sound) in Canada, and returned the following year to establish a church there. His abilities were recognised, and he was moved to Guelph in 1848, though he died in 1850 in Toronto aged 38, leaving land for a permanent church at Sydenham; St George's was built in 1881.

In 1849 Rose published The Emigrant Churchman, by a Pioneer of the Wilderness (2 vols, ed. Henry Christmas), in which he voiced his fears that Roman Catholics would be among the Irish immigrants, and that English institutions would be undermined by Methodist preachers and Yankee settlers, so he called on 'gentlemen emigrants' to help him 'fight the good fight'. He gave this advice to settlers: All pretty-looking tents, camp beds, sets of fishing tackle, and articles of hardware of fanciful invention are just so many traps to catch your stray sovereigns, which you will find far ampler use for when you come out. Farmers should bring along a Cleveland Bay stallion and brood mares or a good Durham bull and cows, but unless they are of the best breeds they might better be left at home, for there was an abundance of mixed blood in the country already. 

For the next appointment there were 31 applicants, and it was agreed to give five of them a fortnight's trial! Charles Adam John Smith, also from St John's College Cambridge, and curate of Pennycross chapel in the parish of St Andrew Plymouth, was appointed (1843-47). The Floating Church Society contributed £150 a year (despite being in debt), the Sailors' Home £100 and the Asylum £50. Like Rose, Smith published many sermons, including this one from his time here (though if it was preached to seamen they would have struggled to make any sense of it!) and was involved with the Naval and Military Bible Society. His first wife Lydia died in 1847 (they were living at Mile End), and later that year he became vicar of Macclesfield, where he remained until his death in 1878. He and his second wife Emily were defendants in a dispute over a family will (Grieve v. Grieve 1867). 

As early as 1836 the Annual Report shows that Elliot was promoting, and finding patronage for, an alternative 'Episcopal Chapel on shore'. The Brazen was decaying, traffic on the river had increased, causing 'Sabbath desecration' and disturbing the services, and its mooring was under threat. With the construction of the docks, working patterns had changed: crews were no longer kept on board to unload cargoes, and lived on shore with their families, or in boarding houses, or at the Sailors' Home. In 1843 plans were laid to purchase the Danish Church, and a fund was set up - the Floating Church's debts had reduced, making a merger possible. But instead it was decided to build a new church, St Paul's Church for Seamen, which was consecrated in 1847. The final services on board the Brazen were in 1845, and it was broken up.

DESTITUTE SAILORS' ASYLUM

The Asylum opened in 1827, originally in an old warehouse in Dock Street, with bread and soup in the basement and straw laid in the upper stories for sleeping quarters. A more permanent base followed at 23 Well Street [now Ensign Street - drawing c1855]. 

Its purpose was to provide shelter and relief, with food and clothing, for distressed seafarers of all nations who had not left their last ship more than a year, and to assist them to find work. A discharge-ticket from the Dreadnought Hospital Ship at Deptford was an automatic passport into the asylum. The old and infirm had their passages home paid for, and others were helped to get into hospitals and infirmaries around London. Morning and evening prayers, and the Scriptures, were regularly read, with a sermon every evening at 7pm.

The Asylum helped about 1500 men a year, and had a good track record of enabling them to find work. A contemporary commentator said its arrangements are well worth imitation in lodgings for the lowest class, such as ragged school boys, and common beggars - a description of lodging-house much needed, and which has not yet, as far as we know, entered into the plans of either of the great societies now in operation.

In due course it was run in parallel with the Sailors' Home, and later changed its title to the Destitute Sailors' Fund, assisting those who were unable to pay for any accommodation.

THE SAILORS' HOME

In 1829 a committee was formed to provide comfortable and cheap board and lodging for seafarers and apprentices between voyages, with a trust deed, of which WIlliam Wilberforce was a signatory. The Sailors' Home was officially opened in 1835 in Well Street [now Ensign Street], on the site of the Royal Brunswick Theatre (built to replace the Royalty, which burnt down, but itself collapsed on 28 February 1828 almost as soon as it was opened) - hence the alternative name of 'The Brunswick Maritime Establishment'. Distinctive bollards in the area, marked 'RBT', date from this time [pictured].

Initially it provided 100 berths (1835 façade pictured in the Nautical Magazine vol 17); in 1848 it was enlarged for 328 (illustration from the British Workman of 1857), and again in 1865 for 500, by which time it was accommodating between 4000 and 5000 men a year. Horse-drawn vans, in charge of tough drivers, met ships to bring sailors and their kit to the Home - in the face of opposition, and occasional violence, from boarding-house keepers' scouts. Each man had a separate 'berth', arranged round a central hall (as in a prison), and the original all-inclusive rates were 2s. a day (apprentices 1s. 6d. a day, 'other lads' 12s. a week). It was the first of its kind, and became a widely-copied model. In 1843 a free evening school, teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and navigation was opened, and enlarged in 1851 at the request of the Board of Trade, with a government grant. Domestic comforts, including 'proper' books, were provided, and the chaplain led worship each day. It also provided a banking service for residents, protecting them from 'crimping' (local gangs defrauding on-shore sailors of their pay) and helping them to save their earnings. It was also an alcohol-free zone!

From 1837-39 the Chaplain of the Home (also curate of St Anne Limehouse) was Charles Popham Miles. A former midshipman with the East India Company, he came here after graduating from Caius College Cambridge. After two further curacies, he was incumbent at St Jude Glasgow from 1843-58 (qualifying in medicine while he was there), and like the other clergy mentioned above was drawn into acrimonious controversy with his bishop (Russell of Glasgow) over the Scottish liturgy and his authority over English clerics - more details here. He then became Principal of the Protestant College in St Julian's Bay, Malta until its closure in 1867, returning to England as vicar of St Peter Monkswearmouth until 1883, restoring the Saxon church and becoming an honorary canon of Durham. As well as various theological publications - including two volumes of lectures on Daniel, The Voice of the Glorious Reformation ('an Apology for evangelical doctrines in the Anglican Church') and the entry on 'The Church of England' in an 1853 Cyclopædia of Religious Denominations - he edited his father's 1789-1817 correspondence on the French Revolution; and, as an early Fellow of the Linnean Society, contributed to a report for the British Association for the Advancement of Science 'On the Marine Zoology of the Clyde', for which in 1856 he organised dredging expeditions, described here! He died in 1891.

Here is the ground floor Bombay or Calcutta dormitory (Pictorial Times November 1846). In one of the annual reports, Captain Elliot said The Sailors' Home was established to preserve sailors from the temptations and depredations to which they are exposed in London on returning from sea. Sailors are often to be seen wandering about the streets in rags; and this was because they had no place to go to with safety to themselves on coming ashore. A home was the very thing a sailor wanted.... I heartily approve of these institutions, and if I had arguments at command I would use all I could find to induce Christian ladies and gentlemen to support them. In a national view they are incalculably advantageous to the country. The Sailors' Home is a kind of nursery for good seamen, and the country is at present very much in want of good seamen, and it is impossible to say how soon that want might be considerably increased. This was a reference to the growing pattern of English sailors finding work with ships of other nations, especially the USA.

Here is an extract from one of Henry Mayhew's Morning Chronicle Letters (XLVII, 11 April 1850) about the Sailors' Home, and other accommodation.

An Act of 1851 established Mercantile Marine Offices in UK ports, and (recognising the pioneering work done here) provided that The Board of Trade may appoint any Superintendent of any Sailors' Home in the Port of London to be a Superintendent, and may appoint an Office in any such home to be a Mercantile Marine Office. Such an office was located in the Sailors' Home from 1853 to 1873, when it moved to Tower Hill for the next twenty years. The 1854 Merchant Shipping Act further provided that engagement of seamen for foreign trade voyages must take place before a Superintendent, and laid down rules (based on observation of the Home's practice) to ensure that at the end of a voyage wages were properly accounted for and received. 

In 1865 the Home was extended, so that the main entrance was on Dock Street, next to St Paul's vicarage and church, as shown above and in a drawing from the Illustrated Times of 27 May 1865. Charles Dickens Junior's Dictionary of the Thames (1883 edition) describes its work in this period. In 1895 a part of it was demolished to make space for  a new Mercantile Marine Office and Examination Rooms, rented by the Board of Trade. Because this was where crews signed on, the Shipping Federation and National Union of Seamen located their offices opposite. 

Between 1878 and 1894 the writer Joseph Conrad stayed at the Home many times as the seaman Józef Korzeniowski, and admired the institution: in his Notes on Life and Letters he wrote I have been in touch with the Sailors’ Home for sixteen years of my life, off and on... I would say that, for seamen, the Well Street Home was a friendly place. [Click here for the full text.] An article by Alston Kennerley [mentioned above], 'Joseph Conrad at the London Sailors' Home', is published in The Conradian, vol.33, no.1 (Spring 2008), pages 70-102.

The training programmes continued - Newton's Navigation School ran until not long before the First World War, and from 1893 the Home housed the London School of Nautical Cookery, which over the years trained 10,400 cooks for the Merchant Navy, playing a key part in raising standards of feeding, particularly on cargo ships. It was later integrated into the London County Council's further education programme. 

For two hundred years there had been a steady trickle of lascars - sailors from Africa, China, the Malay archipelago and Bangladeshis from the Sylhet region who staffed British trading vessels - who jumped ship at 'Tiger Bay', as Shadwell was known (see this article from 1874). By 1940 they made up a quarter of the Merchant Navy. Many of them served in the Second World War, doing the lowliest jobs on board ship. See here for early 19th century reactions to their presence in this area.

The Home continued in existence under the name The Sailor's Home and Red Ensign Club. The Dock Street part of the site was rebuilt in 1955 to provide better facilities; but with the demise of the British merchant fleet the need for such accommodation declined, and it closed on New Year's Eve 1974.

Under the name of Beacon House, and now Look Ahead Hostel, it continues to provide accommodation for the homeless.

ADMIRAL WOODS

From 1933 to 1954 the Chaplain of the Red Ensign Club and honorary curate of St Paul's Dock Street was Alexander Riall Wadham Woods. Vice-Admiral Woods DSO was born in 1880, son of an admiral, and during World War I was captain in charge of signals for the Grand Fleet of the Royal Navy, under the command of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe - the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon, said Churchill). 'Sammy' Woods (as he was known in the Navy) had a key role in the Battle of Jutland [right] on 31 May - 1 June 1916. The Germans were seeking to break the British blockade of Germany, which had begun in 1914, and it fell to Captain Woods to co-ordinate the movements of 151 craft - 28 battleships, 9 battle cruisers, 8 armoured cruisers, 26 light cruisers, 78 destroyers, a mine-layer and a seaplane carrier. Signalling - much of it by flag or shuttered searchlight, with sonar, wireless telegraphy and radio in their infancy - was crucial, and slow. In years to come, he said that at the height of the battle, alongside Jellicoe's telegraphic orders, he had received a personal call from God: an interposed signal which came through from no earthly captain but from a higher command. He kept his nerve, and maintained the fleet's formation. Who 'won' this battle? The blockade remained in place (continuing until after the war, becoming one of the factors humiliating Germany into the Treaty of Versailles), but at a high cost: the British lost 6,094 men, with 510 wounded and 177 captured; 3 battle cruisers, 3 armoured cruisers and 8 destroyers. German losses were lighter: 2,551 men, with 507 wounded;  a pre-dreadnought, a battlecruiser, 4 light cruisers and 5 torpedo boats.

He was awarded the DSO for his bravery under fire, and for a second time the following year, as second in command of HMS Topaze in 1917, when he led a landing party to silence Turkish shore batteries at Salif (in what is now the Yemen). He served out his time in the Navy, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral, but turned down a further commission in 1931, when at the age of 50 he followed his 'higher command' and, despite suffering with muscular dystrophy, spent two years training for ordination, and chose to spent the rest of his days in a docklands parish working with and befriending seafarers.

'Admiral Woods' was a respected figure in the parish, but was reticent about the details of his naval career, and was dubbed by some 'the shy parson'. Lil Mountain, a parishioner at St George-in-the-East, remembers his visits to St Paul's School, where she was a pupil: they held him in awe, and were instructed to curtsey to him in the street!  He lived on the top floor of the vicarage, and rarely claimed his honorary stipend of £5 a year; he died at the Home on All Saints' Day 1954, aged 74 - the 21st anniversary of his curacy [funeral right]. Arthur Calder-Marshall wrote a memoir, under the title No Earthly Command: Being an enquiry into the life of Vice-Admiral the Reverend Alexander Riall Wadham Woods DSO and bar, who during the Battle of Jutland while Signals Officer received an 'Interposed Message' telling him to serve God (London, Hart-Davis 1957). The Queen Mother visited the parish on St George's Day 1956 to unveil a memorial plaque and window.

Canon Walter Crooks wrote of him in 1990 (in a letter to Frank Rust) Just imagine my feelings of anxiety on being appointed to that parish having recently been demobbed from the Navy as a very young padre and knowing that my curate would be a former Admiral, a Flag Lietuenant to Earl Jellicoe at Jutland and old enough to be my grandfather! However, daunting though the prospect was, it took but a very short time to rejoice in the fact that here I had a teacher in the greatest things of life - spirituality and love for people.

In 2002, after St Paul's Church closed, his ashes were transferred to the Crouch family grave, together with those of Elizabeth Crouch. The Crouches had played a central part in the life of St Paul's (Elizabeth, who worshipped there until the 1960s, was probably the last survivor of the Clothed Scholars), and Admiral Woods was a family friend.