Uw zoekacties: Sailortown,

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037 Sailortown
Erfgoedstuk
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Sailortown,
Titel:
Sailortown
Naam uitgever:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. - E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
Jaar van uitgave:
1997
Omschrijving:
Liedtekst en Liedtekst verklaring
Aantal pagina's:
360
Taal:
Engels
Plaats van uitgave:
London & Newe York
Auteur:
Stan Hugill
THE PACIFIC, AUSTRALIA, ASIA, AND AFRICA
ear. When, after a search, he failed to appear the master reported the matter ashore and then sailed without him. It wasn't until the ship reached Dundee, when the jute cargo was being discharged, that the mystery was solved. He had been 'screwed down'y?a< by the coolies. All that was found of him was his white suit, cap, watch and boots, all flattened against the bales, with some hair in the cap, but barely a ves- tige of flesh or bone. Now that we have painted the river scene let us get ashore. In the
nineties hundreds of ships lay at the moorings with their crews paid off and roaming loose in the streets of Calcutta, Indians being shipped to do the work in port. It was a bad time for sailing ships, and many lay for months in the river before cargoes came their way. The case-oil trade out to the East was booming, but there were no homeward cargoes. Thanks to this paying-off of seamen a large sailor quarter developed ashore. Some of the 'beachies' got jobs coolie-driving over at the Howra
Graving Dock on the south side of the river, others joined the Cal- cutta Police Force, which, at this time, was almost fully manned by beachcomber-seamen, while some shipped out again barefooted, in the clothes they stood up in, in coolie ships bound for Mauritius and the West Indies. Whereas sailors seemed to like Calcutta in these days, soldiers, it
would appear, were glad to get away from the place. 'Swaddles', at times, would try to stow away on homeward bound windbags leaving the river. One case, in the eighties, was when the crew of the Altmore, two days out from Calcutta, discovered in one of the ship's boat two soldiers, one a bugler, who had deserted from Fort William (on the Maidan), their plea being that they were fed up with Army mono- tony.
Sailortown had as its centre Flag Street. This was a tough quarter
of sailor drinking houses. The worst lane in the district was just off Flag Street and called the Numbers; the groggeries, selling rotgut rum, which lined it numbering from i to 12. The Flags of All Nations and the House of All Nations in Flag Street were two of the better- class dives, and the Homeward Bound wasn't too bad, but those in the Numbers were much the same as the native toddy and arrack shops. They had, in front of the bar, long rows of steel or wooden rods stretching from ceiling to floor, designed as a protection against rowdy customers and the trouble that nightly was expected to brew up. The barmen were Indians and the customers mainly British sea- men and British beachcombers. Another sailor pub was the Checkers, kept by a big Swede, who,
behind his back, was referred to as 'Draughtboard Dutchy'.This was another site of sailorman brawls. Scandinavians and Germans as a rule frequented the so-called 'German Barracks', and fights between Saxons who drank there and the Angles who dropped in looking for 314
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Organisatie: Shanty Nederland
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