Wesleyan Seamen’s Mission

Methodists were among the first to engage with the religious needs of seamen, but initially they were happy to engage through non-denominational means. Lay Methodists, including Zebedee Rogers, were important catalysts for the spread of shipboard prayer meetings which began among colliers on the Thames. For this reason, they were relatively slow to create their own institutions for the support of marine workers.

This changed in 1843, when a number of lay members of St George's Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Cable Street formed the Wesleyan Methodist Seamen's Mission. They were responding in part to the impoverishment of London's docklands, which began with the expansion of London's docks beyond the Pool of London. As new docks were created, they generated a hinterland of marine workers with low pay, intermittent employment and high levels of social and physical ailments.

The Wesleyan Seamen's Mission was a modest reading room with accommodation above. The first minister was the Rev. Richard Chapman. The significance of its work is indicated by the high level of the patronage. In 1856, the Earl of Shaftesbury agreed to be patron, as he had done for the Anglican Missions to Seamen in the same year.

 

 

 

 

Other Methodist mission work for mariners followed on a grander scale. Possibly the most impressive of all the seamen's homes was the Queen Victoria Seamen's Rest which opened in 1902. This is now the only surviving Seamen's Home in London, and one of the few still operating in the United Kingdom. A scene 'After the Bible Class', shows an impressive number of seamen in attendance, along with a mother and baby, and men of all nations and ranks.