Oral History Interviews
This page provides links to oral history interviews with port chaplains conducted as part of the Mariners project in 2025 and 2026. The interviews were undertaken by Rev. Jonathan Rose and Dr Catherine Phipps in partnership with the Mission to Seafarers.
The Mission to Seafarers
Working in partnership with the Anglican Missions to Seafarers (MtS), the Mariners project team interviewed retired and serving port chaplains and associates. These interviews provide vivid insights into the living experience of merchant seamen today, with valuable reflections on the project themes of religion, race and British ports.
Hilary Carey, Jonathan Rose, 'Oral History Interviews' Mariners: Race, Religion and Empire in British Ports 1801-1914, https://mar.ine.rs/who/oral-history-interviews/
Retrieved 12 March 2026
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Hasaam Latif explores adverse conditions faced by lascars in British ports and depections of the 'Shivering Lascar'.
A profile of G.C. Smith, known as ‘Boatswain’ Smith, the most celebrated of all pioneer marine missionaries.
Marine missions and charities in relation to Bristol's floating harbour
Pioneer marine missionary and founding figure for the Bristol Channel Mission and Missions to Seafarers.
William Henry Giles Kingson, who published as W.H.G. Kingston, was a successful writer of novels and adventure stories for boys promoting Christian hardiness. He was the main motivating force behind the creation of the first national church mission to seamen, the Anglican Missions to Seamen, now the Mission to Seafarers.
The Merchant Seamen's Bible Society was founded in 1818 to supply British merchant ships with copies of scripture.
The Port of London Society (PLS) was founded in London following a meeting held at the City of London Tavern on Thursday 5 February 1818, ‘to consider the best means for affording religious instruction to British Seamen while in the port of London’.
Joseph Salter was one of the most prolific missionaries and writers to address ‘Asiatics’ in nineteenth-century Britain.
The London Sailors’ Home was the first short-stay, purpose-built home for sailors, and it set the model for scores of others that followed in British and colonial port cities.
The Episcopal Floating Chapel Society was the first attempt by the Church of England to provide a maritime church in the Port of London.
Working seamen lived dangerous and peripatetic lives which left families and dependants unprotected. Orphanages were created to provide opportunities for those left behind.
The Sailors' Home was established in 1837 to protect British seamen from crimping and local drinks that the colonial authorities considered pernicious for European constitution, and to 'civilise' them so that they would not destablise the ideology of white racial superiority that underpinned British colonialism.
Duleep Singh was the last Maharaja of the Sikh empire. He lived in England for most of his life and provided financial support for the Stranger's Home for Asiatics, Africans and Soutsea Islanders.
The Wesleyan Seamen's Mission opened in 1843. It was succeeded by the grand Queen Victoria Seamen’s Rest in 1902.
The Seamen’s Christian Friend Society (1848) had its origins in the ‘Thames Revival’ which emerged among common seamen around the Port of London on the final years of the Napoleonic wars.
The Liverpool Sailors' Home operated in Canning Place from December 1850. This establishment provided board and food, and carried out additional responsibilities such as medical assistance, religious instruction, and moral, intellectual and professional improvement opportunities.
The foundation stone for The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders was laid by Prince Albert on 31 May 1856.
Mission to Seafarers was established in 1856 as a national Society, incorporating the Bristol Channel Mission and the Thames Church Mission. The Society provided chaplains to serve vessels and seamen afloat and ashore.
A guide to all the sailors' homes in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland based on a parliamentary return in 1860.
This story recounts the construction of lighthouses along China’s coast under the oversight of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Customs, a Chinese state agency, had a distinctly cosmopolitan character but was dominated by the British. China’s lighthouse scheme incorporated advanced technology from Europe and the United States and involved personnel at all levels from around the world. This story illustrates the far-reaching British imperial networks and the accelerating process of globalisation during that era.
The prevalence of drunken seamen had far-reaching social consequences in nineteenth-century Liverpool. The annual reports of the Sailors Home state many seamen signed the temperance pledge but the figure never crossed 20 percent.
St Andrew's Waterside Church Mission was a high church mission at Gravesend catering not just for seamen but fishermen and emigrants.
Biography of Dame Agnes Weston
The Liverpool Seamen’s Orphan Institute was established in August 1869 in a temporary accommodation in Duke Street. Supported by leading shipowners and philanthropists it provided protection and education for the mercantile marine’s orphaned children.
This story focuses on the diary of Sister Mary Paul Mulquin, written aboard the SS Great Britain in 1873 on one of her final voyages to Australia. The diary sheds light on the experience of seven nuns who migrated to Australia from Ireland to set up a convent school in St. Kilda, Australia.
The 'Blood and Water' Salvation Navy was a small mission to seamen created before the Salvation Army created its own Navy. This piece summarises the little that is known about the organisation.
In this story Steven Spencer, Director of Salvation Army International Heritage Centre, discusses the History of the Salvation Navy and its vessels, including its first flagship, The SS Iole.
In 1900, a mission room for lascars was established at Morpeth Docks, liverpool. It was known as 'The Birkenhead Mission to Asiatic Seamen'.
In 1903, a new Japanese Seamen's Home was opened by the Bishop of Osaka at 31 Elizabeth Street, North Woolwich, near the Royal Albert Docks.
The ‘British Indian Seamen’s Institute’, also referred to more colloquially as the ‘Lascar Club’ opened in 1909 in 313 Victoria Dock Road, E., opposite the Victoria and Albert docks.
A Lascar Institute in Birkenhead is mentioned in the annual general meeting minutes of the Mersey Mission to Seamen, held at the Liverpool Record Office. This appears to be a continuation of The Birkenhead Mission to Asiatic Seamen. The minutes first mention the Institute from 1910 and continue up into the 1920s, when a new building was constructed.
Women have contributed in many significant ways to the work of missions to seafarers. Marine industries were and are isolating and dangerous, and the risks were endured by families at home as well as those at sea. Women and children were associated with marine missions initially as subjects of charity, but by the 20th century they were playing a more assertive role.
Interview with MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Chaplain Widow, on 23 January 2026. She lived in Beira, Mozambique and Glasgow.
This is a summary of an oral interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 18th December 2025 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Port Chaplain whose career spanned the ports of Mombasa, Ipswich, Avonmouth (Port of Bristol) and Dubai.
This is a summary of an oral interview conducted by the Revd. Jonathan Rose that took place on the 26th January 2026 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain, whose career spanned the ports of Hamburg, Milford Haven, Singapore, Teeside UK and Hong Kong (on two occasions).
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 23rd October 2025 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Port Chaplain based at Mombasa Port during the period of Somalian Piracy (2005 to 2012).
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on 1st December 2025 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain with a career in the ports of Flushing (Netherlands), Teesside (UK), Lagos (Nigeria), Mombasa (Kenya), Milford Haven and the Medway Ports (UK), and finally Southhampton.
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 11th December 2025 with a MtS (Mission to Seafarers) retired port chaplain whose career spanned the ports of Bangkok (Thailand), Fremantle and Bunbury (Western Australia), Brisbane (Queensland, Australia), Gravesend and Hull (UK).
Interview with MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Chaplain Widow on 16 February 2026. She lived in Busan (Korea), Port Saïd (Egypt), Dubai and Colombo (Sri Lanka) with her husband from 1977 to 1993.
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on 9th January 2026 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Port Chaplain whose career spanned across the ports of Antwerp, Japan. Hong Kong (twice), South Shields (UK) and Dublin, Bahrain, Bangkok (Thailand), Richards Bay and Durban (South Africa).
This is a summary of an oral interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 1st October 2025 with a retired MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain who served in both Schiedam Port (Rotterdam) and Mombasa Port, Kenya.
This a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 3rd October 2025 with an MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain whose chaplaincies have included the ports of Immingham (UK). Mombasa (Kenya), Antwerp (Belgium), Tilbury and Medway (UK), Southampton (UK) and Cyprus.
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 20th September 2025 with the MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Regional Director for East Asia and Senior Chaplian, Hong Kong.
Interview with the MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Centre Manager at the Port of Falmouth on 15 January 2026.
This is a summary of an interview conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose on the 20th November 2025 with the MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain for Humber and Trent (UK) covering estuary and river ports including Flixborough, Goole, Groveport, Hull, Immingham and New Holland.
This is a summary of an interview conducted on the 24th October 2025 by the Revd Jonathan Rose with the MtS (Mission to Seafarers) port chaplain for the East Coast of Scotland, including such ports as Grangemouth, Rosyth, New Haven (Edinburgh), Leith (Edinburgh), Immingham and the Shetland Islands.
This is a summary of an Interview with the MtS (Mission to Seafarers) Honorary Port Chaplain, Royal Portbury Dock, Avonmouth and Sharpness, Port of Bristol, on the 11th November 2025, conducted by the Revd Jonathan Rose.