Category Archives: labor

by | 18 November 2025 · 5:09 am

Polish Heweliusz Series on Netflix

My latest weekly update from Culture.pl includes a profile of a new and interesting Polish film series: Heweliusz: Netflix Revisits Poland’s Most Tragic Ferry Disaster. During our recent pilgrimage to Gdansk, we stayed in a nice hotel on Heweliusz Street not far from Gdansk Main train station. Here are some excerpts from the story on Culture.pl.

Jan Holoubek’s blockbuster is more than just a solid piece of good entertainment. In this Netflix series the story of the greatest maritime disaster in post-war Poland becomes a tale of the victims of the transformation and the brutal verdicts of history.
…
It was 5:12 a.m. on January 14, 1993, when the rail-truck ferry Jan Heweliusz, operating between Świnoujście [= Ger. Swinemünde] and Ystad, capsized in the stormy winds. A few minutes earlier, Captain Andrzej Ułasiewicz had broadcast a ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ message, calling for help from all nearby vessels. He had 36 passengers and 29 crew members on board, all of whom found themselves in the water at a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius during a raging storm, force 12 on the Beaufort scale. Ułasiewicz didn’t even try to save himself – he remained on the bridge until the end, trying to relay information to rescue units – German, Danish, and Polish. When the waters receded, he was named as the main culprit in the Heweliusz tragedy, whose story is now told in Jan Holoubek’s series.
…

From its inception, the MF Jan Heweliusz was considered an exceptionally unlucky vessel. Launched in 1977 at the Norwegian Trosvik shipyard, it sailed under the Polish flag for the next 16 years, experiencing around 30 different breakdowns during that time. Its history of adventures was so rich that Swedish sailors dubbed it ‘Jan Haverelius,’ or ‘Accident John.’

The Polish ferry capsized twice while in port (hence why one of the series’ characters explicitly calls it ‘a f…cking roly-poly toy’), its engines failed, and its ballast system malfunctioned. The Heweliusz also collided with a fishing boat.

…

However two other failures proved crucial to the tragic events of January 14, 1993. The first was damage to the ferry a few days before the sinking. While docking at the Swedish port, the vessel struck the quay, bending the gate securing the ferry’s entrance, allowing water to enter. The shipowners, Euroafrica company, a subsidiary of Polish Ocean Lines, were aware of the defect but decided not to suspend operation until it was fully repaired. The reason was simple – a vessel sitting in port wouldn’t earn any money, and the company’s management wouldn’t allow it. The crew members themselves were supposed to carry out makeshift repairs, but without the proper equipment and time, they could only partially repair the damage.

…

The second of the ferry’s structural defects proved even more significant and far-reaching. It involved a multi-ton concrete cover on one of the decks. In 1986, during a voyage, a refrigerated truck caught fire on the ferry, spreading to other vehicles and engulfing the vessel’s superstructure on one of the upper decks. The ferry was then renovated at the Hamburg shipyard, and the damaged deck was poured with a layer of concrete. Immediately after the Heweliusz tragedy, attempts were made to argue that the poured concrete weighed ‘only’ 30 tons (a small amount compared to the vessel’s total weight), and that the reconstruction concerned one of the lower decks. However, in reality, the ferry was loaded with more than twice that weight, and the renovation only affected one of the upper decks, significantly affecting the vessel’s stability. Stability, which had already been far from ideal, chiefly due to the wide captain’s cabin on the bridge, which, in hurricane-force winds, turned into a veritable sail. All of this meant the ferry was unable to cope with the severe storm that struck the ship that January night, claiming the lives of 20 sailors and all of the ferry’s passengers.

…

The questions that researchers of the Heweliusz tragedy have been asking themselves for years resonate powerfully, yet at the same time, seemingly incidentally, in Jan Holoubek’s series. Not as a theme in itself, but as a footnote to the story of the people grappling with the consequences of the disaster. Kasper Bajon’s story skillfully transports us across several timelines and between characters examining Heweliusz’s case from different perspectives. Guides through this world include a crew member (Konrad Eleryk) who survived the disaster, plagued by remorse; Captain Ułasiewicz’s widow (Magdalena Różczka), who must defend his memory and care for her teenage daughter; and the truck driver’s wife (Justyna Wasilewska), who lives in the same neighborhood and is left destitute after his death. Finally, there is Captain Piotr Binter (Michał Żurawski), a sailor and friend of Ułasiewicz. As a juror deciding the causes of the disaster, he must choose between loyalty to his deceased friend and his career, which is threatened by the pressures of a political and business alliance.

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Filed under cinema, economics, Germany, industry, labor, Poland, Scandinavia, travel

by | 7 September 2025 · 1:02 am

Korean POWs in Hawaiʻi, 1940s

From Most Prisoners In Hawaiʻi’s WWII Internment Camp Were Korean, by Kirsten Downey (Honolulu: Civil Beat, 5 September 2025). While hundreds of Japanese-Americans were the first held at Honouliuli, many more Koreans followed:

The Honouliuli internment camp in central O’ahu is best known in Hawaiʻi as the place some 400 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.

But new research is bringing to light the fact that Koreans were the largest single population group there.

In fact, there were seven times as many Koreans held there as Japanese Americans. Of the 4,000 people held, about 2,700 were Korean, captured elsewhere and brought to Hawaiʻi, and about 400 were Japanese Americans who had been living and working in Hawaiʻi when the war broke out.

The Koreans were prisoners of war who fell into American hands as U.S. forces made their way across Oceania fighting Japanese imperial forces, who had seized lands all across the Pacific, including in China, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos), Guam, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Most of the Koreans were in fact doubly prisoners: The Japanese, who had invaded and conquered Korea in the early 1900s, had conscripted many of them against their will. Dragooned by the Japanese, they then ended up American prisoners when the Japanese garrisons fell.

The little-known fact that Koreans made up the lion’s share of residents at the internment camp is becoming the focus of new academic scrutiny and discussion.

Korean Prisoners Identified

Last year, researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi’s Center for Oral History began a new collaboration with the National Park Service to collect accounts from the Korean or Korean American descendants of people who were detained at the camp or who worked there to incorporate this new information into current understanding and historical interpretation.

This work builds on the scholarship of Duk Hee Lee Murabayashi, president of the Korean Immigration Research Institute in Hawaiʻi, and Professor Yong-ho Ch’oe, who taught Korean history at the University of Hawaiʻi and was the author of a book about Korean immigration to Hawaiʻi called “From the Land of Hibiscus: Koreans in Hawai‘i, 1903–1950.” Ch’oe died last year.

Murabayashi has identified the 2,700 Koreans held at Honouliuli, providing their names and home locations, which is helping people identify their deceased relatives.

…

‘A Complete Shock’

The fact that so many Koreans were present in the camp during World War II has come as a surprise even to the Korean community.

“Until a few months ago, I certainly did not know about Koreans who, during World War II, ended up as prisoners of war right here in Hawaiʻi at Honouliuli Internment Camp,” said David Suh, president of the United Korean Association of Hawaiʻi, at a recent talk hosted by the park.

“It came to me as a complete shock,” said Edward Shultz, former director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi and the immediate past president of the Korean American Foundation.

…

As the war progressed and American forces began advancing on Japanese-controlled strongholds, they took a number of Koreans into custody as prisoners of war, bringing them to the internment camp at Honouliuli. According to the National Park Service, hundreds arrived after each battle in the Pacific, including from Guam, Peleliu, Tinian and Palau, sometimes intermingled with Japanese prisoners.

Following the 1944 battle in Saipan, the NPS reported, about 350 Koreans arrived, all noncombatants, many with bullet and slash wounds. The bullet wounds came from the American troops, but the Koreans also appeared to have been victims of sword attacks by Japanese, suggesting they suffered systematic abuse.

Relations between the Koreans and the Japanese Americans at the camp became at times so strained that they had to be kept separate from each other, said Professor Alan Rosenfeld, the associate vice president of academic programs and policy at the University of Hawaiʻi, who has spent years studying Honouliuli.

“There are archival incidents of Koreans and Japanese fighting,” said Mary Kunmi Yu Danico, director of the University of Hawaiʻi’s Center for Oral History, who is leading the project to gather oral histories of the descendants of people who lived or worked at the camp.

…

Word began to seep out in Hawaiʻi that Koreans were there, probably because the American military hired some local Korean Americans to serve as translators and guards at the camp.

The first published report that Koreans were living at Honouliuli came in the pages of the Methodist Church bulletin in 1944, according to Murayabushi [Murabayashi!]. Church leaders had apparently been told that many Korean men in their 20s and 30s were being held there, and that they were bored and lonely. The first notice about their existence came when the church asked if anyone had spare musical instruments they would be willing to donate so the men could entertain themselves.

Later, church leaders began organizing an outreach to them, delivering Christmas gifts and arranging to loan them books.

That means there may be people living in Hawaiʻi today who recall those years and those interactions. Murayabushi [Murabayashi!], Danico and Ogura are asking people to come forward to share those memories.

For an earlier blogpost about Korean POWs in WW2, see Koreans, Taiwanese, and Okinawans Among Japanese POWs. See also Origins of Korean POWs in Hawaii, excerpted from an article by the late Yong-ho Ch’oe, mentioned above. Prof. Ch’oe was a fine scholar and a kind gentleman.

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Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, Korea, labor, language, migration, military, nationalism, U.S., war

by | 2 September 2025 · 12:20 am

Purging Venezuela’s Opposition, 2004

From Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, by Carlos Lizarralde (Codex Novellus, 2024), Kindle pp. 71-73:

The broader cultural context of Chávez’s offensive was a new emphasis on the notion of being a “real” Venezuelan. Building on 19th-century tropes, Chávez kept talking about a connection to the land, the music, food, and customs that were thought to be “pure.” These were the opposite of the culture espoused by the “cosmopolitan” classes with roots elsewhere. One of Chávez’s favorite words came to be “endogenous,” or that which comes from the inside, to refer to everything he and his movement stood for: endogenous development, endogenous economy, endogenous culture and film, and by direct implication, endogenous power. Those who had come from somewhere else, and descended from them, or looked to those countries for their inspiration or education, were in this sense not true Venezuelans. Their blood was not tied to the land.

As in prior purges based on ethnicity and religion throughout history, the most important thing was to have a list: a piece of paper with the names of those who were not “real” Venezuelans.

The opportunity to create such a comprehensive classification came about when 1.5 million signatures were collected to force a recall vote against the president in early 2004. While people signed the petition in the hope of bringing about political change by removing the president, the electoral authority leaked the data file containing the names, national ID numbers, and addresses of every single person opposed to Chávez who had signed. A ruling party congressman then uploaded every record to a public website. That is when the ethnic purge went fully digital. Many on the list did not descend from Creoles, or 19th-century German families, or 20th-century immigrants. No existing database can empirically determine the precise ancestry of those signing the petition, but it seems clear that a vast majority had parents and grandparents who came from somewhere else.

The infamous “Tascón List,” with its millions of names, was a classic example of political persecution. It became a virtual and universally accessible blacklist. Entire government agencies and ministries were purged, as were employees of government-owned banks, insurance companies, and other enterprises. Government contractors, scientists, college professors, people in highly technical positions, beneficiaries of government services, and anyone who had a connection to the state, was summarily dismissed, cut off, and otherwise vanished from access to government funds. The systematic persecution and disfranchisement of those who wanted Chávez out simply added to the growing number of those who, not wanted in their own country, would choose to migrate.

The 1.5 million signatures triggered a full recall referendum, which Chávez would win with 58% of the vote. The election’s fairness was questioned by some, but the elections were deemed impartial by former US President Carter, who personally oversaw the process.

Between strong political and electoral victories, the wholesale firings from the oil company, systematic purges from all state functions, and the beginning of an exodus of Chávez’s most educated opponents, the Chavista ethnic identity project was beginning to change the political landscape, and perhaps the electoral one as well.

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Filed under democracy, education, labor, migration, nationalism, Venezuela

by | 1 September 2025 · 12:58 am

Early Rise of Hugo Chávez

From Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, by Carlos Lizarralde (Codex Novellus, 2024), Kindle pp. 53-55:

The slow collapse of the Adeco project started in the early 1980s, as oil prices fell and did not rise again, except for the Gulf War hiccup in 1990, until 2004. In 1998, when Chávez won his first election with 56% of the votes, the price of oil had just dropped in real dollars to its lowest levels since 1972. Venezuela’s population was then twelve million people, as opposed to the twenty-three million inhabitants of 1998.

If the country’s oil prospects had helped Betancourt dream of erasing, and then burying, any sense of racial and ethnic identity from the country at the beginning of the 20th century, 1998 presented a different landscape. The return of ethnic difference in the nation’s consciousness was already in the air.

As explained, Chávez broadened his base toward the end of the electoral campaign and eventually won the 1998 election with support from lighter-skinned middle-class voters. He campaigned hard for those votes by tapping into the desire for a powerful military figure at a time of uncertainty. He said the country and the state were broke only because someone, an “evil group,” had stolen all the wealth. By then his speeches lacked any mention of redistribution, and merely mentioned theft. If he stopped “them” from stealing, there would be plenty of money for all. But this was campaign rhetoric. It was clear to anyone who looked at the numbers that Chávez would not be able to do anything once in power.

Oil prices had hit rock bottom, and there was only so much revenue to go around. There were not even enough resources to satisfy Chávez’s core base in the favelas, much less reconstruct the state that had glued the country together for so many decades. Chávez’s short-term economic options were almost non-existent, but it is also clear he did not even have a plan.

What Chávez had was a prescient understanding of power: he realized the color-blind society built over the prior fifty years was broken and ready to die. Despite his one-nation pitch in the final months of the campaign, Chávez was aware that his powerbase could only be nourished by deepening, not bridging, the ethnic gap. He intuitively understood 19th-century Venezuelan politics, specifically the 100-plus years during which rulers had to grab and retain power in a country with vast swaths of extreme poverty, a weak state at best, and very little money.

The young Chávez vividly understood everything the young Uslar Pietri had described in his novel Las Lanzas Coloradas, which most of the country had forgotten. His encyclopedic knowledge of the songs, legends, heroes, and language of bygone times became a political currency of incalculable value. His humble origins in the rural Plains and his self-proclaimed Zambo identity (the original caste designating those of mixed African and Amerindian descent) made him a different kind of politician. The memory of his great-great-grandfather Maisanta, a renegade warlord whose guerrilla actions had killed former President Crespo in 1898, helped him understand the new politics that were to come.

He saw the power vacuum in front of him, as had been the case for ambitious would-be-rulers throughout the 1800s. Back in that century, a sudden drop in coffee prices, a shift in population, or a palace revolt in faraway Caracas, were always seen as golden opportunities for men of war to march with a few peons and take over the trophy capital while advocating the grievances of Pardo peasants.

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Filed under democracy, economics, energy, labor, military, nationalism, Venezuela

by | 31 August 2025 · 1:14 am

Two Novels of Venezuela

From Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart, by Carlos Lizarralde (Codex Novellus, 2024), Kindle pp. 46-47:

Two novels describe the crux between the past and the imaginary future proposed by Betancourt: Las Lanzas Coloradas (The Red Spears) by Arturo Uslar Pietri, and Doña Barbara, by Rómulo Gallegos. The novels were published in 1931 and 1929, respectively, and both seek nothing less than to explain the country and its prospects. Naturally, both stage their dramas in the countryside.

Uslar Pietri’s Las Lanzas Coloradas tells the story of a slave plantation owned by the descendants of the original Spanish founders at the time of the Wars of Independence. Doña Barbara takes place at a cattle ranch worked by free peons rather than slaves. Gallegos’ Doña Barbara is the story of a college graduate who returns to modernize his father’s land only to find himself opposed by a vicious, uneducated woman with near-magical powers. Barbara, standing in for the country’s dark past, will stop at nothing to derail the civilizing ideals of the protagonist, whose name is Santo, Spanish for Saint. The widely popular soap opera plot in Gallego’s novel ends, predictably, with the triumph of noble civilization over barbarism.

Uslar Pietri’s novel, on the other hand, ends with the Creole family’s plantation burned and reduced to ashes, the last female descendant of the founder graphically raped and murdered by the Pardo foreman, and the white male heir half-crazed and wandering through the countryside. …

The young Uslar Pietri was the last writer of a generation obsessed with the country’s ethnic divides, the savagery of the 19th-century wars, and what some have called the pessimistic view of Venezuelan history. Las Lanzas Coloradas is packed with impressionistic descriptions of the brutality of life for enslaved workers at the plantation, the psychological effects of human submission, and the fury mixed-race Pardos felt toward their Creole masters. Uslar Pietri’s novel also offers an alternative and radical view of the independence wars’ early years.

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Filed under democracy, labor, literature, military, nationalism, religion, slavery, Venezuela

by | 18 August 2025 · 12:12 am

Emigrating from Liverpool by Sea

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 229-232:

The modern Catholic cathedral in Liverpool is known irreverently but affectionately as Paddy’s Wigwam, in deference to its shape and to the antecedents of the masses who worship within the diocese today. The six years of the Famine sailings saw a million Irish emigrants arrive in Liverpool’s port. The majority had just completed the short trip across the usually turbulent Irish Sea – the first stage of their journey to America or Canada. Nearly a quarter of them would have nothing more to do with that cruel sea and those inhuman ships. Some travelled to England and Scotland but many an Irishman and his family remained in Liverpool. For some the city symbolised the end of all their travels and a section of the city came to be known as Little Ireland.

For nearly two centuries, from c. 1700–1900, Liverpool’s port enabled Britain to dominate rival maritime nations. Liverpool sent out ships to explore the world but also ships full of human cargo, first slaves, and then emigrants. Known as the slavers’ port in the 18th century, Liverpool rapidly became an emigrants’ port in the 19th century, though Liverpool’s ship owners continued to trade in slaves until slavery was abolished by Britain in 1807. During that final year, 185 ships transported as many as 50,000 slaves. Soon the commercial rule of ‘slaves-out and sugar-back’ gave way to ‘emigrants-out and timber-back’. On ships bound for New York or Boston during the Famine, it cost 6 cs to insure US $4 worth of baggage but only 4 cs to insure your life. But the Irish were only part of the emigration story. During the 19th century, a total of nine million emigrants spilled out of Europe, sailing from Liverpool to America. Liverpool enjoyed unique commercial and geographical assets. Sited strategically close to the Irish Sea, the city lay only 3 miles up the River Mersey. Liverpool was also one of the first posts to forge a rail-link with Hull, 100 miles away. Hull, in turn, enjoyed busy trade with the ports of Hamburg and Bremen, Gothenburg and Danzig, from where a remarkable ethnic mix of people journeyed, sometimes fleeing their homelands for various reasons. The crossing from Europe to Hull over the North Sea, was as short as that over the Irish Sea, and the rail fare was only a few shillings. Of course, at this particular time the mainland Europeans formed only a minor part of the emigrant population in Britain.

It was logical for the Irish to aim for Liverpool as their launching pad into the New World, not merely because it was the nearest port of convenience, but also because it was a familiar site and source of summer work. Thousands of Irish farmhands regularly crossed to Liverpool, seeking work at the back end of summer on England’s farms. Too few opportunities existed at home at harvest time and the wages in England were better. Additionally, many more ships were available in Liverpool, with its big, fast vessels and speedy American packet ships. The fast packets grabbed a good half of the emigrant trade towards the end of the Famine years, averaging 40 days westward and 23 days eastward. Liverpool was also one of the world’s busiest shipping ports, with over 36 miles of quays and a massive ship tonnage registered as three times the overall tonnage owned in America at that period. Into this teeming city sailed the Irish families from their rural communities. Already overawed by the Irish cities of Dublin, Belfast or Cork, the rural emigrants had to survive the streetwise con-men and racketeers of Liverpool, and later of New York or Boston. At various levels the Liverpool fraternity was engaged in the business of exporting people and, as human cargo was regarded as a commodity, every trader sought to extract his ounce of flesh from that commodity. Yet help was at hand, if only the emigrants knew where to look and who to ask. Various publications offered guidance, and government circulars advised on how to find lodgings, how to seek a passage and buy a ticket, where to exchange money, what to avoid at the docks, on the ships and on arrival.

The priority for the emigrant in Liverpool was to obtain a ticket for a ship sailing within a few days. Space on most of the Atlantic ships was often sold in one block by the owners to the passenger brokers and competition was so intense that fares varied from day to day, sometimes changing by the hour. A berth in steerage ranged between £3 10s to £5 (US $17.50 to $25). The port authority licensed 21 brokers who each provided a bond plus two sureties totalling £200 (US $1,000). The brokers paid a small commission to dock-runners for each emigrant delivered to their office. Given half a chance, a runner would lead his unsuspecting victims from the brokers to a lodging house, and then on to a chandler for provisions and suitable clothing, earning further commission, if he could persuade his prey to part with his last few pennies. Before the day of departure, each emigrant had to appear before a medical officer who was paid by the ship owner or charterer £1 (US $5) for every hundred passengers he inspected. After a very rudimentary examination, he would stamp each ticket as proof of inspection. Passengers were entitled to board the ship 24 hours before departure. Once settled, if lucky to have among them a fiddler or a piper and while spirits were high, the passengers might enjoy a song and dance. Once out on the ocean, the sloping decks and strong south-westerly winds would soon restrict their activities. Occasionally, there were scenes at the quayside if passengers arrived late, after the gangway had been raised, the mooring lines cast off and the ship had sailed away. The late arrivals would be rushed to the dock-gate and as their ship passed close by, their luggage and boxes would be flung aboard, followed by the passengers themselves, hopefully landing on the deck. If they or their luggage missed the ship and splashed into the water, there was usually a man in a rowing boat positioned for a rescue, and a reward.

Steam tugs usually towed a sailing ship into position down-river. As tugs were not always available during these early days of steam, outgoing ships were sometimes steered by a practised pilot with a single-sail cutter in attendance. The pilot’s local knowledge of navigational hazards, tides, currents and winds and his regular practice in handling a ship were invaluable. During the short voyage down-river, the ship’s crew searched for stowaways. All legitimate passengers were mustered on deck during the search, while dubious bundles were poked with long, sharp sticks and suspect barrels were turned upside-down. Many a barrel or trunk concealed a body or two. Once discovered, the guilty stowaways were transferred to the tug and returned to shore where they would be tried before a magistrate. A lucky few survived the search and made their appearance two or three days later when the crew would be grateful as the successful stowaways worked their passage by doing the most unpleasant jobs on board.

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Filed under Britain, Canada, economics, Ireland, labor, migration, slavery, travel, U.S.

by | 13 August 2025 · 3:03 am

U.S. Aid for Ireland, 1847

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 54-56:

No fewer than 5,000 crossings are estimated to have carried the million Irish Famine emigrants westwards over the Atlantic. Yet a single passage in the opposite direction has achieved great significance historically. This was the voyage of the Jamestown, a well-armed man-of-war and one of only six sloops in the American navy, transformed overnight into a merchant vessel on a mission of mercy.

The winter months of 1846 right through to the following spring were bitterly cold, with unusually heavy snowfalls, and the full extent of the suffering in Ireland, especially during the early months of 1847, was never fully or widely appreciated around the world, especially in England where the plight of the Irish achieved neither recognition nor sympathy. The greatest help came from the United States: the recent emigrant arrivals carried the news with them and each one had a personal story which bore testimony to the hopeless situation in every corner of their homeland. Months before the first of the coffin ships sailed, a wave of relief organizations and meetings broke across America. Ships from Newark, Philadelphia and New York sailed before the spring arrived for Cork, Londonderry and Limerick, carrying some clothing but mostly food.

The Quakers Society of Friends were the first large-scale organizers of relief for Ireland, and when the American Vice-President chaired a huge public meeting in Washington on February 9th, they urged that every city, town and village should hold a meeting so that a large national contribution might be raised and forwarded with all practicable dispatch to the scenes of the suffering. Just before that meeting, the government in London announced they would pay the freight charges on all donations of foodstuffs to Ireland.

Washington matched this by stating that no tolls would be charged on roads or canals for goods on their way to Ireland, and several independent railway companies promised to carry suitably labelled packages for free. Cash came in from all sides, including a noteworthy contribution of US $170 dollars from the Choctaw Indian Tribe. Suddenly, available shipping for the eastern crossing of the Atlantic became scarce, and another crowded February meeting, this time in Boston, heard that Congress had been petitioned that one of the ships of war now lying in Boston Harbour, be released to sail for Ireland freighted with provisions.

Reaction in the capital was swift. We need to remember that at this time America was heavily engaged in war against Mexico. Congress voted on March 8th that the USS Jamestown in Boston and the USS Macedonian in New York be released from service, their armaments removed and assigned to the Irish Relief Committee in each city who would arrange for a civilian captain and crew to sail these ships to Ireland with relief supplies.

Three weeks later, the Jamestown set sail. The sloop, which was 157 feet long, 1,000 tons and normally carried 22 guns, was now commanded by Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, a well-known Bostonian. By May 16th he was back home, fully a month before the Macedonian, a frigate of 1,700 tons with 44 guns and buffeted by all sorts of political problems, could leave New York.

Loading had begun in Boston on St Patrick’s Day; the Labourers’ Aid Society composed almost entirely of native Irishmen, stowed all the cargo without drawing pay. If the departure of the Jamestown was seen as such a triumph in America, imagine how she was greeted as she dropped anchor after a voyage of only 15 days in the harbour of Cove, close to Cork City.

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Filed under Britain, democracy, disease, food, labor, Mexico, migration, military, nationalism, U.S.

by | 9 August 2025 · 1:56 pm

Irish Famine Ships Introduction

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 13-14:

Five thousand ships sailed across the Atlantic with Irish emigrants in the six years of the Famine Emigration. They were diverse in size, safety and comfort, or the lack of it, and they varied in many other respects – in age and in the experience and quality of their crews, their speed on the voyage, provisions on board, and the fares they charged.

American packet ships of more than 1,000 tons, with triple-decks were built in the late 1840s specifically for the emigrant trade. They would carry more than 400 passengers, some in private cabins. But by no means all the ships were custom-built. When the British Queen first put to sea in 1785 she needed several major repairs before she could carry passengers on regular voyages from Liverpool to New York. And when the Elizabeth and Sarah achieved infamy in the fever year of 1847, she had been at sea for 83 years.

Undoubtedly, many of the Famine ships would have carried African slaves in the early years of the 19th century. The European slave traders finally ended their activities barely a dozen years before the onset of the Famine and the Arab slavers continued to ply well into the 1860s.

There were tiny vessels like The Hannah with a crew of six and measuring only 59 feet – about the same length as four family cars parked bumper-to-bumper. She was converted from a coaster by the addition of a third mast to enable her to go into deeper waters, and sailed to New York five times, from Dublin, Cork and Limerick, with a complement of only 50 or 60 passengers crammed below in a single hold.

These Irish men and women were not always welcome on arrival in their new homeland, for this desperate migration represented cheap labour, a threat to the established American workforce. But they dug canals, built roads and laid railways, they became seamstresses and servants.

The alternative was to stay at home and starve. A meal, a job, a place to rest, a chance to survive was all the Famine emigrants asked. They left Ireland by sailing ship every day, summer and winter, for six years while the Famine lasted, to make the 3,000 mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean. This is their story.

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Filed under Britain, Canada, food, labor, migration, slavery, U.S.

by | 8 August 2025 · 6:27 am

Polish Acronyms ZSRR, ZOMO

I came across two striking Polish acronyms in the last chapter of the history book I just finished reading: Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014).

ZSRR = Związek Socjalistycznych Republik Radzieckich, lit. Union of Socialist Republics Soviet (abbr. Związek Radziecki, Union Soviet),
also ZSRS = Związek Socjalistycznych Republik Sowieckich (abbr. Związek Sowiecki, Union Soviet)

ZOMO = Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej, lit. Motorized Reserves of the Militia of Citizens. These were the troops who broke up large public demonstrations against the regime from the 1950s through the 1980s. They were disbanded in September 1989, after the election of June 4, 1989, a day of glory in Poland (and of infamy in China).

Another linguistic tidbit from the last chapter (p. 630) is Nie ma wolności bez Solidarności! lit. Not have freedom without Solidarity!

The Far Outliers will be heading for Poland next month.

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Filed under democracy, labor, language, military, Poland, USSR

by | 3 August 2025 · 6:11 am

Poles in Japan vs. Russia, 1904

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 526-528:

In 1904 war broke out between Russia and Japan. As odd as it may seem, the clash with its tiny Asian neighbor proved troublesome for the Russians. The war effort led to problems at home and provided new opportunities, and new challenges, for the Poles of the Russian Empire.

The hostilities provided impetus for the Poles (always on the lookout for opportunity in the international arena) to plot. Both Piłsudski and Dmowski made their way to Tokyo, independently of each other, and each with a different agenda. Piłsudski offered the Japanese Polish military services; his men would fight the Russians on their home front, thus helping Japan win the war. Dmowski came to warn the Japanese against taking up Piłsudski’s offer; he expected that the war might compel the Russians to make concessions to the Poles. While the double visit might have been seen as a comedy of errors (the two men actually met while in Tokyo, discussed their respective views, and respectfully chose to differ), the fact that the bemused Japanese were willing to hear each side suggests the Poles were being treated as if they were genuine players in the international realm, and not subjects of Russia. And, although they declined to use the Poles to fight, the Japanese general staff did provide Piłsudski with some money and war materièl in the hopes he might gather intelligence for them.

The Revolution of 1904–1907

In the meantime the Russo-Japanese War continued, increasingly showing the weakness of the eventual loser, Russia. This weakness had repercussions for the Poles of the empire. The diplomatic efforts of Piłsudski and Dmowski notwithstanding, the events of 1904 and beyond would be more noteworthy for the upheaval and bloodshed they engendered. In the fall of that year, a working-class demonstration broke out in Warsaw’s Grzymułtowski Square in which Piłsudski’s PPS fighters (some sixty strong) defended the crowds against the Russian police and mounted Cossacks. A number of participants were injured, while over four hundred were arrested and six lost their lives—as did one Russian policeman. This was the first armed clash between Poles and Russians since 1863….

Back in the Polish lands, strikes in places such as Warsaw and Łódź raised the specter of revolution; martial law was declared. Poles were becoming radicalized, especially the Polish workers, many of whom lost their jobs as a result of the economic decline brought on by the war.

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