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This chapter explores the employment conditions on British coastal ships between 1870 and 1914, focussing on the modern and industrial screw collier fleet on the east coast, which previous studies have traditionally overlooked. It uses data from British government censuses of seamen taken during the period and employment data from eighty Crew Agreements. In detail it discusses wage rates; methods of payment; recruitment stipulations; methods of maintaining crew morale; the hierarchy of promotion; and the way crew members expressed dissatisfaction with working conditions - such as through desertion. It determines that screw colliers received regular work, long-term employment opportunities, reasonable wages, and less hazardous employment conditions than other maritime career paths such as long-distance voyagers, and was thus a popular role.

This chapter studies the conditions of crewmen during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the systems of payment and wages. It explores the methods by which wages were calculated - such as through shares of the ship’s earnings or payment in lump sum, often the case for shorter voyages. It finds that peace and wartime rates differed, and seeks to determine the reasons for the stability of peacetime wages. It then breaks down the crew roles and their payment rates, and compares the difference between master, mate, and carpenter wages. It give further attention to legislative regulation; advance payments; contributions to social security; and portage. The relationship between wages for slave trade cargoes also comes under consideration, due to disputes over crew requests to carry slaves freight free. Finally, it looks at the difficulties and dangers of the seafaring life, in order to determine why so many men took the risks involved in a career at sea.

This chapter explores the day-to-day lives and interactions of seamen and maritime crew within Franco-American shipping at the end of the eighteenth century. It analyses what it considers ‘culturally substantive’ relationships between crew-members, where friendship, language-exchange, and working knowledge of each other's’ maritime and naval systems developed between French and American seamen during the American Revolution and the Franco-American Alliance of 1778. These results come from the study of diplomatic and military records. It clarifies that maritime labour facilitated cultural exchange, and that to view this period as either Atlantic or Mediterranean is too narrow a specification for such an intermingled period of history.

This chapter studies the role of the crewmen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by focussing on their identities, relationship with the sea, and career rewards. It begins by listing the quantities and duties of men on specific voyages, to highlight the variety in crew sizes and determine which roles were vital across all forms of shipping trade. It examines the living conditions of crew members; the specialisation of skills; the flux in intake during wartime; navigation apprenticeships; the possibilities of promotion; and the structure of crew hierarchies. It concludes that conditions for crewmen would vary between shipmasters, but that harsh treatment by the shipmaster would often spur crew members to seek promotions to their own command.

This chapter explores the level of involvement of the British government in mercantile shipping during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It provides the history behind the 1651 Navigation Act and the previous instances of British trade being restricted to British vessels, which date as far back as the fourteenth century and were also present during the reign of Elizabeth I. It then analyses the competition between British and Dutch shipping and the escalating tensions that caused the passing of the 1651 Navigation Act and the outbreak of the Dutch wars. It lists the Navigation Act provisions that applied to shipping, and attempts to answer what scope foreign ships had to trade with England as a result of its implementation. Though the bulk of the chapter discusses the Navigation Acts and their fallout, it also considers the increase of government intervention in maritime activity during the eighteenth century which included law-making efforts concerning the Navy, and investment in docks and ports. It concludes that government intervention, when present, was often beneficial to the industry, particularly when it came to employment issues and working conditions.

This chapter explores the brief resurgence of piracy in Newfoundland between the years 1717 and 1725. It places the developments in Newfoundland within the context of North Atlantic piracy in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession, whilst linking the presence of pirates in Newfoundland to the working conditions of the Fishery. It details the fish trade’s vulnerability to piracy, particularly from North African ‘Sallee Rovers’; the increase in state protection; the differing approaches of Britain and France when dealing with piracy; and the difficult working conditions in the fishery and how that contributed to the recruitment of pirates. It concludes that once the Royal Navy’s presence in Newfoundland increased and the working conditions in the fishery eased during economic recovery, piracy was quick to disappear from the area.