The Union Castle Line and Emigration from Eastern Europe to South Africa

 

© Aubrey Newman

 

All papers ought to begin with acknowledgements, and “thank you”s should be at the beginning.  So I must express my gratitude to my departmental colleague who tells me how to put my computing data together; to some twelve generations of students who have been inputting my data as part of their undergraduate studies; and now to my erstwhile research student, now research associate - Nick Evans - who has done a lot of work on the Wilson Ellerman papers at Hull University Library and who, as we shall see, has been responsible for cracking the story of Baltic shipping at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It is true I suppose that the biggest growth industry of recent times has been in ‘migration studies’ and there can be no doubt that there have been masses of books on the impact of one growth or other on the attitudes of one or other group of host communities. They have been set in various contexts from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries,  and indeed I suppose that if I were a classical scholar I would find studies of the impacts of the Greek colonists on the original inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.  But all these studies, I would suggest, concentrate on two aspects of the basic issues -  they look at the countries from which the migrants come and they look at  the countries into which they go.  What they very rarely do is to look at the ways in which they go from A to B, and to ask how far is the journey from A to B affected by the various means of transportation available;  indeed how far do those means of transportation actually distort the whole process by influencing the migrants to travel not from A to B but to decide to go to C instead?  What I have been doing recently is to raise such problems within the general context of migration studies and in particular to discuss them in the context of one special mass migration and in connection with one special group of shipping companies.

The mass migration which I have been studying is part of a general migration out of Europe after the middle of the nineteenth century.  There were Scandinavians, Italians, Hungarians, Rumanians, Poles and Russians, the majority aiming at North America, amounting to some six million or more.  Since until very late in the century the passenger traffic between America and Europe was largely in British hands it would follow that much of this traffic went through Great Britain.  Add to that the factor that even after other routes were opened it was often cheaper to travel through Britain to America than to sail directly from Europe to North America and you can see how the issue as to how people were moved can be a most significant feature of this mass migration. 

Within that movement there was one particular element, that of Jews mainly from Poland and Russia, and largely between 1880 and 1914.  If there were six million persons were on the move out of Eastern Europe, some four million of them were Jews, coming out of the so-called Pale of Settlement, that part of Western Russia and Russian Poland which had been designated by the Russian Government as an area within which Jews were allowed to live. It stretched from the Baltic down to the Black Sea, and within its provinces or Guberniya lived millions of Jews, restricted both geographically and economically by the Russian government and subjected after 1882 to an increasingly severe level of official and governmental persecution.  Many of them sought to leave, but that was easier said than done.  The Russian government might well have been prepared to let them go, but nonetheless in practice placed many restrictions on their departure so that it was often much easier for travellers to have themselves smuggled over the border than seek to leave legitimately.  Indeed, so little was the Government trusted that even those who might well have secured official papers and approval preferred to use the smugglers.  Those who lived in the southern parts of Russia or in Rumania might have travelled through the Black Sea ports or by rail through Central Europe, linking there with those from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were making their own way to America.  Those from the central provinces would most probably have travelled by train, as would those from the northern part of the Pale.  All these would have faced long and difficult journeys, languages which they could not understand and instructions which they could not decipher.  Almost certainly they would not have embarked on these journeys without some sort of guidance, sometimes from those who had preceded them and could pass on information based on their own experience but sometimes from a network of agents in the Pale who were in a position both legally and illegally to facilitate journeys, giving information about trains, desirable routes, and the costs of the various journeys involved.  The main agents would have been based upon the major centres of population and the ports, but within the villages and small towns, the so-called shtetls, there were chains of sub-agents who would have been responsible for initial contacts with the would-be travellers.

After these migrants had crossed the borders of Russia with the west, legally or illegally, they would have arrived at various receiving stations set up on the eastern borders of Germany.  As time went on these stations served not only as control points to check the health of the travellers but also to try and steer them into using the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line.  Crossing Germany by train, as the bulk of the migrants undoubtedly did, they would be taken by way of transfer stations in Berlin to accommodation provided in Hamburg and Bremen by the shipping companies, thus ensuring that the travellers had as little contact with the native German population as possible. Other routes of migration however were opened up for those who did not wish to use the German trans-Atlantic shipping companies but preferred to use British ships.  Many of them still came through Hamburg or Bremen but made their way to Hull or London. Others often came through Amsterdam or Rotterdam

However before the end of the century a further route was beginning to open up, and that was a sea route from Libau, at the northern end of the Pale.  Clearly this route presented advantages for residents in the North of the Pale, in Lithuania, since it allowed them to avoid the long-drawn out railway route to Hamburg.

But before that I must sketch out briefly the steps which have led me to become especially involved and led us to this evening’s discussions.  Some years ago the University of Leicester decided that all its History undergraduates had to study a computer database and write a project in connection with it. One of the databases available for them is founded on some thirteen volumes of registers of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter in London, covering the years 1896 till 1914, in addition to a number of volumes of Minutes of the Executive and General committees, a copy-letter book for a short period, as well as a number of annual reports and other statistics made available for the Board of Trade..  The volumes of registers are slowly being transcribed and entered onto the computer.  The records note the dates on which the so-called ‘inmates’ entered the Shelter, their names, places of birth, their marital status, their occupations, where they had come from in order to reach London, how long they stayed in the Shelter, and their intended destination.  Analysis of these records have however presented us with some unexpected results. We had started in the knowledge that of the four million persons on the move out of Eastern Europe, most of them wanted to go to America..  This is a time when, as is generally stated, there develops in the United States an enormous Jewish immigrant population. That much is common form.  However not everyone did go to America.  Clearly Jews did go elsewhere, and in this I am not including those who might have wanted to go elsewhere but ended up in Great Britain.  One of the communities to which Jews did go was South Africa.  There is however a peculiarity about the community which established itself there. It has always maintained that it was Lithuanian in origin, and that most of its families who went there before the outbreak of the first World War came in particular from the province of Kovno. So much and for so long has this been a feature of South African Jewish life that there is at least one study of the Jewish community there entitled ‘Lithuania on the Veldt’.  When work started on our database I had assumed that the vast majority of those passing through the Shelter would be going to North America; what was demonstrated most unusually from the very beginning was that the most frequently stated destination was not North America but South Africa. We had begun by taking short inroads into the thirteen volumes at random, in order to get some feel for the volumes, and we found at that stage that some forty per cent of those passing through the Registers were headed for South Africa.  We have now largely completed these volumes and it still remains true that Africa was the most important destination.  It became a feature of our analysis of the Shelter records on our database. Further information about the importance of the South African migration for the Shelter can be drawn from the statistics provided either from those Annual Reports of the Shelter which have survived or from various figures afforded to Parliament by the Board of Trade and based in their turn upon figures supplied from the Shelter authorities.

Numbers passing through the Shelter each month; the numbers in bold are those noted as proceeding to South Africa.

	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	July	Aug	Sept	Oct
1885-86	36	81	49	71	55	59	101	125	131	122	115	82	1027
1886-87	129	84	86	72	69	49	110	121	139	125	118	60	1162
1887-88	95	88	86	120	68	170	175	124	144	136	57	59	1322
1888-89	65	52	62	39	50	41	69	55	113	28	75	34	683
1889-90	84	109	111	105	81	64	153	152	150	173	124	93	1399
1890-91	144	126	98	114	145	82	150	190	275	303	283	111	2021
1891-92	154	123	120	106	155	71	160	170	211	168	61	49	1548
1892-93	51	68	84	114	102	143	232	283	274	294	162	144	1951
	13	26	13	16	23	40	58	41	80	87	30	26	453
1893-94	187	187	149	100	117	100	203	186	231	179	134	101	1874
	65	46	30	15	53	16	62	23	60	63	47	11	491
1894-95	162	127	164	112	118	66	280	218	375	300	185	129	2236
	53	34	21	27	30	3	126	91	190	182	85	38	880
1895-96	365	261	197	198	163	214	357	486	281	501	188	239	3450
	253	175	83	73	63	94	210	353	152	392	111	175	2134
1896-97	336	249	191	138	152	111	291	352	330	352	201	108	2811
	260	170	52	38	59	20	170	170	143	161	78	10	1331
1897-98	232	184	127	160	191	80	284	220	185	207	99	91	2060
	46	81	36	36	30	28	157	110	96	123	48	17	808
1898-99	185	120	144	117	118	174	268	462	367	374	90	275	2694
	100	50	64	51	35	46	182	316	133	150	18	22	1167
1899-00	265	220	136	107	151	57	353	530	588	229	130	81	2847
	1	9	-	12	11	-	19	71	156	120	45	31	425
1900-01	217	147	112	147	189	122	249	239	244	322	113	249	2350
	133	68	39	45	15	15	78	115	145	242	54	148	1097
1901-02	224	241	95	123	166	50	200	202	305	289	230	145	2270
	123	99	1	11	47	8	58	106	81	95	86	117	832
1902-03	835	768	718	180	119	33	213	233	390	483	328	172	4472
	817	728	560	46	62	12	125	181	308	387	228	140	3594
1903-04	775	469	264	244	161	116	316	575	619	495	256	479	4769
	591	329	155	101	63	16	116	129	94	137	27	53	1811
1904-05	1062	1355	867	560	396	161	552	476	439	432	308	133	6741
	102	58	54	56	79	8	113	98	101	163	71	37	940
1905-06
1906-07	136	151	162	78	68	60	291	213	279	407	47	328	2220
1907-08	327	341	79	102	201	25	112	127	149	198	162	89	1912
	62	34	38	63	52	-	42	90	88	117	61	30	677
1908-09	120	103	184	160	82	38	153	138	162	205	86	116	1547
1909-10	183	203	86	185	457	1024	140	153	213	230	274	179	3327
	90	73	60	59	137	11	110	115	190	208	177	45	1275
1910-11	406	338	177	185	216	85	137	119	269	207	193	140	2472
	96	118	53	61	74	9	106	106	197	143	114	71	1148
1911-12	241	134	108	95	80	85	137	119	269	207	193	140	1808
	121	89	75	80	46	33	100	127	111	154	65	121	1122
1912-13	202	173	160	123	187	193	248	200	292	220	261	96	2355
	113	97	92	65	108	13	56	108	132	119	164	26	1093
1913-14	220	191	129	109	154	41	139	122	171				1276
	118	87	60	56	87	2	82	72	102				666

 

But if places born are matched with destinations, and in particular with the South African destination over 90% of those who declare Africa as their destination and whose place of birth is named were born in those provinces of Russia usually known as Lithuania.  And of these the overwhelming majority were born either in the Kovno Guberniya or in the two Guberniya immediately adjoining Kovno.  We have other evidence too, emanating from Russia itself on this subject. There was an organisation operating in the Pale of Settlement entitled the Jewish Colonial Association or ICA for short.  In a number of reports in the first decade of the twentieth century analysing conditions for the Jews in the Pale it amongst other things reports on emigration patterns, and indicates a large number wishing to go to either North or South America. But it also reports that very unusually in two districts there are large numbers wishing to go to Africa.  I am not suggesting that Lithuanian Jews did not go elsewhere, for we do know of many who settled both in UK and in USA, but it seems to me that this particular wave of settlement is very unusual.

The figures are indeed extremely interesting, for they show that South Africa did not appear as a destination for inmates when the Shelter was first opened in 1886.  Indeed as late as 1892 there is no mention of Africa as a destination.  Then the figures jump; in the year 1893, 453; in 1894, 500;  in 1895, 880, and in 1896 2134.  In 1897 they go down slightly to 1337 and then vary considerably.  But there is no year where the figures fall below 425, and at various times they rise again to 3594.  They fall into place as well in considering the total figures for migration out of and through Britain to southern Africa.

 

 British and Alien Migrants to South Africa 1879-1913.

 

 

	British Migrants	Alien Migrants	Shelter Inmates Going to Africa	Shelter Inmates as a % of Alien Migrants
1879	6895	770
1880	9059	744
1881	12905	1313
1882	12063	1520
1883	5742	960
1884	3954	722
1885	3268	692
1886	3897	762
1887	4909	749
1888	6166	1236
1889	13884	1758
1890	10321	1755
1891	9090	1592
1892	9891	1750
1893	13097	3061	525	17%
1894	13133	3583	467	13%
1895	20234	5751	1221	21%
1896	24394	11246	2136	19%
1897	21109	7692	1021	13%
1898	19756	5877	831	14%
1899	14832	4431	1327	30%
1900	20815	4703	666	14%
1901	23143	5410	1118	21%
1902	43206	8680	2155	25%
1903	50206	12418	2969	21%
1904	26818	5450	1051	19%
1905	26307	4839	780               (10 months only)
1906	22804	3519	no figures available
1907	20924	2339	96 (2 months only)
1908	19568	2376	581 (10 months only)
1909	22017	2638	163 (2 months only)
1910	37273	3541	1326	37%
1911	30767	3761	1144	30%
1912	28216	3672	1172	32%
1913	25852	3857	1088	28%

It is I think interesting, and as we shall see significant, that the Shelter processed between 17% and 37% of those Aliens who are registered as en route for Africa.

But the Shelter and its records have much more to tell us.  An examination of the Registers and more especially an examination of the ships named as conveying the tranmigrants passing through the Shelter can easily identifies those going to Africa as using entirely the Union Shipping Company and the Castle Line.  These were the companies which between them were almost invariably awarded the Royal Main contracts between the United Kingdom and the Cape, and in contemporary advertisements both in London and in Cape Town they boasted that they were the only ones providing cheap steerage and third class passenger fares to South Africa.  While other companies specialised in conveying passengers and cargo to Cape Town or even dropped off passengers at Cape Town while their ships were en route to New Zealand or to Australia, none did so as cheaply and none had the mail contracts.  These two companies played the leading part in mass passenger traffic and, incidentally, it is surprising how little mention is made of this in the most recent studies of the leading light in this trade, Sir Donald Currie.

It is when we look at these companies in detail or more especially at their ships that a number of very interesting facts develop.  Between 1891 and 1900 the Union Line ordered and brought into service no less than 12 new passenger ships, between them capable of carrying some 800 3rd class passengers in addition to whatever might have been available in steerage accommodation - usually some 400 passengers each.  At the same time the Castle Line brought into service 24 new ships, many of them capable of carrying between 100 and 150 3rd class passengers in addition to several hundred steerage passengers. They came into service gradually, but the orders must have been given for the building of these boats in the late 1880s when the Board of Trade figures demonstrate a jump from some 7500 passengers a year to over 16,000 a year were going to Africa.  Certainly there is no doubt that despite the very strong competition between these companies neither of them would have built these ships if they did not have a reasonable chance of filling them.  And incidentally the competition was less than might have been expected, for when the Cape Government invited tenders for the mail service the one principal fear against which specific provision had to be made was that the companies might merge, and in practice even before there was a merger the two can be found co-operating most effectively.  It would seem reasonable to assume that the ships were built in order to provide for a specific or envisaged need, and all the evidence is that that need was based upon the contemporary rush to get to the golf fields.  Certainly at one stage the companies were cramming as many passengers as might possibly be got on board the ships, and one account has the report that the pursers  are to allocate sleeping space for these passengers wherever they can find room.  Many of these passengers had been Cornish tin-miners; there had been a collapse in the Cornish tin industry, since it was much cheaper to produce tin from Malaysia by washing it out from alluvial deposits rather than from deep quartz workings. Gold mining in Johannesburg was by now also based upon deep ore working, and so it seemed logical to take the unemployed miners there instead. Part of the evidence for this is in various letters home, including an account by one Jew who went from UK to Africa on a refrigerator boat, in company with a group of these miners. These Cornish migrants escalated from some 200 a year in 1886/1887 to a peak of 4,000, but it collapsed rapidly.  It would seem that such as went were unhappy about staying, and within a short period of time they started going back home to their families instead of persuading wives to come out and join them. There is some element of anecdotal evidence for this but certainly it is in part illustrated by the figures showing how and why the Castle Line gave up calling in at Dartmouth for passengers.  It would seem as a consequence that there had to be some attempt made to replace these passengers; since there had to be a regular mail service to the Cape, provided by these two companies operating their joint contract, the recruitment of passengers even at a minimum fare level might well have made a significant difference to the accounts of the companies.

There seems also to have been at this stage some variation in the various ports served by the Castle Line, in that it introduced a service between Hamburg and London as well as with Flushing.  These variations were short-lived, but in the absence of the Company’s detailed management records it is not possible to determine the details of these variants nor the reasons why they were made.  But at this stage I must refer back to such records of the Shelter as we have.  It is in 1893 that there first appears in the minutes of the Committee of the Shelter a note of the receipt of a cheque from Donald Currie, and thereafter these cheques come fast and furious.  By the end of the century the Shelter was in receipt of regular cheques from both the Castle and the Union Lines, while various statements by the Chairman of the Shelter (as well as their balance sheets) indicate the extent to which these payments in effect covered the running costs of the Shelter.  There had clearly developed a close relationship between the Shelter and these companies - which were amalgamated into one company in 1900 - a relationship illustrated for example in 1906 when the Shelter moved into a new property and invited the Union Castle Line to make a donation towards the costs of building. 

 

Kindly pardon me for taking the liberty of reminding you of your kind promise to me some time ago of a donation from Messrs Donald Currie and Co. towards the Building Fund of the new Shelter. This matter has undoubtedly slipped your memory, but as we are about to open the new Shelter in the course of a few weeks and we are sorely in need of funds for furnishing same, may we hope that Donald Currie and Co. will take into consideration the good work we have done in connection with the South African emigration and furnish us with the promised donation now as it will arrive at a most opportune moment.

 

[It arrived]  The committee rejoice to think that their efforts in looking after the transmigrants holding your tickets have met with your appreciation and they hope that the greater opportunity the new building will afford them will enable the Shelter to continue for many years to come the happy relations which have existed and now exit between this institution and the Union Castle Line.

 

There is also some very interesting correspondence between the Secretary of the Shelter and a number of shipping lines in 1906 following the passage of the 1905 Aliens’ Act.  Under that act distinctions were made between immigrants seeking to enter the country on a long-term basis and those who from the beginning had declared their intentions of merely passing through, of being transmigrants.  This latter category could enter freely, but the shipping companies which brought them into the country had the responsibility under a substantial financial bond of ensuring that all of these transients left the country. The Secretary offered the services of the Shelter’s organisation  which had been accustomed to doing this  in connection with the Union Castle Company for over fifteen years.  Other letters at this time to the Union Castle Company list a number of passengers despatched to the Cape with details of the services afforded - five shillings a head for meeting and seeing-off as well as a schedule for each passenger of the number of nights for which board and lodging had been provided.  Clearly then the Shelter played a considerable part of the provision which could be made for passengers booked through the Union Castle Line en route for South Africa.

The evidence suggests that it was in 1895 and 1896 that the flow of passengers passing through the Shelter en route to South Africa really exploded.  The figures given in the annual reports submitted to the Board of Trade certainly indicate that, while the mere existence of the volumes of Registers points that way too.  The fact that volume one of` our records beginning on 29 May 1896 opens with number one as compared with the other volumes which normally change their numbering on 1st November - when the Shelter’s financial year opens - points to the possibility of a new departure.  A reference in the Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held in the spring of 1896 shows a call for a new system of keeping records of the numbers passing through the Shelter so that a proper system of charges can be made, while the executive agreed to a raise in salary to the superintendent while ‘quote the present numbers passing through’.  Clearly there has been a new development, as is evidenced also by the discovery in a Hebrew language newspaper circulating in the northern Pale of an advertisement by Spiro and company in Libau pointing out the availability of the Castle Line for those wishing to travel to South Africa as well as indicating that they were acting as agents for those travelling to America or even to Australia. 

Some features of that new development have been indicated by work done by Nick Evans whom I have already mentioned to you.  His work is intended to look at the patterns of transmigration through Britain as illustrated by the records of the Wilson company operating out of Hull.  Much of this is obviously concerned with the traffic coming into Hull and moving either to Liverpool or later Southampton, but his analysis of the ways in which Wilson’s managed to establish a steamship cartel dominating the Baltic traffic has a considerable spin-off so far as African traffic is concerned.  He shows that there is the beginnings of a transformation in 1895, partly as a result of the opening of Libau as a port of significance and partly also as a consequence of the opening of an enlarged Kiel Canal that year, cutting down the time that would have been taken by steamers from Libau into either Hull or London.  What however is of most importance is the way in which he has analysed the various steps by which Wilson’s manipulated the relations between the various companies in order to maximise the traffic and of course their own profits.  The years immediately after 1893 saw intense competition for traffic between Wilson’s and the Continental rivals at the same time as the reports from for example the British vice-consul in Libau indicate a growth in traffic from the port:

 

There has been a considerable movement this spring and summer ... and many Jews have emigrated to America, Africa etc. via Libau and the continental ports Bremen, Rotterdam, Antwerp, in fact a regular trade in the forwarding of emigrants has been established - each firm of ship brokers vying with each other to see who will forward cheapest

 

Some of the evidence we have is from individual tickets issued by the Union Castle Lines and still preserved by the descendants of those who migrated;  mostly they are issued in London but some of them give details of an exchange for a voucher.  One of them gives the name of the firm which issued the voucher, and it is Knie, Falk of Libau.  Another is issued by a Dublin firm.  The report from ICA already mentioned describes the activities of some of these agents. 

Clearly Wilson’s had established for themselves an important role in the whole movement out of the Baltic both to London and to Hull, and there is clear evidence of the company’s connections with various transatlantic shipping companies. But as time went on the relations between the Wilson line and Currie’s company - now amalgamated with the Union Line into Union Castle - became more formalised, and Nick Evans has produced a logbook illustrating how the activities of Wilson’s and Union Castle dovetailed.  One of Wilson’s ships was the Romeo, and this boat left Riga on the 18th August 1909; on 19th August it arrived at Libau where it picked up further cargo - pork, horses, and also 41 migrants.  The boat travelled through the Kiel Canal and anchored off Gravesend at midnight, 23rd August.  The passengers were landed at Hays Wharf after clearing customs at Gravesend on 24th at 11.25 am.  28 of the passengers went on to the Shelter where their entry was duly recorded and stayed there until 26th August when they went to Southampton and sailed on the Tintagel Castle. I have not yet been able to check their date of arrival in Cape Town.

There is still work to be done on this migrant trade to South Africa. Principally it is now necessary to examine the shipping manifests and compare the proportions going to Africa who also pass through the Shelter.  These manifests will not give the same detail as the Registers;  they do not for example give details of place of birth. But from them it will be possible to ascertain much more about those who between 1890 and 1914 made their way by ships and trains, through the Shelter and on their own account, and ended up in Cape Town.  What happened to them then is a story that can only be told in Cape Town itself.