Word: seamen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Britain's life line is its merchant navy. Last week the life line snapped. For the first time in 55 years, Britain's seamen went out on strike...
...would take at least three weeks for all of Britain's 2,500 merchant ships, the world's largest trading fleet, to return to British ports (British seamen are prohibited by law from striking their ship in a foreign port or at sea). But already at least 500 ships and 12,000 of Britain's 65,000 seamen were idled, and the strike was having severe effects on Britain's economy. Despite Prime Minister Harold Wilson's warnings, some grocers hiked food prices about 10%. The government forbade the export of meat to conserve...
...surface, the strike seemed simply a matter of money. The seamen, who now earn about $56 for working 56 hours a week, want the same wage for a 40-hour week, plus overtime pay for the additional 16 hours. The raise would be far above the 3½% annual wage increase Wilson has laid down as the cornerstone of his policy of economic restraint...
...never be known, though a Coast Guard inquiry was expected this week. As always, passengers had a hundred conflicting stories. While many had high praise for the crew, the captain of the Finnpulp said that he had turned back the first lifeboat because it was loaded with seamen, ordered it to return to pick up passengers. Voutsinas blandly accounted for the remarkable survival of his crew-only two of 174 died-by explaining that they were "young and well trained, and many of the passengers were elderly...
...GREAT MUTINY, by James Dugan. The British fleet in 1797 may have seemed invincible to the French, but 50,000 of His Majesty's seamen, fed up with being underfed, underpaid and too often flogged, took control of 100 vessels and blockaded their own country in the biggest mass mutiny in maritime history...