Marine Workers Historical Collection
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Abstract
The Marine Workers Historical Collection was the result of a community history project on the Chelsea area of New York City conducted by Joe Doyle, then a New York University Department of Public History graduate student, beginning in 1981. Doyle set out to reconstruct and document the working-class population and institutions of the Chelsea waterfront of New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. The project was continued and expanded in partnership with the Marine Workers Historical Association. The collection includes rank-and-file newsletters, flyers, union correspondence, grievance reports, pamphlets, memoirs, memorabilia and printed ephemera of many kinds documenting the working and living conditions of American merchant seamen/women since 1900 and the struggle of maritime workers, particularly sympathizers of the Left, to organize and maintain leadership in the National Maritime Union (NMU) and other unions.
Historical/Biographical Note
The Marine Workers Historical Collection was the result of a community history project on the Chelsea area of New York City conducted by Joe Doyle, then a New York University Department of Public History graduate student, beginning in 1981. Doyle set out to reconstruct and document the working-class population and institutions of the Chelsea waterfront of New York City in the first half of the twentieth century. Chelsea was a center of shipping and there was a sizable Irish presence in the area. Through walking tours, lectures, plays and locally published articles, Doyle examined the role of Irish politicians and maritime workers in the fabric of a neighborhood. Through oral history interviews, he learned that many founders of the National Maritime Union shipped out from the hiring halls of Chelsea. Doyle's grant application, project reports and an article in Public History(Vol. I, l984) explain the difficulties of trying to research the maritime history of a community that in some instances did not want that history written. During his second year of work on the project Doyle joined forces with the Marine Workers Historical Association, which was actively collecting documentary material.
In 1979, some sixty former seamen and longshoremen had formed the Marine Workers Historical Association to bring together those who had been engaged in the organizing efforts on waterfront and on shipboard in the 1930s, to preserve their history through documents and written and oral accounts by participants, and to make that history more widely known. The first issue of their newsletter, The Hawsepipe(Nov Dec, 1981), included a reference to the Tamiment Library's interest in adding documents, personal histories, photographs, etc. to its archives. Because many American seamen had shipped out of the Chelsea area, Joe Doyle had included MWHA seamen in his Chelsea research activities and he became a central contact person and chief solicitor of much of the current collection. The collection continues to seek out and accept donations of material.
Arrangement
Files arranged alphabetically.
Scope and Content Note
The Marine Workers Historical Collection includes rank-and-file newsletters, flyers, union correspondence, grievance reports, pamphlets, memoirs, memorabilia and printed ephemera of many kinds documenting the working and living conditions of American merchant seamen/women since 1900 and the struggle of maritime workers, particularly sympathizers of the Left, to organize and maintain leadership in the National Maritime Union (NMU) and other unions.
Of particular note are files of clippings relating to NMU president Joseph Curran and critiques of the Curran administration produced by rank-and-file opposition groups and individuals. Outstanding among these is a 350-page typescript memoir by Edward Gordon entitled "Where Away." Gordon describes in detail his upbringing in a Russian immigrant family and his twenty-four years at sea. He discusses early organizing efforts, the hardships of life at sea and power struggles within the union.
A series of files documents the International Seaman's Union strike of 1936, and a small amount of material on Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union and Paul Hall, president of the Seamen's International Union, are also included. Notable among the rank-and-file activists whose experience is documented are Bill Bailey, Barney Lynch, Frederick N. (Blackie) Myers, Stanley Postek, and Morris Weiner. The structure and development of Joe Doyle's Chelsea Waterfront History Project and the administrative history of the Marine Workers Historical Association are also well represented in the collection.
The collection also contains some photographs of National Maritime Union members, membership books, and identification cards.
Subjects
Organizations
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Because of the assembled nature of this collection, copyright status varies across the collection. Copyright is assumed to be held by the original creator of individual items in the collection; these items are expected to pass into the public domain 120 years after their creation. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Marine workers Historical Collection; TAM 125; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The material in this collection was donated to the Tamiment Library as a result of collecting efforts by Joe Doyle, working with the Marine Workers Historical Association, in a series of donations from 1982-2002. The accession number associated with these gifts is 1950.032.
Separated Materials
In 2008 correspondence between Elinor Ferry and F.X. Boyle was separated from this collection and incorporated into the Elinor Ferry Papers (TAM 116), and a Sidney Kaufman scrapbook was transferred to the Sidney Kaufman Papers (ALBA 058).
About this Guide
Processing Information
Photographs were separated from this collection during initial processing and were established as a separate collection, the Marine Workers Historical Collection Photographs (PHOTOS 200). In 2013, the photograph collection was reincorporated into the Marine Workers Historical Collection. In 2013, the collection was rehoused and renumbered.
