CONFLICT AND CO‐OPERATION AMONG TRAWLERMEN1
| Published date | 01 June 1963 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1963.tb00980.x |
| Date | 01 June 1963 |
| Author | P. Duncan |
CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION AMONG TRAWLERMEN’
P.
DUNCAN*
INTRODUCTION
ONE of the outstanding features of modern British social anthropology
is the increasingly sophisticated analysis of conflict and other aspects of
soda1 structure normally contrasted with
it.
Underlying much of this
analysis is Gluckman’s contention that
‘
every social system is a field of
tension, full of ambivalence, of co-operation and contrasting struggle.’l
The substance of this article is an exploration of this thesis in the context
of a particular area of social relations in Britain, namely, the world of
the distant-water trawlermen of Hull,
The typical distant-water trawler sailing from the Port of Hull has a
crew of
20
men consisting of Skipper, Mate, Bosun, 3rd Hand, six to
eight Deckhands, one or two Deckhand-learners, Chief Engineer,
2nd Engineer, two Firemen-trimmers, Cook,
Cook‘s
Assistant, and Radio
Operator. Although all these men are properly described as
‘
trawler-
men
’,
engine-room staff (chief engineers, second engineers and firemen),
cooks and radio operators are not regarded as
‘
fishermen
’
since they
do
not participate in the manhandling
of
trawls and fish and the other
activities directly associated with the actual catching process. In the
social structure of the trawler there
is
a basic cleavage between fisher-
men proper and the engine-room staff. The aim of this article is to
analyse the nature and ramifications of this cleavage between the deck
and the engine-room.
One of the writer’s informants, a skipper, described the relations
between fishermen and engineers as ‘an armed truce’, the military
metaphor hinting at the component of hostility in these relations. Many
verbalizations of this cleavage in the trawler crew add up to the general
maxim that
‘
oil and water don’t mix
’.
This notion is not peculiar to
Lecturer in Sociology at the University
of
Leicester.
1
The field work material and some
of
the documentary evidence on which this article is
based was collected by the writer between September, 1957, and September, 1959, .in the
course of his duties as Research Assistant to the Department
of
Social Studies in the
University of Hull.
A
art from a vo age in a Hull trawler and a Period
of
unpaid
employment on the HuTI Fish Docks, tie writer
s
ent a great deal
of
time with trawlor-
men ashore. It goes without saying that this articre would have been im ossible without
their co-operation and friendliness. The writer would also like to actnowled e with
thanks the help and advice given him by
R.
W. Drinkwater, P.
M.
Worsley anfG. W.
Horobin, all
of
the University
of
Hull, Walter Crawley, M.B.E.. former Secretary
of
the Fishing Section of the Transport and General Workers’ Union who was in office
during the period of field work and gave the writer invaluable assistance,
T.
W.
Boyd,
D.S.O., President
of
the Hull Fishing Vessel Owners’ Association Ltd., who made it
rible
for
the writer to go to sea, and finally,
I.
Neustadt and P.
S.
Cohen
of
the
a
M.
Gluckman,
Rituals of Rebellion in
South-East
Africa,
Manchester University Press,
331
niversity
of
Leicester.
1954, p.
21.
332
BRITISH
JOURNAL
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
trawlermen for, in varying degrees of intensity, it has been a character-
istic feature of the relations between all
'
seamen proper
'
and engineers.
The maxim embodies a traditional attitude which goes back to the
development of the steamship in the nineteenth century and the intro-
duction of a new occupational group into ships.
Among trawlermen the opinions of engineers on matters of actual
fishing generally receive scant attention, as do the opinions of fishermen
on the workings of the engine-r~om.~ However, the relations between
engineers and fishermen are not unambiguously hostile. The activities
of both groups are essential for the success of a trip and, furthermore,
both groups have to live together in the confined space of a trawler for
the three-week periods which represent the average duration of trawler
trips to the distant-water fishing grounds4 Under such conditions the
open expression of hostility could have explosive results.
British distant-water trawling
is
vigorously competitive. Payment of
each Hull crew is partly based on the price realized by the sale of the
catch in the dockside auctions,
so
skippers struggle to outfish each other
and to catch the market at the most favourable time. The competitive
relations between the crews
of
different trawlers can increase or decrease
the significance of the differences between engineers and fishermen
within a crew depending upon the success or failure of the trip. Identi-
fication with a successful trawler tends to draw all the crew together in
relation to other crews while failure tends to lead to mutual recrimina-
tion. Furthermore, there seems to be less turnover in the crews of
successful trawlers
so
that temporal continuity of social relations
buttresses success in cutting across intra-crew differences5
Fishermen and engineers share a difficult and dangerous life. Such
sharing is the basis of the more general role of
'
trawlerman
',
and
identification with this role cuts across narrower occupational differences.
While it will be argued later that such cross-cutting has complex con-
sequences, it can be said at this point that the common role of trawler-
man does engender solidarity and some degree of friendliness between
3
During a Ministry of Transport inquiry into the loss
of
a
Hull
trawler, the
second
engineer
said that the weather was too bad for the trawler to be fishing on the day she
was lost.
The Wreck Commissioner
. .
.
'
Did you ever tell the skipper?'
. . .
*
I
said it was a
bit had for fishing
but
of
course
they take no notice
of
us.'
(Laughter.)
Hull
Daily
Mail,
October
20,
1954.
(My italics.)
4
The main distant-water fishing grounds are Iceland, Bear Island, White Sea, Norwegian
Coast, and Greenland.
5
It was not possible to work out any precise quantitative relationship between success
and crew turnover as the figures were not available to the writer. However, the field-
work material strongly suggests that there is an inverse relationshi between success and
turnover. There is much competition among trawlermen for 'bertl!s in the trawlers that
are successful and skippers seek to keep together a crew that is working well. In an
occupation where earnings are dependent on results, there is an accumulation
of
advantages at the
'
top
'
as the best ships, the top skippers and stable crews entail eacp
other, while there is a corresponding accumulation
of
disadvantages at the
'
bottom
.
The whole competitive complex rests on the fundamental fact that there are no con-
tractual obligations which tie particular men to particular ships for longer than a single
trip. In short, trawling is essentially a
'
casual
'
occupation.
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