We have long been fascinated, some might say obsessed, by the subject of the Windrush stowaways. The official passenger list shows there were 1027 passengers on board when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 22nd June 1948. This is the view that would have greeted them:
The passenger list shows two ‘stowaways’ (passengers 1026 and 1027) whose names have been handwritten on the last page of the typed list. Passenger 1026 was Evelyn Wauchope who we have discussed elsewhere on this site; 1027 was Samuel Johnson, 30 years old, who boarded at Kingston, Jamaica, but gave his ‘last place of permanent residence’ as Trinidad.
The fact that Evelyn is listed as a stowaway is a little harsh as, although she did board the ship by nefarious means at Kingston, she had, thanks to the support and generosity of her fellow passengers, paid her £48 fare in full. Samuel was not so fortunate and he was duly arrested and charged with having stowed away. There were fourteen other stowaways who were not named on the passenger list but who nevertheless were found on board without a ticket and they too were charged.
We strongly suspect there were others who escaped detection. Aldwyn Roberts (the calypsonian, Lord Kitchener) told of people jumping overboard and swimming ashore:
‘And the boat reached Tilbury, the water was brown and red. Well it’s the time I really realised that people are really brave. All those stowaways jumped from the ship into the water and started swimming. And I was wondering if those fellas were not afraid of alligators, because that water it seemed to me must have some kind of reptile in it. Anyway they went ashore … About a week after, I went to a place called the Paramount, where they could dance, there was a lot of dancing there. To my surprise, many of the stowaways were in the Paramount jiving, dancing and what have you. I had to laugh, I couldn’t believe it. A man just stowaway and, after a couple of days, he was in a dance hall jiving and dancing around.’
Perhaps we should take this account with a pinch of salt, Roberts was, after all, a storyteller by profession. Would anyone really have tried to swim across the river to Gravesend in Kent, or even up or downstream on the Essex side of the river?
But there is other evidence, Alford Gardner has hinted at all sorts of subterfuge to enable passengers to travel without paying their fare, including in a television documentary when he commented about ‘four lads who wanted to come and didn’t have the money, so we arranged to get them on and we got them off.’ We are also aware of at least a dozen men who claim to have been on board but whose names are not on the passenger list.
So, in the unlikely event you are asked in a pub quiz ‘how many passengers were on the Empire Windrush?’ the only correct answer is ‘no one knows’!
Little research has been done on what happened to the fifteen known stowaways, indeed, until now, they have never been named. But thanks to original research by Bill Hern in the court archives, we are in a position to rectify this omission and, in a series of articles we will attempt to piece together their stories.
Before discussing individuals, we will start by summarising what happened to them in the hours and days following their arrest.
It is easy to imagine that the fifteen did what they could to avoid being caught. Perhaps they lacked the courage to jump overboard or maybe they simply couldn’t swim?!
A report in the London Evening Standard of 22nd June said that they were taken of the ship handcuffed in pairs: ‘Six were put into a police van and driven away and four were marched up the road.’ A Police Inspector explained that the handcuffs were only: ‘because of the difficulty of bringing them from the ship through more than 400 other coloured people.’ All the papers got the numbers wrong so the fact that the Standard reports ten is not too much of a surprise.
They were swiftly taken to the Court at Orsett in Tilbury where a special session was arranged from 5.30 to 6.30 pm on 22 June – the day of arrival!
All fifteen were charged with the same two offences. All that differed was the date on which they began their journey i.e. the date of offence and the place they started from.
First to appear was Ulite Chin, aged twenty four, who had boarded at Kingston, Jamaica. In Ulite’s case the charges were:
Offence 1 – On 27 May 1948 at Kingston, Jamaica did travel on the British Steamship “Empire Windrush” without first paying his fare and with intent to avoid payment thereof contrary to Section 287 Merchant Shipping Act 1894.
Offence 2 – On 27 May 1948 at Kingston, Jamaica did secrete himself on board the British Steamship “Empire Windrush” and proceed to sea without the consent of the owner, master, consignee or any other person entitled to give such consent. Section 237 Merchant Shipping Act 1894.
Ulite pleaded guilty to both offences. Indeed all fifteen did likewise. The penalties were identical with one exception, that of Ernest Arthur Rochester who had no identity papers so suffered a harsher sentence.
For the offence of non-payment, Ulite was given the choice of a £1 fine or 7 days in jail. Like most of his fellow travellers he opted to pay the fine.
Given that the cost of a ticket would have been £28 and 10 shillings some of the stowaways may have regarded a mere £1 fine as a good piece of business. The Court would seem to have regarded the offence as none too serious. To give an idea of similar sentences for other offences, on 25 June one Oliver Frederick Payton was fined £1 for driving a motor van on a footpath. On 2 July Harry Henry Mumford was also fined £1 for stealing tea towels to the value of 1 shilling and 8 pence (about 18 pence in decimal currency).
The offence of being at sea without consent resulted in Ulite being imprisoned for ten days. He also had to pay 4 shillings in penalties and costs.
The Court records show that the imposition of prison sentences for the types of offences usually heard in Orsett was rare, so clearly the Magistrate and the prosecuting officer, a Mr Spreckley, felt the second offence was by far the more serious.
The Court managed to rush through ten of the stowaways on 22 June before resuming at 10.15 the following morning. This time the prosecuting officer was Edward A Jackson. By 11.15am the final five offenders had been dealt with and all were either in, or on their way to, jail.
The ages of the offenders ranged from nineteen to thirty years old. Ten boarded the Windrush in Kingston, three in Trinidad and two in Bermuda.
The results of our research into what happened to each of the fifteen will be reported in future articles.