The Daily Worker

Crew Slave-Driven, Officers Incapable, on Lamport-Holt Liner Vandyck, Says Sailor

HELL-HOLE IS A SISTER SHIP OF S. S. VESTRIS

Starvation Pay, Long Hours for Slaves

The Daily Worker herewith publishes the first part of a letter from a seaman correspondent, who slaved aboard the S. S. Vandyck, of the Lamport & Holt Co., a sister ship of the liner Vestris, on which the Lamport & Holt Line was responsible for the death of over a hundred lives. The seaman correspondent reveals that similar, even worse, conditions exist aboard the hell-hole sister ships of the Vestris, and that an even worse fate awaits the seamen and passengers aboard these hell-holes should disaster occur to these ships.

(By a Seaman Correspondent)

I will describe the conditions on board the Lamport & Holt ship, Vandyck, a hell-hole for the seamen, owned by the line that was responsible for the death of over 100 on the steamship Vestris. The conditions on the Vandyck are every bit as bad as they were on the Vestris. If the Vandyck should get into the same difficulties as the Vestris did when it sank near Cape Hatteras, then there is no telling how many people would lose their lives, for the ship is as bad, the officers as incapable and the lifeboats as rotten as those of the Vestris.

I was a pantryman on the Vandyck on the voyage from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and on the return trip from Buenos Aires back to New York. This was from Jan. 4 to March 8.

Slave 6 A. M. to 11 P. M.

The hours of the pantrymen are from 6 a. m. to 11 p. m., and more often long past this hour. It is a rare occasion when the pantrymen get through at 11 p. m. The work of the pantryman, who gets $45 a month, consists of cleaning the presses, getting the stores from the store-room, cleaning the ports, washing down the pantry three times a day to make it clean for inspection, getting the food from the galley after it is cooked, and washing the enamelware--all for $45 a month.

There is no such thing as a lunch hour for the slaves on this boat. If lucky, we get an hour off at 2 p. m., not more often than every other day. There are only four pantrymen on the Vandyck, when there is enough work for 10 men or more. Four men do all the work in a pantry longer than a city block. All get $45 a month, a month of 30 days, not 28 days. Pay is given at the end of the return trip to New York. You can get an advance of $10 or so when the ship reaches Buenos Aires.

The chief steward walks about, looking for more and more work for the men to do. Not a minute's chance to rest--the chief officers always find something for you to do, whether the work they make you do has anything to do with your job or not.

The waiters, for instance, besides waiting on table, have to wash plates and pans, scrub the saloon four times a day. The conditions are so bad that two bedroom stewards tried to commit suicide on that trip.

Slaves Get the Leavings.

The food served to the workers on the Vandyck is unspeakable. It consists of the leavings of the passengers. Food is served three times a day to the workers on the ship, each meal after the passengers have eaten, in order that the leavings only be given the slaves. We start the day's slavery at 6 a. m., but breakfast is not given until 10 a. m., after the last passenger has eaten his. If the passengers do not deign to get up early for their breakfast, it only means the seamen and kitchen slaves will have to wait so much longer for their breakfast.

No breakfast is served the slaves until four hours after they have begun working.

Then at 2:30 we get dinner, after the last passenger has eaten dinner. Supper doesn't come around for the slaves until 9 p. m., after the last passenger has eaten supper.

For breakfast, the slaves on the Vandyck get whatever is left from the tables of the passengers. For dinner we get mostly some sort of clam chowder soup and steak four days old warmed up. Dishwater tea and muddy coffee is also served the seamen.

The food served the Negro workers, who are mostly from the Barbados, is unmentionable. They practically starve. These poor slaves never get any fruit.

Recruiting the Slaves.

Here is the way the Lamport & Holt Co. gets its slaves: The men sign a contract in England to do 12 months on board the Lamport & Holt ship. They are sent out from Liverpool to New York as "passengers," and sent home this way also, in order to avoid the American law against contract labor. Long before the 12 months are up, the men are so completely worn out from the unbearable slavery that many of them become permanently drunk, or commit petty crimes, in order to be sent back home. Many commit suicide if they cannot get out of the slavery before the 12 months are up.

The second part of this description by a seaman correspondent of the slavery on board the Lamport & Holt hell-holes will appear in tomorrow's worker correspondence section. The reader will be enabled to see clearly the causes of the horrible disaster on the sister ship of the Vandyck, the ill-fated Vestris. The constant drunkenness of the slave-driving officers, the cruel treatment of the Negro workers of the Lamport & Holt Line, the same Negro workers who behaved so heroically in rescue work on the Vestris; the revels and feasts by the parasite wealthy passengers, for which the already desperately driven slaves were forced to toil practically 24 hours a day--the unseaworthiness of the Vandyck--these are only part of the story of class struggle on the sea which the seaman correspondent will reveal.

The Daily Worker today starts publishing a letter from a seaman correspondent, telling of conditions of slavery on board the Lamport and Holt liner Vandyck, shown above. The Vandyck is a sister ship of the Vestris, on which the Lamport-Holt line sent over 100 to death. "The Vandyck would have no better chance in a storm than the Vestris did," says this seaman correspondent. The Vandyck is shown above, aground on a flat in Buttermilk Channel, between Governor's Island and Brooklyn.