Priest in Deep Water: Charles Hopkins and the 1911 Seamen's Strike

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Charles Plomer Hopkins (1861-1922), born in America and educated in Falmouth, England, became a seamen's chaplain in Burma, and then India, where he founded a seamen's union and used the Merchant Shipping Acts to pursue erring captains and ship owners through the Courts. Against a backdrop of the British Empire, the Raj, and the Church of England's Catholic revival, accusations of sexual impropriety, murder, and fi nancial malpractice followed him to England, where he began to build Alton Abbey in Hampshire, and to throw in his lot with the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union. As Secretary of the International Committee of Seamen's Union he announced in 1911 the start of the fi rst and, to date, only international strike of merchant seamen, conducting most of the negotiations to effect its conclusion, before being appointed a Trustee of the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union and then Joint Secretary of the National Maritime Board. This gripping story will be of interest not only to readers concerned with maritime or Church history, but to those who fight for human rights, morality or freedom. R.W.H. Miller, a Roman Catholic priest in the West of England and a long-time student of maritime social history, has worked for both the Missions to Seamen and the Apostleship of the Sea. He is a member of the Society for Nautical Research and the International Maritime Economic History Association.