How Did a 184-Foot Shipwreck Wind Up Grounded in the Carquinez Strait?

    Press/Media: Expert comment

    Description

    Rudolph Ng discusses the roles Asian crew members usually held on ships in the 1900s, and the discrimination they suffered whilst sailing the world

    Period27 Jan 2022

    Media coverage

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    Media coverage

    • TitleHow Did a 184-Foot Shipwreck Wind Up Grounded in the Carquinez Strait?
      Degree of recognitionInternational
      Media name/outletKQED
      Media typeWeb
      Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
      Date27/01/22
      DescriptionWhile plenty of vessels sailed to similar destinations, the Forester was unique in that it had one captain its whole career: Otto Daerweritz, a Czechoslovakian immigrant. He owned a third of the schooner and loved it dearly. We don't know much about the rest of his crew, but ship logs show that many of them were of Scandinavian descent. There also was almost always a Chinese or Japanese crew member on board, usually the cook.

      "Cooking jobs at the time wasn't much desired by Caucasian crew members," explained Rudolph Ng, a professor of global history at the University of Portsmouth in England. "They were paid less and [it was] probably more physically demanding. So they were always left to either the Japanese or the Chinese."
      Producer/AuthorKatrina Schwartz
      URLhttps://www.kqed.org/news/11902622/how-did-a-184-foot-shipwreck-wind-up-grounded-in-the-carquinez-strait
      PersonsRudolph Ng