Saltwater Cowboys

Article | Updated 7 years ago

Lend me your body tonight my bluewater lady

This salty wind is getting to my bones

These lugger sails are moving too slowly

For this saltwater cowboy sailing home.

 

This ol’ copper hat is aching my shoulders

These lead weight boots don’t need any spurs

To ride these waves and bareback mermaids

Ah, this saltwater country is my home.
 

‘Saltwater Cowboy’, lyrics by The Pigram Brothers 

Armed with at best a basic chart and a compass – and their experience and local knowledge – the multicultural crews toiling on the pearling luggers endured some of the roughest maritime conditions.

For weeks at a time, the crews lived on small wooden boats which were purpose-built for pearling but which lacked basic amenities. They worked from sunup to sundown in seas with some of the biggest tides in the world. They faced cyclones, tide-rips and unforgiving currents that could suck the lugger of an inexperienced captain into vast, destructive whirlpools. Most of the crew members were indentured workers, and they toiled hard for minimal rewards.

It was a highly competitive industry, with bonuses based on the size of the catch. The head diver was also the ‘skipper’, or captain. He directed the work from the sea bed through a code of tugs on his lifeline – his life, and the success of the dive, depended upon the alertness and skill of his tender. On board, the crew had to work together, with great trust and understanding, to ensure the divers were able to collect as much shell as possible.

The crew lived ‘like family’. There was a hierarchy that ran from head diver to shell-opener, and each man had his own well-defined duties. Even today, old lugger crews reminisce about the days when they were the ‘saltwater cowboys’. 

Lugger Life

Six to eight weeks, living on a lugger. Nine men. It’s very crammed, and its very hot. There’s no smoko, no lunch, nothing. You just have your smoke, eat your lunch at the same time you work.

‘Smiley’ Ismail bin Ibrahim, pearling crew, 2006
[Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome]

Many writers, photographers and filmmakers were enchanted by the sight of the pearling fleets sailing out on turquoise seas with their multicultural crews. But conditions were primitive for the crews who lived aboard the luggers for weeks on end. There was no electricity, no refrigeration, no running water and no toilets.

The sleeping quarters were squeezed into the cramped bow and aft sections of the boat. Lacking portholes, these were dimly lit, poorly ventilated spaces, overrun with cockroaches. Bunks were small wooden platforms under leaking decks that stank of drying shell. Up on deck, the coiled air hoses, helmets and lifelines littering the deck left little space for the crew, whose movements were also impeded by the diving suits and pearl meat that had been hung from the rigging to dry.

Cooking was done on deck, using a wood-fired or gas burner in a cut-out kerosene tin or 44-gallon oil drum, but the cook had to keep up the supply of hot tea and meals for the crew, even though it was often windy and the decks were constantly wet.

The head diver chose the pearling grounds, the patch to work on and the direction of each drift. Fortunately, experienced head divers and their Aboriginal crewmen, were able to read the currents and tides, and navigate by the stars in the dark. They understood the weather and knew when to head for safety. Aboriginal crew also supplemented the provisions by hunting fish, dugongs, turtles and turtle eggs.

Lugger Crew

A vessel is more than its ribs and rigging: it is a structure, a set of relationships. Fore, aft, starboard, port – shipwright, skipper, sailors, friends 

Kate Lance, author of Redbill, 2004

Lugger crews embodied a colourful mix of cultures, each with its own language, cooking style, customs, religion and personality traits. They came from places such as Malaysia, China, Timor, Philippines and Japan. When Japanese divers were banned after the Second World War, Chinese divers were engaged. Many workers encouraged their family and friends to take up pearling and would try to get them signed on to the same companies. Most Aboriginal men from Dampierland worked for the pearlers at some stage of their lives.

A typical post-war lugger crew consisted of up to ten men: as many as four divers, including the head diver, the No. 2 diver, their replacements and ‘try’ divers, who were learning the trade; two tenders, an engineer to operate the engine and air compressor; a cook and several shell-openers and cleaners. In the days of the hand-pump boats, more hands were required to man the pump.

The crew worked a very long tough day. Each man had his own assigned task, but in the event of accident would step in to replace the injured man. As everyone shared the quest for shell, life revolved around the tasks and needs of the divers. The hard work, and the need to live in a confined space for weeks on end, in the face of life-threatening risks, brought the men together, and many describe their fellow crew members as family, regardless of race, culture or position.

I was head diver. Diving is a very difficult, and a unique job ... so many risks when you are down, plus the responsibility for the rest of the families on board.

Kunihiko Kaino, head diver, 2006
[Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome]

We got 2 types one is half-dress, one is full suit. When the sea is much warmer, we use half-suit and much easier to pick up shell. When you ready to go down, you stand up on the side. When they put the helmet on, I feeling dead or alive? Because I know that it is very dangerous job.

Amat Bin Fadal, head diver, 2006

Tender:
Out on the ocean we had to learn how to handle the lifeline, the lifeline was like a Morse code. Paul Phillips, Yawuru tender, 2000 [Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome] I look after the diver ... because that life, I look after the diver’s life ... if not, that diver, he get killed.

Hussein bin Abdul Aziz, tender, 2006
[Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome]

Engineer:
Started out as a deckhand and then worked as an engine driver. The engine was ‘your own baby’. Had to look after it. Every hundred hours, change the oil, filters. You had to crank the engine but never had any trouble. The engine and the compressor worked together. When the compressor was full the engine would cut, but if the engine stopped the compressor still had air for the diver. No one died when I was there but lots of divers got the bends.

‘Ossi’, Osman Bin Ibrahim, engineer, 2006
[Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome]

Shell-opener:
I was the tender and the shell-opener. We would also dry-shell on the reefs. I walked away with a couple of pearls. If I found a pearl, I used to hide them in the folds of my trousers. I would sell it for 60 pounds.

Paul Sampi, Bardi elder, 2015

Building Luggers

It was a pleasure to watch these men working – always at a trot … Saws, with a long straight handle which pulled to the operator, and adzes – ordinary ones – but for special work a Japanese one with bentwood handle, which could be used to work a design on a stem head. Caulking mallets and irons – the caulker worked from a springy plank stage to get the correct and even caulk, which would spew out when the timber swelled. The seams were payed with pitch below the waterline and putty above … Sails were cut and sewn in the loft. Our ‘master’… cut all his own canvas – sailmaker and tenders seamed and roped them.

Jack Cryer, fleet manager for A.C. Gregory & Co, 1920s

Pearling luggers – ketch-rigged wooden vessels, 13–19 metres in length – were handcrafted to ride low in the water, drift with the current and be easy for divers, in their cumbersome dress, to climb aboard. Lugger designs varied across the north, in response to the different environments, changing technologies and type of pearlshell fishery.

It took roughly a year to build a lugger, using local craftsmen or Japanese shipwrights, although some pearlers bought their vessels from other seaports.  Men such as Jack and Richard Hunter, the Aboriginal sons of beachcomber–pearler Harry Hunter, or Jack Parriman and Charlie D’Antoine, built fleets of luggers and clinker dinghies for the pearling masters in Broome.

Most luggers were made without the benefit of detailed plans, with builders using experience and the naked eye. Aboriginal workers knew where to find the tallest cadjebut trees for the ribs. The boat’s timbers were steamed to shape in 44-gallon drums joined together and heated on fires.

At the end of each season carpenters and other workers would strip the luggers. Sometimes they sank them to kill the cockroaches, then caulked and repaired them, ready for next season. It was then that worn-out old luggers would miraculously reappear, supposedly having been ‘repaired’ but twice the size and looking brand-new – a ploy masters used to avoid the rules prohibiting using indentured foreign labour as boat-builders. 

Indenture

Worked for 4 years – did everything from labourer to a diver. I started seeding pearl shell – I learnt by watching the Japanese and had success. We had a good time. When it was time to leave, I was jumping [ship]. Never go back to Malaysia.

Jumali Bin Abdul Rahman, pearling crew, 2006

[Source: Pearling Legends, Goolarri Media Enterprises, Broome]

By 1870, competition, legislative restrictions and disease had led to a shortage of Aboriginal labour in Western Australia’s pearling industry. So pearlers looked to the Indonesian archipelago as a recruiting ground. Within a year, Captain Francis Cadell and Charles Broadhurst had imported 50 workers from the Lesser Sunda Islands. Eventually, so-called ‘Malays’ arrived from Kupang, Batavia, Surabaya, Macassar, Singapore, Sulu Islands and the Philippines, governed by other colonial powers.

These indentured workers were contracted for a set term of employment at an agreed wage, with a guarantee of repatriation afterwards. With little official monitoring of indentured labour, however, there were abuses, including many deaths. For their part, the Dutch authorities imposed hefty sanctions for the ill-treatment of Indonesians.

As new diving apparatus was introduced, Japanese and Chinese recruits arrived from South-east Asia seeking work that would enable them to send money back home to their families. Despite being classified as ‘aliens‘, many of those who came to pearling towns such as Broome never returned home. Foreigners were not permitted to own luggers, but many did, using a white ‘dummy’ owner on the paperwork.

The pearl-culture industry continued to employ indentured workers until the 1980s.