Buried in the records of the Durham Assizes are the proceedings of a coroner’s inquest on the body of a sailor named Thomas Aird. The document reveals details of a dramatic but little-known seamen’s strike that was brutally suppressed by troops under orders from a Sunderland magistrate.

In an article for The National Archives website, Dr Joe Cozens, nineteenth century social and political records researcher at TNA, tells the story of the strike which, in the summer of 1825, brought Sunderland’s bustling port to a halt in a dispute over wages and working conditions, and which claimed the lives of three seafarers and four bystanders when troops fired into a crowd gathered on the North Sands.

Some of the seafarers were members of Seamen’s Loyal Standard Association, established in October 1824, after the repeal of the Combination Acts. By December 1824, it had more than 1,200 members, with sailors from the Tyne and Wear paying regular subscriptions in exchange for pensions, sickness benefits, and insurance against the loss of personal possessions in the event of shipwreck.

The strike broke out when employers rejected the Association’s claim for a preferential employment for LSA members and an additional shilling on their wages. It came to a head when a floating picket of seafarers surrounded two large coal ships bound for London, boarding one and striking its sails to immobilise it.

With a crowd of between 500 and 1,000 gathering on the shore nearby, a magistrate called out a party of twenty-four soldiers from the Third Regiment of Light Dragoons and headed to the harbour to read the Riot Act. When the crowd failed to disperse, he gave the order to fire. The first volley of shots went over the heads of the crowd; the second was fired directly into them.

The full story of the strike and its aftermath can be found here.