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Seamen THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 818 Sears There are now 175 ports where the work of the German Evangelical Seamen's Mission is carried on in some way. There are twenty-nine sailors' homes (with lodgings) and forty-four institutes (reading rooms). For the welfare of sailors twenty seamen's pastors and forty missionaries (house-fathers, deacons) are at work in the field, besides about ninety who devote a part of their time to this serv ice. The statistics for 1907 show that 13,800 men took lodging in the homes; the reading-rooms were visited by 160,000; 29,400 attended the religious services; more than 900,000 marks were deposited by sailors for safekeeping or to be sent home. III. American Missions: The mission to seamen in America began in 1812, and was initiated by The Boston Society for the Religious and Moral Improve ment of Seamen. As far as is known it had no direct visible relation to the move r. Begin- ment in Britain, for the operations of nings; Amer- the war between Great Britain and ican Sea- the United States created such dif men's Friend ficulties that the work was suspended. Society. In 1816 prayer-meetings were started in New York and in 1819 the first mariners' church ever erected was opened in Roosevelt Street, New York, by the New York Port Society, now in its ninety-second year. Bethel Unions or Marine Societies, as they were called then, were opened in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Or leans, Charleston, S. C., Portland, Me., and New Bedford, Mass. In 1828, the year of the founding of the National Society for Seamen, the American Seamen's Friend Society, 76 Wall Street, New York City, unquestionably the most widely operative and efficient of existing missionary societies for seamen, came into being. Its first president was Hon. Smith Thompson, then secretary of the United States Navy; Rev. C. P. McIlvaine, afterward Protestant Episcopal bishop of Ohio, was its cor responding secretary; and Rev. Joshua Leavitt its general agent. Article II. of its constitution pro vides: " The object of this society shall be to improve the so cial and moral condition of seamen by uniting the efforts of the wise and good in their behalf, by promoting in every port boarding-houses of good character, savings-banks, register offices, libraries, museums, reading-rooms, and schools, and also the ministration of the gospel, and other religious blessings." Its first foreign chaplain was Rev. David Abeel (q.v.), who reached his field of labor at Whampoa, the anchorage for ships trading at Canton, China, Feb. 16, 1830. In its fortieth year, (1867-68) its laborers (chaplains and sailor missionaries) were stationed at twenty foreign and thirteen do mestic seaports. The services rendered in the evan gelization of the Hawaiian Islands by the American Seamen's Friend Society's chaplains, 1840-70, Rev. Titus M. Coan and Rev. S. C. Damon, popularly known as " Father Damon," are worthy of mention because of their association with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and with an almost forgotten chapter in American marine history, the whaling industry. At the eightieth anniversary held in 1908 the society had seventeen foreign stations and sixteen
domestic stations. In the United States of America: Brooklyn Navy Yard; Gloucester, Mass.; Norfolk,
s. Stations C.; Pensacola, Fla.; Savannah, Brunsand wick, Ga.; Mobile, Ala.; Galveston,
Operations. Tex.; New Orleans, La.; Portland,Astoria, Oregon; Tacoma, Seattle, Wash.; San Francisco, Cal.
In South America: Buenos Aires, Rosario, Argentine Republic; Montevideo, Uruguay; Valparaiso, Chile; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In Europe: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; Rotterdam, Holland; Hamburg, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Genoa, Naples, Italy; Funchal, Madeira.
In Asia: Bombay, India; and Yokohama, Japan. At that time the society had shown a steady advance and decided increase in efficiency. From its beginning the national society had cared for the physical and mental needs of seamen along with its spiritual ministrations, and in its eightieth year the society opened the new institute, 507 West Street, New York, costing $325,000, the largest institution in the world for merchant seamen. In brief terms, the institute aimed to reach the whole ship and the whole man. Around the Bethel was grouped a hotel, club, and social features adapted to the steamship sailor's needs. So successful was the effort that in one year three or four new places modeled after it had been initiated. The loan library work began in an organized way in 1859, and became and has remained an important and regular feature of the society's operations, circulating since 1859 a grand total of 25,708 libraries, an average of 521 per year for fifty years. In the fifty-second year of the loan library work 3,000 libraries are in active use. These libraries contained 620,808 volumes of general matter, and 26,702 Bibles were sent in them, 12,000 manuals of worship for seamen, and 25,938 (estimated) hymn-books. 445,044 seamen have had access to the books by actual record, although more than one million seamen must have been reached by them. The number of books sent to sea by this system since its start in 1859 would nearly equal the present combined libraries of Princeton and Columbia universities. Public recognition of this work has been generous and frequent. In 1900 the Paris Exposition medal was granted the society for its literary work, and at the Jamestown Exposition, 1907, a diploma and bronze medal was awarded for the society's exhibit. When the explorer Peary went to the North Pole he had two of the American Seamen's Friend Society's Loan Libraries with him on the "Roosevelt."
Chief among the local societies unattached to the American Seamen's Friend Society are the following: Seamen's Church Institute, New York (Protestant Episcopal), with a sailors' home, a boat
for work in the harbor of New York 3. Auxiliary and a branch at Houston and West Movements. Streets; the New York Port Society
with the Mariners' Church and readingroom, and a work among the Latin seamen; and the Boston Seamen's Friend Society (Congregational). Extra missionary effort on behalf of seamen which may legitimately be called "Missions to Seamen"