HMT Empire Windrush Voyage to Britain (1948)

West Indian migrants

In 1948, Empire Windrush travelled from the United Kingdom to the Caribbean, to repatriate around 500 West Indians who had served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. She was also carrying 257 civilians, including women and children. The officer in charge of the servicemen was Sierra Leonean Flight Lieutenant John Henry Clavell Smythe. He later became Attorney General of Sierra Leone. With him on the voyage was Flight Lieutenant John Jellicoe Blair from Jamaica. The ship departed from Southampton on 7 May and arrived in Trinidad on 20 May. She then stopped at Kingston, Jamaica, Tampico, Mexico, Havana, Cuba and Bermuda, before returning to the United Kingdom.

Several weeks before the ship left the United Kingdom, opportunistic advertisements had been placed in a Jamaican newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, offering cheap passage on the ship's return voyage; advertisements were also placed in newspapers in British Honduras, British Guiana, Trinidad and Tobago and other places. However, the cheapest fares were only available to men, who were accommodated in the large, dormitory areas usually allocated to troops. Women were required to travel in the ship's two and four-berth cabins, that cost considerably more.

Many former servicemen took this opportunity to return to Britain in hope of finding better employment. Some wished to rejoin the RAF. Others decided to make the journey just to see what the "mother country" was like.

Passengers aboard

A figure often given for the number of West Indian migrants aboard Empire Windrush is 492, based on news reports in the media at the time, which variously announced that "more than 400", "430" or "500" Jamaican men had arrived in Britain. However, the ship's manifest, kept in the United Kingdom National Archives, shows that 802 passengers gave their last place of residence as a country in the Caribbean.

Among Caribbean passengers was Jamaican-born Sam Beaver King, who was travelling to the UK to rejoin the RAF. He later helped to found the Notting Hill Carnival, and became the first black Mayor of Southwark. The Jamaican artist and master potter Cecil Baugh was also aboard. There were a number of musicians who were later to become well known. These included the Calypso musicians Lord Kitchener, Lord Beginner and Lord Woodbine, all from Trinidad; the Jamaican jazz trumpeter Dizzy Reece and the Trinidadian singer Mona Baptiste, one of the few women on the ship, who travelled first class. A small number of the Caribbean people aboard were Indo-Caribbeans. One of whom, Sikaram Gopthal, was the father of the record-label owner Lee Gopthal.

There were also 66 Polish passengers who embarked when the ship called at Tampico, Mexico. They were women and children whom the Soviets had deported to Siberia after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, but who had escaped and travelled via India and the Pacific to Mexico.

Arrival

Empire Windrush's arrival became a news event. When she was in the English Channel, the Evening Standard sent an aircraft to photograph her from the air, and published the story on its front page. She docked at Tilbury, downriver from London, on 21 June 1948, and the 1,027 passengers began disembarking the next day. This was covered by newspaper reporters and by Pathé News newsreel cameras. The name Windrush, as a result, has come to be used as a synecdoche for West Indian migration, and, by extension, for the beginning of modern British multiracial society.

The purpose of Empire Windrush's voyage to the Caribbean had been to repatriate service personnel. The UK government neither expected nor welcomed her return with civilian, West Indian migrants. Three days before the ship arrived, Arthur Creech Jones, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote a Cabinet memorandum noting that the Jamaican Government could not legally stop people from leaving, and the UK government could not legally stop them from landing. However, he stated that the Government was opposed to this migration, and both the Colonial Office and the Jamaican government would take all possible steps to discourage it.

The day after arrival, several MPs, including James Dixon Murray, warned the Prime Minister that such an "argosy of Jamaicans", might "cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned".

Previous Caribbean migrant arrivals

While the 1948 voyage of the Empire Windrush is well-known, she was not the first ship to bring West Indians to the UK after World War II. On 31 March 1947, Orient Line's Ormonde reached Liverpool from Jamaica with 241 passengers, including 11 stowaways. The passengers included Ralph Lowe, who became the father of the author and poet Hannah Lowe. Liverpool Magistrates Court tried the stowaways and sentenced them to one day in prison, which effectively meant their immediate release.

On 21 December 1947, Royal Mail Line's Almanzora reached Southampton with 200 passengers aboard. As with Empire Windrush, many were former service personnel who had served in the RAF in World War II. 30 adult stowaways and one boy were arrested when the ship docked; they were jailed for 28 days.

Legacy

In October 1954, one of the military personnel on Empire Windrush during her final voyage was awarded the OBE, and two were awarded the MBE for their roles in the evacuation of the burning ship. Also, a military nurse became an Associate of the Royal Red Cross for her role in evacuating the patients under her care.

In 1998 a public open space in Brixton, London, was renamed Windrush Square to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Empire Windrush's West Indian passengers. In 2008 a Thurrock Heritage plaque was unveiled at the London Cruise Terminal at Tilbury to commemorate the "Windrush Generation". On 27 July 2012 this part of the ship's history was briefly commemorated in the Pandemonium sequence of the Opening Ceremony of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London. A small replica of the ship plastered with newsprint represented her in the ceremony.

In the 2000s, Hamburg Süd commissioned ten container ships of a new Monte class. Several re-use the names of their passenger-ship predecessors, including the container ship Monte Rosa, which has been in service since 2005.

A London Overground rail service in East London was named the Windrush line in 2024. The line runs through areas with strong ties to Caribbean communities today as a celebration of the Windrush generation, and the wider importance of migration to London's culture.