In a message dated 12/10/2007 16:05:12 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: it was a national Trade Society formed in 1851 _________________________________________________________________ Hi Allan, The problems of organising and financing a union among seamen meant that unions had a local and transient existence. Joseph Havelock Wilson spent eight years at sea and when he returned to Sunderland joined the North of England Sailors' and Seagoing Firemen's Association, which in spite of the title was confined to Sunderland and was ineffective and inefficient. His National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland, had 500 members in 1888, and in July 1889, with a membership of 65,000 he moved the head office from Sunderland to London. There is quite a lot about Joseph Havelock Wilson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He was born in Sunderland on the 16th August 1858, the son of John Blenkin Wilson, a foreman draper, and his wife Hannah Robson. On 30th March 1879 he married Jane Ann Whatman, from South Shields, and they had two sons and one daughter. He was a member of Parliament in Middlesbrough 1892-1895, 1906-1910, and for South Shields 1918-1922. He died 16th April 1929, in Southwark, London. Stan