Brassards

[stephen van niekerk]

Can anyone on this forum enlighten me as to whom this brass brassard (arm band) was made for? when used? and what does "Serang" mean? The piece pictured is currently listed for sale on BidorBuy. I am not the seller nor have any knowledge of the seller. I myself have a number of these brassards, with their leather straps (for wrapping around the arm) and would just like to know more about them.

[Ian Roberts]

Serang is the Hindi word for foreman, team leader or bosun.
It may be that some of the harbour crews such as moring gangs at places like Durban were originally made up of Indians

[John Ashworth]

Welcome to the forum, Stephen, and I hope you will get the answers you seek.

[Steve Appleton]

Perhaps a Serang held a position on an SAR ferry or tug boat at the docks. The following definitions and story give some credence to that theory.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
serang /səˈraŋ/
Noun (dated): the head of an Asian ship's crew.
– origin from Pers. and Urdu sar-hang ‘commander’.

Se`rang´
n. 1. The boatswain of a Lascar or East Ondian crew.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

se·rang
noun \səˈraŋ\ Definition of SERANG
1: boatswain
2: the skipper of a small boat
Origin of SERANG
Persia. sarhang commander, boatswain, fr. sar chief + hang authority



And this short story by Rudayard Kipling:

Title: The Limitations Of Pambe Serang
Author: Rudyard Kipling

If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thing that he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till he is dead, and Nurkeed is dead also.

Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck was coaling at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the big fat Zanzibar stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet down in the hold, got leave to go ashore. He departed a 'Seedee boy,' as they call the stokers; he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar--His Highness Sayyid Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on the fore-hatch grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songs of a far country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man of the Lascar sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrow some salt, and when he came back Nurkeed's dirty black fingers were spading into the rice.

A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though the stoker draws better pay. He sets the chorus of 'Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah! Heh!' when the captain's gig is pulled up to the davits; he heaves the lead too; and sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts on his whitest muslin and a big red sash, and plays with the passengers' children on the quarter-deck. Then the passengers give him money, and he saves it all up for an orgie at Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. 'Ho! you fat black barrel, you're eating my food!' said Pambe, in the Other Lingua Franca that begins where the Levant tongue stops, and runs from Port Said eastward till east is west, and the sealing-brigs of the Kurile Islands gossip with the strayed Hakodate junks.

'Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark's liver, pigman, I am the Sultan Sayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away your garbage;' and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe's hand.

Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed's woolly head. Nurkeed drew HIS sheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife; but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat through the grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with his blood.

Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were looking after the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their close cabins. 'All right,' said Pambe--and went forward to tie up his leg--'we will settle the account later on.'

He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife had a cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinese girl; and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. The English sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities, marry as profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, being uninfluenced by the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe was a good husband when he happened to remember the existence of a wife; but he was also a very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay, because he does not forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe's case blood had been drawn and food spoiled.

Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan of Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened his jacket to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a flying- fish and stuck into the woodwork of the cook's galley half an inch from his right armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying to remember what he could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon, when all the ship's lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their midst, and, being a placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he opened negotiations, saying, 'Men of the ship, last night I was drunk, and this morning I know that I behaved unseemly to some one or another of you. Who was that man, that I may meet him face to face and say that I was drunk?'

Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed's naked breast. If he sprang at him he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only means a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between unless the subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other lascars. Their faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the custom of the Oriental when there is killing on the carpet or any chance of trouble. Nurkeed looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only an African, and could not read characters. A big sigh--almost a groan-- broke from him, and he went back to the furnaces. The lascars took up the conversation where he had interrupted it. They talked of the best methods of cooking rice.

Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about; and even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot of his head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his foot, began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased cargo fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife dropped from the fo'c's'le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed made complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried himself among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles till the ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too; but his Bombay wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the Spicheren to Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work gives Jack a ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a great deal of Nurkeed, and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port with the Spicheren, inquired after him and found he had gone to England via the Cape, on the Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. The Spicheren met her by the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with the Spicheren to the Calicut coast.

'Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?' said a gentleman in the mercantile service. 'Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Docks till he comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poor heathen.' The gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in the world where, if you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish. The head of the Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing Cross Station is the second--for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks is the third. At each of these places are men and women looking eternally for those who will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time was no object to him; and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day, week to week, and month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the Red Dot smoke-stacks, the Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies of the sea that loaded and unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared in the everlasting fog. When money failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe to become a Christian; and Pambe became one with great speed, getting his religious teachings between ship and ship's arrival, and six or seven shillings a week for distributing tracts to mariners. What the faith was Pambe did not in the least care; but he knew if he said 'Native Ki-lis- ti-an, Sar' to men with long black coats he might get a few coppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little public-house that sold shag by the 'dottel,' which is even smaller weight than the 'half-screw,' which is less than the half-ounce, and a most profitable retail trade.

But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted from long standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced to lie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.

The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambe talked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, and almost seemed to become a benighted heathen again--till one day he was roused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. 'My friend--he,' whispered Pambe. 'Call now--call Nurkeed. Quick! God has sent him!'

'He wanted one of his own race,' said the kind gentleman; and, going out, he called 'Nurkeed!' at the top of his voice. An excessively coloured man in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shining hat, and a breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed how to spend his money and made him a citizen of the world.

'Hi! Yes!' said he, when the situation was explained. 'Command him-- black nigger--when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good ole Pambe. Dam lascar. Show him up, Sar;' and he followed into the room. One glance told the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe was desperately poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, then advanced with clenched fists on the sick, shouting, 'Hya, Pambe. Hya! Hee-ah! Hulla! Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You know, Pambe. You know me. Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!'

Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow. Nurkeed removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he could catch a faint whisper. 'How beautiful!' said the kind gentleman. 'How these Orientals love like children!'

'Spit him out,' said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.

'Touching the matter of that fish and onions--' said Pambe--and sent the knife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.

There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly from the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces that ran across the room.

'Now I can die!' said Pambe.

But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skill that money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grew sufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.

Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kind gentleman.


-THE END-
Rudyard Kipling's short story: The Limitations Of Pambe Serang

[stephen van niekerk]

Many thanks Ian, John and Steve - for the welcome and information. Much appreciated.

Attached see the brassards from my own collection. Any idea what a "sorter" or "sorteerder" would do. Perhaps something to do with mail?

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

The Serang Brassard is an interesting one.

Ian and Steve's explanations sound without a doubt 100% correct to me.

Why then would not English or Afrikaans be used for the title? Probably because as Ian suggests they foremen were working with "imported labour gangs".

This would imply that that the imported labour came in largish numbers. It noes not necessary imply that the foremen however were imported with the labourers......

Can anyone shed some more light on the labour story here?

[Steve Appleton]

Kevin, imported labourers are indeed the cornerstone of a likely explanation.

If it is assumed that this brassard was worn in the Durban docks, then one must tlook at the building and operation of the railways and harbours in Natal which was beset with labour shortages and other difficulties, as was also the sugar industry.

Given the then perceived problems with the local Zulu population which lead to the Zulu wars, the local Zulu people were not totally trusted by the local administration. Local Zulu males were in short supply. The solution adopted was to ship in indentured labourers from India and its vicinty. The term "serang" could have come in with them.

Alternatively, the term might have arisen in the Cape Town docks. There was an enslaved population and, later, a number of exiles brought in by the Dutch East India Company from maritime South East Asia to work in the Cape area. Many also apparently have a South Asian (Indian) ancestory. A significant portion of the migrant Indians were also subsumed into the Cape. In these circumstances, the term "serang" could perhaps have been introduced by boatman employed in the Cape Town harbour.

Indeed it is theoretically possible that the boatmen or foremen were not necessarily themselves of Asian descent, but could have come from the white population group. It is then possible that the labourers under their control, who were of Asian descent, may have used the term to describe their masters. A term that became formally or semi-formally adopted by the SAR+H.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_South_Africans, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Malay, http://cape-slavery-heritage.iblog.co.z ... post-1860/

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Interesting.

Thanks Steve.

[Ian Roberts]

Indeed it is theoretically possible that the boatmen or foremen were not necessarily themselves of Asian descent, but could have come from the white population group. It is then possible that the labourers under their control, who were of Asian descent, may have used the term to describe their masters. A term that became formally or semi-formally adopted by the SAR+H.

I do not think the term would have been used for white Foremen. The low hindi usage on ships was the position followed by the honorific "sahib" Thus on a ship you could have a captain-sahib or a malim-sahib or a lakri-sahib. (Captain, Deck Officer and Carpenter) but never a serang-sahib.

I have a fascinating book "The Malim Sahib's Hindustani" which was required reading when working with Indian crews.

[Adelbert Stigling]

The term "Sorter" was used for the leader of the four guys working under a Checker in the Goodsheds, there was allso a "Chief Sorter", alltough it was never noticed any of them wearing these.
They handled the goods traffic in the goodsheds as well as the parcels on pasenger side.

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Ian - you make a good point here. What you say is actually pretty obvious, if the term Serang is Indian...........

But, as far as I am aware while the work occurs in Hindi, the term in the sense of a supervisor comes from Malay/Indonesian. So it would be associated maybe more with Malays. Perhaps the Indians who in som cases (if they did not speak Urdu) would not interpret it as meaning a "Supervisor".

Steve - your pennyworths here?

[stephen van niekerk]

thanks for all the interesting input so far ...

In response to Adelbert Stigling and others - I have always presumed (perhaps incorrectly) that these Brassards were used in the time of S.A.R, so after the time of Central South African Railways, but before the time of SAR&H.

Does anyone have idea when this period was ?

[Ian Roberts]

Kevin, I would stick to the origin of the word being Indian, there was a large export of indentured labour from India to many areas. Singapore used large quantities and their shipyards are still using them today. Hence the malay conection.

The common language of these Indians, who were mainly low-caste was a very basic form of hindi, known as "Bazaar bat" The garammar was simplified and the vocabulary was limited, but it served its purpose well with the labour. Urdu is quite a complicated language and would have little comprehension by the laborers.

The common ship crew members and their Indian equivilants were Bosun - Deck Serang, Lamp Trimmer and Store Keeper - Cassab, Leading Fireman - Ag Wallah Serang, Greaser - Tal Wallah, Quartermaster - Sukunni (These were usually Anglo-Indians and spoke good English)

I would not be surprised if some of these titles also showed up in SAR&H.

[Steve Appleton]

Hi Stephen,
Although popularly called by that name and operated as a department, there never was any separate legal existence of a "South African Railways" (SAR) entity. The Cape Government Railways (CGR), Natal Government Railways (NGR), Central South African Railways (CSAR - railways of the Transvaal and Orange Free State - successor to the NZASM and Imperial Military Railways, etc.) and the various harbours were all combined on 31st May 1910 to form "South African Railways and Harbours" (SAR&H), a central government-owned entity, established when the Union of South Africa was created. South African Airways was added to the SAR&H in 1934.
There is quite a good article on SA Railways history at:
http://myfundi.co.za/e/South_African_Ra ... _the_years

[stephen van niekerk]

Thanks Steve.

Does anybody have any idea who the early private lines were operated by/constructed by?

To quote from myfundi "Not only did a railway of 2.5 ft (approximately three quarters of a metre) gauge, opened by a private concern between Port Nolloth and Okiep in Namaqualand, continue to function, but other private lines were built in the Cape, Transvaal and Natal. These were all eventually absorbed into the state system"

Perhaps this needs to be opened under another thread topic ?