This absence is not an accident. It is the product of the same structural forces that produced the wage gap, the inferior conditions, and the lower formal recognition of Chinese seamen in the British merchant navy throughout the wartime period. Men whose official status within the British maritime and legal system was as a subordinate, non-citizen labor category were less likely to have their individual identities preserved in the administrative and commemorative records that subsequent researchers could access. The ships’ articles — the contracts under which Chinese seamen served — were often written in ways that recorded crew members as a collective category rather than as named individuals with independent legal standing.
The historiography of the Chinese seamen of the British wartime merchant navy has developed significantly since the 1980s, with researchers including those associated with the Blue Funnel history project and the documented work of maritime heritage organizations working to recover the names and stories of the men whose individual histories the official record did not preserve. The ongoing work of recovery — finding the names, tracing the home communities, documenting the deaths and the lives — is work that extends beyond the scope of this article but that provides the broader context within which Poon Lim’s specific story sits.
He was the one whose name was preserved, because he survived to give it. The fifty-three who did not survive to speak for themselves depend on the researchers and institutions willing to do the recovery work on their behalf.
## The Raft as Object and Symbol