Ship-owners from the Ferić family and the composition of seafarers on their ships

Abstract

The changes in state borders and the role of the administrative centre that Split acquired in the interwar period affected the significance of certain economic branches in the structure of the city's economy. Shipping trade in Split recorded a rapid rise during the interwar period, and it did not rely on a significant shipping tradition from the previous period. Shipping became a significant economic branch in Split in the interwar period, and in the 1930s, the city was the home to a large number of shipping companies. One of the smaller steamship companies owned by the Ferić family has been chosen as the topic of this paper, which over time was divided into two even smaller ones by the division of family property, on whose examples several issues important for the development of the city, i.e. for changes in its social and economic structure, are analysed. In finding seafarers for their steamships, Marin Ferić's shipping companies did not rely on Split and its surroundings; their seamen came from almost the entire coast of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and from those places that came under the Italian rule after the First World War, and some from the inland. Those seafarers, for whom the data have been preserved, did not move much from their birthplaces to major centres; and most of those who did were educated and a better paid staff – officers, deck officers and engineers. They mostly moved to the centres to which their birth places gravitated, which was not always Split as the headquarters of the company; those were other maritime centres, such as Sušak, Bakar and Dubrovnik. Therefore, these maritime companies did not affect much the profession structure in Split, the headquarters of the company; however, they did increase the citizens’ and farm labourers’ interest in jobs related to maritime economy.