Sailors' Home & Red Ensign Club

A group of philanthropists opened the Destitute Sailors' Asylum in 1827 in a warehouse in Dock Street, in Whitechapel to provide shelter and food for shipwrecked and destitute sailors. It was soon realized that sailors who were not destitute also needed somewhere to stay when they were ashore as an alternative to the notorious boarding houses of the time, and a fund was started to build a sailors' home upon the site of the old Brunswick Theatre in Well Street (now renamed Ensign Street). The Committee for the Home had already begun finding berths for sailors in direct competition with the crimps, before the Home was opened in 1835. Agents were then employed to meet ships on arrival and persuade the men to stay at the Home. Other facilities provided by the committee included a sailors' bank, a slop shop, a chapel and an evening school. Later a school of navigation was opened. The Asylum was transferred to a new building in Well Street in 1836, renamed the Destitute Sailors' Rest and placed under the management of the Home.

Over the years various extensions were added to the Home to provide further accommodation until the buildings covered the whole of the site between Well Street and Dock Street. In 1882 a branch of the Home and a Rest were opened at Gravesend and the Well Street Rest was closed. The Gravesend Home and Rest were handed over to the Government during the First World War and afterwards were sold to the Shipping Federation for their new sea school. It soon became evident that provision was still needed for the destitute and the Beresford Rest was built in Wellclose Square near the Well Street Home in 1923. In 1851 a Mercantile Marine Office was opened in the Home and in 1854 the Secretary of the Home was appointed as the Shipping Superintendent. The Mercantile Marine Office moved to Tower Hill in 1873, but in 1895 part of the Home was demolished and a new Mercantile Marine Office and examination rooms were built in Dock Street for leasing to the Board of Trade. In 1893 the London School of Nautical Cookery was opened by the Home in conjunction with the London County Council. When the Merchant Shipping Act of 1906 made it compulsory for all British foreign-going ships to carry a certificated cook, the School was enlarged to help meet the extra demand. The Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society rented a room at the Home from 1895 until 1958. The object of the Destitute Sailors' Fund had been to provide practical help through the Rest. When bomb damage prevented this in 1941, the men were accommodated at the Home. In 1947 it was decided to use the Rest Fund for the purpose of assisting the inmates of the Home in temporary need of help. At the Home a rebuilding programme was carried out between 1951 and 1961. However, by 1974 the Home was in financial difficulties and had to close at the end of that year.