How we help relieve poverty for seafarers

We assist serving merchant seafarers of numerous nations, retired merchant seafarers and seafarers' dependants in many different ways when they have fallen on hard times due to illness, lack of work opportunity or infirmity in old age.

Typical examples would be financial assistance toward the cost of a much needed home appliance such as a cooker or washing machine, payment of an outstanding utilities bill, money towards vital medicines or urgent dental treatment, etc. This is particularly the case in those countries where no public social support arrangement exists.

We will usually pay small one-off grants to provide immediate relief from financial difficulty according to emergency circumstances; we do not normally provide regular ongoing support funding.

We administer The Elizabeth Bibby Bequest which is a trust fund set up by its benefactor specifically to firstly assist past or present employees of the North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Shipping Company Limited and then applied to qualifying seafarers who are natives of, or have lived in, the original county of Aberdeen, and the Isles of Orkney and Shetland, Scotland.