What sort of life is this?
Seafarers generally come from developing countries where the average household income is low and local unemployment is high. In the world economy, maritime labour sourced from these countries is relatively low cost with little pressure on employers to add benefits. There is a ready supply of a qualified workforce. Eager to earn a decent living to support their family back home some seafarers will unknowingly work for unscrupulous ship operators. With little redress, some will become victims of exploitation and abuse; wages withheld, time onboard extended without recourse.
Additionally, most seafarers spend much of their time in international waters, thousands of miles away from home and family, out of range from or unable to afford normal communication. Often they have no one on board they can trust sufficiently to share their personal anxieties, complaints or vent their frustrations. Their colleagues may not even speak the same language. It’s a very lonely and isolated existence.
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“Seafarers really want to feel human sometimes, and that's very hard to find on a modern ship”.
“You are treated like a machine. You just work and work and work.''
These are typical remarks being encountered by our Chaplains visiting ships in port nowadays.
After more than 37 days at sea, the 21 Filipino crewmen were working on their super tanker that was now stationary in dry-dock. They could see the skyline of Galveston, Texas through the morning haze. But for most of them, there was no hope of making it to the city, much less walking down the gangway to the local store on Harborside Drive or to the church. When they left their last port the docking in the States wasn’t planned. They had no US visas and therefore were granted no permission by the authorities to go ashore, reflections of the daunting array of bureaucratic hurdles for foreign seafarers to gain shore leave after 9/11.
Shore leave is no longer a normal occurrence on reaching port. With the quick turnarounds of the modern shipping industry, it often means a brief few hours snatched for phone calls, a visit to the local seafarers' club or shopping for essential personal items.
But even that change of scenery is important for the psychological and physical health of the mariners. These people work in a very closed environment often for ten months at a stretch.
Just imagine what it must be like to live on an enormous container ship, to call a small cabin your home for all that time, not to see your wife and children at Christmas and on other important occasions; not to be able to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries with your loved ones, but not to have any control over this either! To miss those important dates that will never occur again such as the birth of a child, the graduation of your student daughter the funeral of a parent, all because you want to provide a better life and upbringing for your family than you currently enjoy.
Seafarers make great sacrifices. They work incredibly long days among multicultural and multinational colleagues. The work is hard and dangerous in a constantly hostile environment. When they do stop at ports without knowing anyone there, or where to go that’s safe, then their life will not really change. Their existence is far from easy and that’s why our Chaplains and the welfare services and spiritual ministry that the Sailors’ Society provides through them are so valued by seafarers all over the world.