The work of our Chaplains in Ports

Our Chaplain can help you. Our Seafarers’ Clubs and Centres are there for you.

When your ship comes into port, and our Chaplain comes aboard to meet you and your fellow crew members, to ask what you might need and to see if you want help, please make the most of the time with them. We want you to benefit from our mission in port.

Our Chaplains will regularly visit ships on the berth to dispense phone and SIM cards, give you newsprint from home and local knowledge. They can arrange transport to the local Seafarers’ Club or Centre for you to use telephone and Internet access, and enjoy the recreation facilities that may be available and where you may relax in comfort.

Our Chaplains also help seafarers and their families in times of great need or hardship, give counsel – particularly if meeting survivors of piracy – and they can offer compassion and comfort if you’re grieving at the loss of a loved one and just need someone to listen and pray.

Our Chaplains have opportunity to meet and mix with and talk to seafarers from a variety of backgrounds and faiths – or of no faith – believers or non-believers. They are also comfortable working with seafarers and their dependents, who might never have been to chapel or church yet who have a deep need for someone they can confide in.

We think it's very important that although seafarers are far from their home and their loved ones they know that people do care for them. It's very important that our Christian ministers go and stand alongside them and say, ‘People do care about you, and in those often dark days and dangerous seas that you're going through our thoughts and prayers go with you’.

A Sri Lankan seafarer said about Sailors’ Society Chaplains.

“I told people about the Sailors’ Society, everyone I know. They were amazed. They say it’s hard to believe that there are such helpful people living amongst us. Your help reminds me that religion, race and skin-colour don’t matter for good will.”

 

“I just wanted to say on behalf of my crew, thank you very much to all of you who make things a little easier and brighter for us who work at sea.”

An Indonesian Captain.

Our Chaplains also have the privilege of working together freely with chaplains of various other denominations and without compromise in meeting the spiritual needs of the individuals whom they meet aboard ships in the port where they are assigned. This is the spirit of ecumenism that permeates all that we do in the Sailors’ Society and is what we stand for. We believe that there should be no faith barriers to the service that we provide.

"For this mission, our Chaplains are the sensors, confidants, caregivers, and friends that offer humanity to seafarers.”