The voyage was something of a discovery. I live in Toronto, one of the largest cities in North America and far from the Atlantic. Although once a major port on the St. Lawrence Seaway, those times are long gone. It had been years since I'd considered the role of the shipping industry and how it affects our lives.
Even in the United Kingdom, an island, most people only see a freighter or tanker when taking a ferry to the Continent. How much less do those who live in North America. We are largely oblivious of our dependence on ships, although roughly 90% of international trade moves, at some point, by water.
Containerization means that, as I type these words, virtually everything I see – my computer, desk, lamp, chair I’m occupying, clothes I’m wearing – was probably transported in a container.
Whether we live in developed, developing or under-developed countries, shipping – container ships, bulk carriers transporting materials such as grain or iron ore, or tankers – is at the heart of globalization.
Here are some containers being loaded on Melbourne Star. This is a forty-foot container – or box – belonging to P&O, a British company now owned by Carnival Cruise Lines.
I don’t want to bore you with too many statistics and facts. With as little text as I can manage and, I hope, interesting pictures from my travels, I want to create a sense of life at sea. This is a life, not on elegant passenger ships (and I’ve been on those, too, including the old QE2), but on the workaday vessels bringing us the goods we need to survive.
My next shot is of a sailor aboard the Melbourne Star. Like a large proportion of the world’s seamen – and they are still mostly men – he is Filipino. He spends up to nine months continuously on his ship before going home at the end of his contract. Quite often, when the ship is in port, there is not enough time for him to get off or security restrictions prevent him from going ashore. So he can pass, quite literally, months without setting foot on land. He is one of the undervalued, underpaid, vital cogs of global trade.
He is covering his face, not because he’s shy or a criminal, but because he has been doing one of the nastiest, most boring, but most essential, tasks on a vessel – chipping rust. It is noisy and exhausting and has to be done, because a ship exists in conditions that conspire to destroy it – salt water, sea air, storms, constant movement, heat and cold, and human fatigue leading to error.
Here is another view from another ship; this time it’s the Eilbek, a German vessel halfway across the Atlantic between Antwerp in Belgium and Montreal, Canada. We have endured days of constant pounding and even the ship’s officers and crew, used to conditions of this sort, are looking tired and fed up.
Coming up, some more background. And a reminder - if you want to skip straight to my next voyage come back late next winter. 