Around the world - parting thoughts - 1

My postings so far have been by way of an introduction. Before putting this blog on hold, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts.

In part, I was motivated to write this because of a splendidly informative book. Historian Philip de Souza in Seafaring and Civilization (Profile Books Ltd., London, 2001, p. 30) makes a key point:

‘[T]he proportion of the world’s population who have regular contact with the seafarers who service their trading needs has … declined, even in countries like the United Kingdom which depend heavily upon seaborne commerce.’

We often see trucks and freight trains, but, as briefly mentioned in an earlier posting, are largely unaware of the ships carrying the bulk of international commerce. More than that, we have no sense of their crews. Few young people in the West are now attracted to a career at sea. Globalization means that Western nations have left transport of the goods that sustain them to ships increasingly registered in – and with officers and crews from – Third World states.

Admittedly, foreigners on, for instance, British ships, are nothing new. In Gipsy of the Horn (Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., London, 1951, p.9), Rex Clements wrote of the crew he sailed with in 1903:

“A motley crowd they were, of all shapes, sizes, colours and nationalities …”

What is changing is the overall decline of Western-registered ships and officers. We are losing honourable traditions and important skills. As with the erosion of of our manufacturing base, we may come to regret the loss. I want to make it clear that this is not a criticism of non-Western countries or people. Sailors from the developing world are among the hardest workers I know. They are also doing one of the more dangerous jobs.

Recently I was reading my diary from my first circumnavigation:

‘One of the crew, ‘Big Al,’ is painting deck fixtures – almost delicately given the industrial quality of the setting. Al seems to take an artist’s interest in his work and painstakingly avoids putting green paint where white should be. This may be because the captain is watching from the bridge or simply that Al is a good workman. As I wander down to the stern, I pass a party of cheerful Filipinos carrying more paint cans and heading for a break. “We got the money, sir,” one smiles.’

The freighters I’ve been on have had British or German lead officers and, at least in two cases, have been registered in major West European countries. But an era is passing or, in fact, has already passed. Britain once truly ‘ruled the waves’, both with the power of its navy and size of its merchant marine. Even Canada had a substantial deep-sea merchant fleet. Now, the bulk of the world’s ships are registered in countries such as Panama, Liberia and, of all places, the Marshall Islands. If you’re looking for the Marshall Islands on a map, you better have a magnifying glass.

The United States is 15th on the list of registered large ships and the United Kingdom 19th. Canada doesn’t make the top twenty-five, but, I was surprised to find, is the 21st biggest shipowning country. That means there are Canadian-owned ships sailing under foreign flags. Safety on those ships and conditions for crews may not meet standards that would be required for Canadian-flagged vessels. (By the way, the U.S. Department of Transport’s Maritime Administration is the source of my statistics.)

Nationalities of ships and crews may change; what doesn’t change is the sea’s immensity. Or that the sea is in control. It’s one thing to look at an ocean in an atlas; quite another to cross it. Technology may improve, but ships still vanish. Most are lost because of weather. I live over the subway (underground) in the sheltered centre of a large city and am less affected than many by the weather. At sea weather is everything. A ship looks big when she’s docked, but at sea feels much smaller. And even smaller in a storm.

That’s the serious stuff for now. The last in the current series of postings will expand on what takes me to sea for months at a time.