Few people probably notice that when ships enter the port of a country having come inwards on an international voyage, they fly the yellow “Q” flag on the mast above the navigating bridge. There are a set of flags onboard every ship – each one is a different color, pattern, and shape. This is so that they can be easily recognized at a distance, there are flags for every letter of the alphabet and the numbers zero through nine. They are known as signal flags and despite all the advanced digital technology that is evident today in onboard systems you will find a full set of signal flags on every merchant and naval ship. They are typically housed on a wooden cabinet that has individual compartments for each flag with a label on each compartment indicating which flag resides in that space. The cabinet is organized so that the required signal flags can be easily accessed as required when called upon on.

There are three signal flags that remain in common use today:

Signal flags have been in use for centuries and the modern version known as the International Code of Signals originated with the British Board of Trade and were published in 1857. The Code of Signals was later amended and came into force worldwide on January 1, 1901. Over the span of two world wars the Code of Signals was fully employed with further revisions and amendments. Following the end of World War II a decision was made to place the governance of the Code of Signals within the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization – IMCO. IMCO later became known as the United Nations agency, IMO based in London. Starting in 1959 the IMO took responsibility for the Code of Signals and over the following years revisions were made to align with the 1960 Conference on Safety of Life at Sea – SOLAS convention and these were adopted in 1965.

Today, every ship carries a full set of signal flags and together with the binnacle compass, chronometer, and sextant they represent a set of tools for communication and navigation that require no power supply or satellite connection. They form the ultimate nautical backup plan.

So, what about the mysterious yellow “Q” flag? What is Free Pratique and why is this flag flown when entering a port? Pratique is a French word that is defined by the Oxford dictionary to have the following meaning: “permission is granted to a ship to have dealings with a port, given after quarantine or on showing a clean bill of health.”  The word quarantine comes from the Italian term “Quaranta Giorni” meaning 40 days. Ships arriving at the port of Venice during the 14^th century from infected ports were held at anchorages for a period of 40 days before being allowed to enter the port of Venice. The practice of quarantine has evolved over the centuries and played an active role during the COVID-19 pandemic with lockdowns, confinements, social distancing, and restrictions of movement. Here we see that the maritime industry was at the forefront in the practice of quarantine and still today when a ship enters a port at the end of its international voyage, it must declare whether all onboard are healthy or not. By flying the “Q” flag, the message is that all onboard are healthy and therefore the ship requests free pratique or free permission to enter.

If the ship has health problems onboard, then free pratique cannot be requested and in such case, the ship may be ordered to a quarantine anchorage within the port until such time as the matter is remedied. The local health authorities may also have reason to question the request for free pratique if they have evidence or reasonable grounds to suspect that the persons onboard be they crew, or passengers have or may present a health risk to the port. Of course, the obvious question is how you define “healthy” particularly considering COVID-19. Given the historic nature of pratique, it is more than likely that the definition of “healthy” is a question of contagion rather than someone with a sore elbow. The issue of contagion is the very reason that the 40-day period of quarantine was established in the 14^th century.

An earlier global pandemic also involved shipping as the means by which a deadly disease would spread.  Following the end of World War I, the world suffered a global pandemic that is commonly referred to as the “Spanish Flu”. This influenza pandemic between 1918 and 1919 resulted in the loss of an estimated 50 million people globally. According to the Journal of Military and Veterans Health based in Australia, the name Spanish Flu was erroneous because the source of the influenza is now widely accepted as originating from the United States. (The disease was first reported in Spain). The disease seems to have been carried to Europe by US soldiers in 1917 and spread throughout Great Britain and France. At the end of the war, soldiers returned home by troopships to the USA and all parts of the British Empire. Influenza enjoyed free passage with the returning soldiers and the crews of the troopships.

The question of quarantine was brought to the headlines of the media with the case of the passenger ship “Ruby Princess” in Australia in March 2020 when 2,700 passengers were allowed to disembark in Sydney despite 158 cases of illness with flu-like symptoms on an earlier voyage. The COVID-19 virus hitchhiked among the passengers and spread quickly, the learning from this case and others during the pandemic has shown that quarantine and containment would have been a wiser and more prudent course of action, although for leadership these are clearly tough commercial decisions to make at the time.

During a cross-pacific voyage in the winter of 1970 from Portland, Oregon to Tokyo, I sailed as a navigating cadet onboard the British ship “London Statesman”. We were loaded down to our marks and encountered a series of unrelenting storms from the moment we dropped the pilot at the mouth of the Columbia River. During that voyage, we lost some of the deck cargo when heavy seas broke the substantial securing of the drums stowed on deck. These drums contained Tetraethyl lead a toxic chemical used as an additive to prevent anti-knock in car engines. Some of the drums pierced and the contents spilled out causing vapors to permeate around the ship. Each time that the deck cargo shifted, we had to heave to, to safely venture on deck and do our best to resecure the remaining drums. As we approached Tokyo Bay, we had used all our heavy fuel oil, and we ran the main engines and generators on the last of the remaining diesel fuel. Entering the port of Tokyo, we were denied pratique, and we were therefore ordered to the quarantine anchorage. The first officials to board our ship came up the gangway wearing full hazmat clothing and breathing apparatus, we met them in our ordinary clothes with no masks or any form of PPE. We were held at the anchorage for several days; our working clothes were bagged up and sent ashore for decontamination and we were all given medical checks. The decks of the ship were sprayed with a neutralizing agent. Only after all these precautions were we allowed to enter and berth in the port of Tokyo. Sadly, we were never provided with the right PPE or guidance on what to do if the contents of the drums leaked. As is often the case, as seafarers we were left to manage on our own. Fortunately, our decks had been awash with seawater and we wore our oilskins on deck, so we probably had a near-miss with a nasty substance.

For seafarers, the “Q” flag represents a plea to the port authorities for entry to port. In return the master warrants that all are “healthy” on board. So, when you look up and see the yellow “Q” flag it should serve as a reminder of the inherent risks of disease and the importance of good health for seafarers both physical and mental.

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The chain of documentation that charts the course for the flow of goods through the supply chain has evolved since the time of the Roman Empire. This chain involves the issuance of documents that track the receipt and delivery of goods as they pass from one responsible party to another. These documents are of critical importance because they are evidence of custodial responsibility and are necessary to ensure that the goods flow to the correct person in the supply chain. They are also critical with respect to the condition, quality and quantity of those goods. Any deviation may be a cause for a claim back up the supply chain if the goods received are not as advertised or described.

In the world of Amazon Prime and delivery couriers, the consumer is often asked for a signature when a package is delivered. If the box has been opened or appears damaged, then it is wise to make a notation to that effect before signing for receipt. Failing to do so may affect the consumer’s rights to claim should the contents have been lost or damaged. 

In the maritime world when cargo is delivered onboard a ship the custom of trade is that the ship issues a document known as a “Mate’s Receipt.” In the bulk and breakbulk trades and particularly in the neo-bulk trades for steel and forest products the issuance of a mate’s receipt for every consignment is the standard practice. In prior years when liner cargo ships traversed the globe the chief mate had a book of mate’s receipts and as cargo was loaded by the stevedores, the mate would issue a receipt for each item or booking note. (A booking note would be the detail of the goods that a shipper had booked to be shipped and could be anything from one to a multiple of items.) The Chief mate and his deck officers would inspect the item or items loaded and note any discrepancies on the mate’s receipt. In some cases, the chief mate would organize his own tally to make sure that the quantity declared by the shipper agreed with the physical count. If there was a dispute on the count, it may not be physically possible to make a recount when say a cargo of bagged rice has been loaded. So, in a time honored tradition, the mate’s receipt would be notated with the statement. X bags in dispute – “if on board to be delivered.”

At the Plymouth School of Navigation where I studied, our lecturer used the story of a British ship loading a consignment of elephants in India, there was a dispute over the number of elephants, so the chief mate notated the mate’s receipt as follows; 10 elephants, one in dispute, if on board to be delivered. (Why they could not do a recount of 10 elephants was never explained…)

Due to the changes in the administration and management of documents, the task of creating the mate’s receipts has shifted to the workload of the local steamship agent. However, the signature of the mate’s receipt remains the responsibility of the chief mate under the authority of the master. It is at the point of signature that any deviation may be documented on the mate’s receipt. Why is this critical?

The mate’s receipt is the document in the chain that precedes the issuance of Bills of Lading. Bills of Lading become the document of title that may be used to negotiate letters of credit that have been issued by the buyer’s bank in favor of the shipper. The shipper needs possession of the original bill of lading to present to the bank in order to be paid. If there are discrepancies or notations on the mate’s receipts these may or may not be a permitted deviation within the terms of the letter of credit. It can cause serious headaches for the shipper who wants to be paid for the goods that are now onboard a ship and probably on voyage.

Frequently shipowners are required by their P&I Clubs (Protection and Indemnity) to hire a marine surveyor to independently inspect and assess the condition of the cargo being loaded, particularly true with cargoes such as steel. Since 1874, the P&I Clubs insure the shipowner against cargo claims and they therefore have a particular interest in prevention and loss control. A primary measure in this process is to make sure that the cargo is described in an accurate way at the time of loading. For steel, there could be physical damage caused by rough handling and there could be the presence of corrosion. In some cases, these are normal conditions, so for example hot rolled steel coils are shipped unwrapped. The steel has a blue/grey appearance from the mill scale on the surface which will lightly corrode over time and become light brown. Hot rolled coils are routinely stored outside by steel mills and steel warehouses. However, claims have been made against shipowners during or after discharge that hot rolled coils are rusty and this gives rise to a debate over the degree of rust and where it was caused, i.e., during transit on the voyage or prior to loading. P&I clubs have taken a cautious approach and instruct their marine surveyors to document the apparent condition of cargo in a meticulous manner. When the mate’s receipt is heavily notated it may result in Bills of Lading that are also notated and that in turn may make the bank that issued the letter of credit unwilling to release the payment to the shipper.

Mate’s receipts are therefore an essential instrument in the documentary supply chain and there are times when knowledge of the cargo being loaded is essential to avoid a paper jam. As the supply chain director at the second largest steel plant in Europe and one of the leading exporters and shippers of steel slabs we frequently encountered shipowners and masters who were not familiar with the product type and because it was steel, they assumed that it was a finished product. Steel slabs are a semi-finished product that is impervious to any damage or corrosion because the buyer will reheat the slab in a furnace and roll the slab under pressure to create sheet or plate steel. The lack of understanding would create problems when the P&I club would advise on notating the mate’s receipts with remarks such as stored outside, corroded, and the generic notation “Quality and quantity unknown.” This type of notation if transferred and carried forward to the Bills of Lading could cause delays in negotiating the letters of credit which then caused cash flow to be interrupted. We took the decision to inform the buyers that they should instruct their bank to open the letter of credit with the caveat that the bill of lading would be acceptable with the notation “remarks as per mate’s receipt.” This then avoided any delays in the cashing of the letter of credit and kept the treasury department at the steel company smiling.

For bulk cargo, there is no opportunity to tally cargo piece by piece as there is with neo-bulks like steel and forest products. For bulk cargo the measurement is weight, and the shipper will use a shore measurement derived from a scale on a loading conveyor. The chief mate will check the shipper’s weight declaration by taking a change of displacement draft survey before and after loading.

At the conclusion of loading the shore figures and the ship’s figures will be compared. Marine surveyors are often employed to represent each of the parties involved and they will each make their calculations and reach their own conclusions. Neither the conveyor belt scales or the draft survey method are absolute because each has an error factor that is inherent in the equipment or the methodology. Once again, the mate’s receipt will be the document that will be issued and signed with any notation that reflects a deviation from the declared shore figure.

The seemingly humble mate’s receipt has an important part to play in the smooth running of maritime commerce.

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by David Reid MA FNI

In Rose George’s book Ninety Percent of Everything (2013) we learned that the maritime global supply chain works largely in the background to provide the needs of the global community. For some countries, the outflows or exports create and support their economic growth, copper ore from Chile, Iron ore from Brazil, Coal from Australia. The global food chain depends on the shipment of fertilizer and cereal grain. We have recently seen how the conflict in Ukraine has disrupted flows of both fertilizer and cereal grain and these have led to shortages and price spikes for basic commodities. But how do these cargoes find their way onto a ship and how are they contracted for shipment?

Commodities like raw materials used for making steel and in construction begin their life in the supply chain as types of ore. For example, to make aluminium you first need bauxite ore. Major deposits of this ore are found in Australia and 100 million tons was exported by ships in 2022. The bauxite ore is then refined to produce Alumina and that in turn is smelted to produce Aluminum. The flow of these raw materials is managed by global trading companies which specialize in buying, selling, and transporting around the globe. Companies like Swiss-based Glencore, Singapore-based Trafigura and US-based Koch Industries are prime examples. These companies engage with shipowners and ship operators to move single cargoes or multiple cargoes on a voyage ‘charter party,’ also known as a ‘contract of affreightment.’

Trading companies employ shipbrokers to represent their needs in the shipping market and they set out their requirements to solicit offers from shipowners and operators. Supply and demand determine the cost of freight and the trading companies are very astute at playing the market to achieve the lowest cost to move their commodity. However, they are also involved in complex supply chains that may involve forward planning to meet the needs of industrial operations that span the globe. Sometimes they must secure a ship within a specific time frame and that can play to the advantage of the ship operator who happens to have the right ship in the right place at the right time.

The negotiation of voyage charters for a full and complete cargo follows the same process as a time charter, concluded via a chain of shipbrokers. It also follows the ethos of “My word is my bond.” However, for a voyage charter, the core element is the type and quantity of cargo to be loaded. The quantity is specified within a range expressed as a percentage of the stipulated amount, so a cargo of wheat might say 50,000 tons plus or minus 5% in the owner’s option. This means that the ship used by the shipowner/operator must carry at least 47,500 or a maximum of 52,500 tons. Sometimes the voyage charter is for a named ship and sometimes it is for a “to be named” ship or “TBN.” If it is for a named ship, it can also be stipulated for that ship or a similar substitute.

These flexibilities are needed because the voyage charter is negotiated in advance and some weeks might pass before the agreed loading dates arrive. During that time a ship might encounter delays at a prior port or have a technical difficulty. So, the negotiation of an alternate ship or a ship that will be named closer to the loading time represents commercial flexibility.

Perhaps one of the most critical aspects of the voyage charter is what is known in the trade as the “laycan.” This is an abbreviation for the “laydays cancelling.” Laydays are an agreed window of time during which a ship must present itself to commence a charter. The laydays are a window of 5, 10, or 15 calendar days that must be met. The master of the ship must arrive at the designated port and issue a notice of readiness to the local steamship agent at the port within the laydays. If this does not happen, then the charterer may elect to cancel the charter – thus the origin of laydays cancelling or “laycan.” In some cases, the laycan may be extended but a shrewd charterer may use this to renegotiate if the market has fallen or simply cancel and fix an alternate ship at a lower price. So, as you can imagine there is a lot of stress when a ship is at risk of missing her laycan because there may be severe economic consequences. Often a ship may have sailed on a long ballast voyage to arrive at the loading port within the laycan. Perhaps across the North Pacific to arrive in Portland Oregon for a cargo of grain. If bad weather causes a delay and the ship loses time, it can result in a lost charter.

Under the voyage charter once the ship has presented her notice of readiness there are agreed times allotted for the loading and discharge of the cargo. These are known as the “terms” and form the basis for laytime. For example, at the loading port, the charterer may specify that the cargo will be loaded at the rate of 5000 tons per weather working day, Sundays and holidays included (abbreviated to 5000 wwd shinc). For a nominal cargo of 50,000 tons this equates to 10 weather working days. Note that weather working is extremely important here because any days lost due to inclement weather are at the owner/operator’s risk.

Let’s say that a ship arrives to load but the port is congested, and the ship must wait at anchor, in such case the laytime clock starts to run for the 10 allowed weather working days. If the ship waits more than 10 days, then the voyage charter provides additional compensation to the ship owner/operator with the payment of a daily demurrage. Conversely if the ship loads quickly and in less than 10 days the charterer earns dispatch. After the ship has loaded these laytime calculations are made based on two critical documents, the notice of readiness and the statement of facts. Local steamship agents prepare the statement of facts, and they are then used to transform the agreed terms of the charter party into either a claim for demurrage or dispatch.

The subject of laytime calculations has led to perhaps more commercial disputes that have given rise to laytime and a mysterious world of skilled laytime practitioners. Sometimes the commercial risks can be staggering, during my time as the supply chain director at a major European steel plant we encountered congestion at our private port due to multiple arrivals of large ore carriers, at that time the daily demurrage rates were more than $100,000 per day, with several ships at anchor we had days when the laytime was clicking up a daily demurrage bill of $300,000. That really focuses the mind!

Not all cargo is shipped as a full cargo and in many cases, the charterer may have what is described as a part cargo. This might be carried as a full cargo on a ship of a smaller size, or it may be carried on a larger ship as a part cargo combined with another part cargo. Ships have a number of cargo holds or compartments and so it is possible to load a different cargo in different holds. This requires greater attention by the master and chief mate to make sure that no undue stress is created on the ship when only a part cargo is onboard. Ship operators use their creativity to find various combinations of cargo that will deliver a higher freight yield and increased profit. This requires much greater commercial skill because expert knowledge of the cargo type, the stowage requirements and methods of handling are needed to fit all the commercial components together. For example, when ships trade from Brazil into the Great Lakes with steel cargo, they carry part of that cargo to east coast ports – this enables the ship to carry a full cargo of steel from Brazil and then after discharging part of the cargo in Philadelphia or Baltimore they are sufficiently lightened to be able to enter the locks to pass through the St Lawrence Seaway and on to ports like Cleveland and Detroit.

Some ships employed in what is known as Liner trades carry smaller part cargo volumes that are known as liner bookings or freight parcels, these are typically carried on ships that are in a dedicated service and the ship will have a mix of charterers. This can be seen in the forest products trade where dedicated ships carry freight for a variety of different clients. The container sector is the ultimate mix of part cargo because every shipping container is a part cargo, and the unified nature of a cellular container ship makes it possible to create a cargo that is made up of thousands of TEUs or “twenty-foot equivalent units.”

Earlier this year, my wife and I shipped our personal effects from Pennsylvania to France. We packed and manifested all our belongings, and I then delivered the boxes to a warehouse close to Port Newark, NJ. A week later our container was loaded onboard the Atlantic Sky and 10 days later it was at the port of Antwerp. Prior to the era of the modern container, our personal effects would have been shipped box by box probably on a pallet on a traditional liner cargo vessel. Thanks to Malcolm McLean and the container revolution that started in Port Newark on April 26, 1956, it is now efficient and simple to transport small shipments around the world.

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The maritime world is like other commercial spaces. Most shopping centers or office buildings, for example, are built to be rented out to others, not to be used by the owners themselves. So, in shipping. Someone who rents a ship is called a ‘charterer’ and the agreement between that charterer and the owner of the ship is a ‘charter party’.

The term charter party has been a fixture of maritime commerce for hundreds of years. The first time you hear the English word it sounds like it must refer to some kind of celebration, but actually derives from the French ‘charte-partie’ meaning ‘split paper’. This in turn is based on the Latin, ‘Carta partita’ meaning a divided document. The agreements in question were drafted in duplicate on the same piece of paper and torn into two irregular portions. Each participant in the contract would take a portion of it and the authenticity could be proven by matching up the pieces. Today when we make retail purchases, we are issued with identical paper receipts, one for the vendor and one for the customer – a modern-day version of split paper.

The process of fixing a ship on time charter starts with the initial requirement and the parameters of the ship that is required and when it is needed. These parameters are circulated on the market by the shipbroker representing the charterer. Once a potential ship is identified then an offer to charter may be presented to the shipowner. The negotiation of a charter party proceeds with a series of offers and counter offers until an agreement is reached. Each step involves a chain of shipbrokers representing each side of the transaction, but with the core principle that “My word is my bond.” As the main terms of the charter party are agreed (the daily rate, the length of time, the starting date among other details) the participants will reach a point where they are “fixed on main terms” or “fixed on subjects.” This part of the negotiation may only take a few hours and is often conducted over multiple time zones. There are no maritime attorneys involved, all the communication is between the two principal players and their respective shipbrokers.

I learned the importance of the trust element in chartering when I was running my own shipping company based in Southern California in the 1990s. My best example of understanding the ‘My word is my Bond’ ethos in this process was a day that I was visiting the Baltic Exchange in London at its former building in St Mary Axe. The Baltic Exchange was for many years a physical trading floor where shipbrokers would meet in morning and afternoon sessions to conduct the business of chartering ships and cargo. After a visit around the trading floor exchanging pleasantries with the numerous shipbrokers that I knew, I made a visit to the Gentlemen’s toilet which was a beautiful rendition of marble and plumbing from the Victorian age. As I took my position, I found that I was standing next to a shipbroker that I knew. We exchanged pleasantries and he asked me if I had any use for one of his ships that was imminently available for charter near Gibraltar. I knew the ship well and that it was perfect for a cargo of steel that my Swiss-based client needed to move from Brazil. In the space of less than a minute, we agreed on the main terms, and after we washed our hands, we shook hands and confirmed the fixture, subject to details. That might have been the only ship that was negotiated and fixed in the Gentlemen’s toilet of the Baltic Exchange, but validated for me the phrase, “My word is my bond”!

The business model of my company at that time was to time charter ships and then operate them on voyages carrying cargo for our clients. We were therefore known in the market as time charter operators. Running the business meant that we had to negotiate the hire of the ships that we chartered for periods from six months to one year or more. Charter party contracts for ships hired for periods of time are negotiated and written on what is known as the NYPE form. NYPE stands for the ‘New York Produce Exchange’ form which was an active commodities exchange in the lower Manhattan district of New York during the 19^th century.

From our offices in Southern California, we employed a London-based shipbroker to represent us on the Baltic Exchange in London. When we desired to hire a ship for a 6-month time charter we would instruct our London shipbroker to find candidates that were available. We often wanted a particular size bulk carrier with suitable cranes, and we also wanted a ship that was in a geographically convenient location at a specific time. From these basic requirements, our London shipbroker would canvas the other brokers on the Baltic to see what candidates would fit our needs.

The shipping market is constantly driven by the forces of supply and demand, these factors influence pricing. When there is a surplus of ships available the daily charter rate falls and conversely when supply is tight rates rise. So as the saying goes, timing is everything.

A successful time charter operator would seek to secure ships during downturns in the pricing cycle and then ride the upturn over the period of the charter. The entire process involves thinking about commercial risk in the future. If you get it wrong it can have dire consequences. Even with the best market intelligence, which is largely based on recent events, the global market can turn when ‘black swan’ events occur. Recent black swans have been the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. One such event when I was working was the 1989 Tiananmen Square event in Beijing. The images of a student facing off against a tank sent shock waves through the supply chain and almost overnight commercial trade froze with China and the knock-on effect hit the shipping market. Time charter daily rates fell sharply as demand shrank.

Many shipowners do not operate their own ships commercially. They prefer to put the ships out for hire to other operators who take care of the commercial trade. When the shipowners do this, they have a time charter that provides a steady revenue stream from the daily hire which is paid in advance in 15-day increments. Shipowners that have financed the building of ships prefer these arrangements because it gives them and their banks a steady cash flow that supports their financing and daily running costs.

The time charter operator becomes what is known as the ‘disponent’ owner of the ship (something like subletting an apartment) because the master is now following the orders and instructions given by the time charter operator for the commercial trading activity. This relationship can become more complicated when there are chains of these disponent owners. This happens when a time charter duration is over multiple years and then the ship is sub-chartered for a short duration to another operator. In such cases, the charter party must be carefully negotiated so that the terms and conditions along the chain are in alignment. For example, in some time charter contracts there may be geographic trading restrictions based on the insurance coverage on the vessel. The charterer might be prohibited from carrying a hazardous type of cargo such as direct reduced iron briquettes. In such a case, a sub-charter cannot convey a right to carry a cargo if that right does not exist in the head charter party.

Once there is a fixture subject to charter party details there is an implied contract and an obligation to work through the details with good faith. Once again it is the shipbrokers who communicate back and forth to iron out the details on the NYPE form. Shipowners and operators find comfort in using a trusted contract template, so the final contract will be based on a previously executed contract that will be amended to reflect the logical changes and any new conditions that have been agreed upon. Refining the details typically takes approximately 24 to 48 hours from the main terms and once all has been agreed the ship is “fully fixed.” However, it can be some weeks before the actual charter party document is drafted and circulated for a physical signature. Recent changes in software and digital communications have improved the process but in prior years it was not unusual for the charter party to be signed months after the contract had been in place.

At peak times, I had a fleet of twenty ships under time charter operating around the world carrying cargo for our clients that were commodity trading companies. They preferred to contract out the shipping to operators because that kept their business off-market. If they had an in-house shipping department, their trading activity would be visible to their competitors when canvassed on the shipping exchanges. Instead, they would privately contract to a time charter operator and then they would secure a suitable ship to carry either a full cargo or a part cargo that would be combined with something else. These arrangements provided the forerunner of what has become known today as the 3PL sector or Third-Party Logistics.

Companies with cargo to ship are constantly looking for ships to charter. There are many trades that follow regular patterns. For example, in major commodities such as iron ore, the trade is driven by the major source countries of Brazil and Australia. Very large ore carriers are specialized for that trade, and they are engaged in one-way trade patterns that require them to return in ballast, empty of cargo back to Brazil or Australia. In some cases, cape-size bulk carriers can find triangulated trading patterns that reduce their ballast time, so a cape-size might trade iron ore to China from Australia and then return to Australia to load metallurgical coal destined to Europe. After that, they may ballast to Brazil for another iron ore voyage. However, the pricing or freight charge is affected by supply and demand, so a coal cargo from Australia to Europe will be discounted because there are more ships than there are cargoes on that trading route.

The art of operating a ship is like a global board game where you try to position the ship in the right market at the right time. This requires an understanding of global trade and market conditions. Congestion in ports also plays a factor, when ships are held for long periods of port congestion the supply chain shrinks because ships are held off-market for extended periods of time. This leads to increased demand and rising prices. Freight costs rose dramatically as container ships waited for weeks to unload at West Coast ports during the pandemic.

The business of chartering involves an element of trust because deals must be made quickly. It is therefore important to know that you are dealing with a counter party of good standing. I have experienced situations where a client was offered a very low freight rate by an unknown operator that made no sense, and I cautioned them to be careful. The lure of the low cost was so attractive that they fixed a contract to carry the cargo. The ship came into port loaded with the cargo; the client paid the freight to the unknown operator. A few days later the client received a demand from the shipowner saying that he had not been paid under the time charter and demanding to be paid the freight. When the client attempted to track down the unknown operator, they found that they had been defrauded and the unknown operator had vanished with $1 million dollars of freight that had been paid. The client had no choice but to pay again so that the shipowner would deliver the cargo.

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Many mariners compare the role of the captain on board a ship to a supreme being – the ultimate authority. On a merchant ship, there is no rank or qualification of captain. Instead, this is the master mariner. In the 2020 movie Greyhound, Tom Hanks plays the captain of a US Navy destroyer on convoy duty in the North Atlantic during World War II. The burden of command is very much on display when Hanks takes evasive action to protect the convoy of merchant ships from the prowling threat of German submarines. Hanks wrote the screenplay based on the novel The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester. Greyhound illustrates the loneliness of command and is an accurate portrayal.

On a merchant ship, the ultimate authority on board for all matters rests with the master. When in uniform, they wear four gold stripes on the arms of their jacket or the epaulets on each shoulder.

Ever since the Vikings set forth across the oceans, there has always been a hierarchal command structure led by a single individual. The Norwegian Gulating law dating back to the 11th century prescribed the role and duties of the styrimaõr, the skipper or master of a longship. The structure of manning on a merchant ship has evolved and adapted to meet the demands of the technological evolution from wind power to propellers driven by engines. Under sail, the ship’s compliment revolved around the management of sails and navigation; thus, seamanship was the primary focus – the role of engineers and radio were yet to be.

The safe navigation of a ship requires round-the-clock attention, and the navigation team consisting of the deck officers divides the day into periods of duty known as a watch. They are also referred to as watchkeepers. Typically, merchant ships operate on a 3-watch system, each watch lasting 4 hours and repeating twice in 24 hours. The chief mate takes the 4-8 watch, the second mate the 12-4 watch, and the third mate (the most junior) the 8-12. The watch system allows the master to oversee the watch of the most junior mate during hours that are convenient to the master.

To serve as a mate requires training and qualifications that certify that individual’s competency to perform the tasks. To become a mate involves a combination of academic and practical training through a cadetship program. During the time serving as a cadet, the individual gains experience through mentoring and hands-on learning. A navigating cadet is the starting point for eventually rising to the four stripes worn by the master and being in command.

Not all cadets will become a master, and the mathematics are such that this is not possible. Some find that they are content to remain serving as a mate. The burden of responsibility that comes with the four stripes is not for everyone. Others serve at sea for a limited period of time and then seek employment ashore because they desire to enjoy an everyday life that does not require long periods spent working away from home. The effect of this natural attrition is that those who have both aspiration and aptitude rise steadily through the hierarchal system and eventually become appointed to serve as master – thereby earning their four stripes. The timeline for this process is governed by statutory periods of sea time served and takes at least seven years and often longer.

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The 19th century brought about the technological revolution from sail to propeller. The arrival of steam boilers, engines, and all the associated equipment introduced a new department onboard the engineering department. In the earliest stages, this involved manual labor to shovel coal into boilers, but over time, as innovation evolved, the task of operating the propulsion became more efficient. Nevertheless, the engine room also required around-the-clock attention, and so the engineers were initially organized as watchkeepers in a mirror image of the mates. The professional engineers required academic training and qualifications, and they performed the task of managing the stokers, oilers, wipers, and fitters.

Automation in the engine room has since changed the need for a physical presence and has reduced the level of manning needed. Instead, the engineers are on call to respond to alarms and otherwise they work a day watch. The leader of the engineers has the title of chief engineer and wears four stripes, but since 1865, they have an additional purple stripe that differentiates them from the master. The chief engineer reports directly to the master and, in many respects, is equivalent to the chief mate since they are both heads of departments. The career path for a chief engineer also commences with an engineering cadetship like the deck cadetship that leads to master.

The deck and engineering departments are the two principal departments onboard a ship with the master in command and the chief mate and chief engineer reporting directly. However, another department also reports to the master, and that is the catering department. Some might argue that the catering department is the real engine that keeps everyone sustained at sea. The task of keeping the entire ship’s complement fed and healthy rests with the smallest department that often may only consist of a cook and a messman.

Meals need to be ready on time to match the watchkeeper’s schedules, and the food has to be nutritious and in line with the minimum victualling requirements and the ship manager’s budget. The ordering and taking on of provisions and stores at each port of call requires forward planning and knowledge of the availability in the countries where the ship is trading. Once the ship sets off, there is no opportunity to run to a convenience store, so the business of provisioning requires perfect planning so that nothing runs out mid-voyage.

The ship’s complement is a hierarchal structure that consists of its leader, the master, and the two department heads, the chief mate and chief engineer. Within each department, the mates and engineers make up the deck and engineer officers. At the next level in each department, we have the ratings; these are skilled and less-skilled persons who make up the team required to run the ship. On the deck side, the senior rating is the Bo’sun (Boatswain), a skilled seaman who is the team leader managing the ordinary seamen and deckhands. The term rating evolved from the classification or rating of crew members who served below the officers, they were rated by their level of competence. They perform essential tasks such as handling mooring ropes at berthing, setting the pilot ladder, rigging the gangway, and manually steering the ship under pilotage. In port, they act as security on the gangway watch. They also undertake numerous maintenance and repair tasks. They are also the team that will launch a lifeboat or deal with a fire on board. On the engineering side, the team is smaller due to automation and may consist of technicians and fitters performing routine maintenance and repairs.

Technology eliminated the radio department, often known as ‘sparks’ or the ‘Marconi man. The radio officer held a crucial position in the era of morse code communication. The arrival of satellites eliminated the need for transmission via the morse code key and, along with it, the individual that operated that key.

Merchant Navy uniforms became the fashion for British merchant mariners after World War I; this followed the recognition bestowed by King George V and the title of “Merchant Navy” in honor of the service given by the commercial merchant shipping during the Great War. During World War I, 3,000 British merchant ships went down with the loss of 15,000 merchant seamen.

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I first went to sea as a navigating cadet in November of 1968; I had to fly to Houston, Texas, to join my first ship, the London Prestige. 

I was under the misguided impression that I was required to wear my uniform while traveling to join my ship. I boarded my transatlantic flight to New York at London Heathrow, fully attired in my dress blues and cap.

As I boarded that BOAC plane (the predecessor to British Airways), the flight attendant asked me if I worked for the airline; apparently, my uniform was similar to that of BOAC. I found my seat, and within a few minutes, there was a tap on my shoulder, and a man not in uniform asked me if I was joining the London Prestige. I was surprised, “How could he know?” Then I realized that my uniform was the giveaway. That was the first and only time that I joined a ship in uniform… 

The hierarchal structure on board a ship is universal irrespective of flag state or crew nationality. Indeed, the system functions on a multi-national basis, often bringing together a master, officers, and ratings of multiple nations who work together in a collaborative environment. The chain of command sets in place clear lines of responsibility and authority and is essential for the safety of all on board. No matter the flag, port of registry, or classification society, when the pilot steps on board, it will always be the person with four stripes that welcomes the pilot to the bridge.

Image: Seamen’s Church Institute (Flikr)

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Ship gangway design has not materially changed in the past 50 years. However, ships have changed substantially in terms of size, manning and function – the humble ship’s gangway or accommodation ladder, as it is properly known, has remained essentially the same.

Yet this humble and seemingly forgotten aspect of nautical design performs an extremely important function. Access via the gangway is the primary access for all shore personnel and this may include large numbers of longshore workers as well as vendors, chandlers, agents and regulatory officials. As chaplains and ship visitors, we are also frequent gangway users. Many shore personnel are not conversant with the fact when a gangway is being used in a suspended mode the interface is dynamic. The ship can move and quickly change the relationship between the dock and the foot of the gangway. Even when gangways are landed, they are still prone to sudden movement.

Gangway safety is important.

The lower platform of the gangway is the first landing point – you should never step on to the lower platform without having a good handhold on the railings. Many accidents have taken place at the lower platform because individuals have either slipped or in some cases the lower platform is not horizontal or has not been fully secured.

At a major port terminal in the port of Philadelphia an experienced marine surveyor stepped on to the lower platform of a ships gangway and immediately fell between the ship and the dock.  The pin securing the lower platform was not secure. Fortunately for the surveyor the gangway net had been properly rigged and he landed in the net and not in the hypothermic cold water of the Delaware River. The surveyor was a master mariner and well versed in ships gangways because he routinely boarded ships as part of his work. This example illustrates two things: one is that even the most experienced can become complacent and second that for the social welfare ship visitor the gangway represents a risk that needs to be respected.

Here are 10 key precautions that everyone using a ships gangway needs to be mindful about:

1. Gangways are narrow – they are a one-way system, so always give right of way to those coming up, wait at the top for clear passage before starting down.
2. When walking up a gangway you should always have one hand free to hold the handrail, ideally both – never carry anything which prevents you from holding on.
3. Keep in mind that on larger ships the length of the gangway and the height of the climb may be very significant, be prepared to pause during the climb to avoid being stressed.
4. Be careful during inclement weather when the treads of the steps may be slippery or icy. Gangway steps are designed with a curved profile so that they function at both shallow and steep angles.
5. Every gangway is required to have a safety net that extends 2 meters forward and aft of the gangway itself, the net is to avoid anyone falling into the gap between the ship and the dock. This is particularly relevant at the foot of the gangway where people must transition between the dock and the lower platform.
6. In some cases, the gangway may be rigged from the main deck and it may be under a working cargo area, avoid using the gangway when cranes are working cargo overhead.
7. Many ships now post signs stating the maximum number of persons permitted on the gangway at any one-time, larger ships, and longer gangways mean that their safe working load can be exceeded with too many persons at one time
8. Be mindful of ‘jury-rigged’ planks or similar that are used to create a bridge between the dock and the lower platform of the gangway.
9. When ships are working cargo and pumping ballast the gangway is in constant need for adjustment – this may also be due to large tidal changes in some ports. If the lower platform of the gangway is not aligned with the dock, STOP and request the duty officer and/or deck watch person to adjust the gangway.
10. In some ports when ships are heavily loaded and the dock has a high wall, the ships main gangway or accommodation ladder will have difficulty to be deployed, you may see other access ladders deployed – in some cases terminals may deploy a shore gangway for a limited period of time. Often these are rigged over the ships bulwarks or railings and that means that there will be a second set of steps to be traversed in order to reach the deck. In these cases, it is always safer to descend these second steps backwards using three points of contact at all times.

The Nautical Institute in London will celebrate its 50^th anniversary next year, the Institute has been a strong advocate of safety at sea encouraging members to share both near misses and details of accidents and the background into the causes. The Institute’s monthly magazine “Seaways” includes the MARS report. MARS stands for Maritime Accident Report System. All of the reports are anonymous as far as names of ships, people and locations. The sole purpose is to share what happened and why. The Institute maintains a MARS searchable database that all of its members can access. In writing this article, I did a quick search of that database and found six gangway accidents profiled in recent years.

In my 50+ years within the maritime industry, I have rigged gangways as a cadet, supervised gangways as a deck officer, and I have been responsible for the maintenance of gangways as a chief officer. As a stevedore manager and terminal operator, I cannot remember how many different gangway scenarios I have experienced – all I can tell you is that they are many and varied.

In more recent years serving as a chaplain in the port of Philadelphia I have experienced yet more gangway moments. One that serves as an example was during my visit to a 13,000 teu container ship that was lightly loaded and therefore had a very high freeboard. I was leaving the ship after spending an hour listening to members of the crew share their experiences of their brand-new ship. As I arrived at the head of the gangway to hand back my shipboard security pass, I observed a large group gathering on the dock, perhaps 20 or more. I headed down the very long and steep gangway and stepped back on to the dock. I recognized one of the group and realized that this was an official visit including the local press to welcome the new ship to Philadelphia. As I stood on the dock waiting for the terminal bus to take me back to the gate, I observed the group follow each other up the gangway. Unfortunately, they had not read the sign that limited the number of persons on the gangway, [limit of 5]. Because the gangway was very long due to the size of the container ship the group just kept marching up adding more people until the entire group filled the gangway. Fortunately, the ship was brand new, and the gangway was suspended on its cables, all in good condition. They all made it safely to the main deck. Safety signs are ineffective if nobody reads them!

When using any gangway to board or disembark a ship, remain situationally aware. STOP, observe BEFORE you put your foot on the gangway. Always KEEP ONE HAND FOR YOU AND ONE FOR THE SHIP.

Photo: Courtesy of Seamen’s Church Institute flickr.

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by Rev. David Reid MA AFNI

An article written by William Langewiesche for the New York Times recently caught my attention – the article was titled “What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max.” Langewiesche wrote about the question of airmanship. In his detailed analysis of the two crashes that subsequently grounded the global 737 Max fleet, Langewiesche presents a view that the pilots lacked the essential quality of airmanship. Langewiesche is a writer at large for the New York Times and a former national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine. He has a background in aviation as a pilot before turning his focus to journalism.

When I read the article published on September 18, 2019, in the New York Times, I confess that the term airmanship was new to me. However, as I read Langewiesche’s definition, I recognized that airmanship is a very close cousin to seamanship the essential ingredient of the maritime industry.

Here’s how Langewiesche defined airmanship:

“Airmanship is an anachronistic word, but it is applied without prejudice to women as well as men. Its full meaning is difficult to convey, it includes a visual sense of navigation, an operational understanding of weather and weather information, the ability to form mental maps of traffic flows, fluency in the nuance of radio communication and, especially, a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia, and wings. Airplanes are living things. The best pilots do not sit in cockpits so much as strap them on.”

We can easily identify and interpolate Langewiesche’s definition of airmanship to our maritime seamanship.

In my recent book Eight Down, I focused on the loss of eight ships over 42 years, starting with the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 to the Stellar Daisy in 2017. I wrote about the Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation developed by Professor James Reason. I considered the role of mindfulness in both individuals and the collective and how that played a part in the loss of the eight. In my book, I touched briefly on the Boeing 737 Max issue as the story was unfolding in early 2019; clearly, there were actions of both individual and collective mindfulness that allowed the failure condition which led to the tragic crash of both the Lion Air and Ethiopian 737’s.

Seamanship is both the application of common sense and the spatial awareness that comes from the ability to process multiple streams of data and rapidly make sense of it all. I learned the common-sense rule fifty years ago from a Royal Navy quartermaster during my week at the London School of Seamanship then based at St Katharine’s Dock. Those of us who will have passed through that esteemed training establishment will remember vividly the metaphor he used to explain common-sense.

During my research for Eight Down, I observed that there were numerous instances when the practice of seamanship was in short supply. The Edmund Fitzgerald’s hatch covers were not adequately secured. The Marine Electric was unseaworthy with perforated hatch covers. The Herald of Free Enterprise sailed with her bow doors open. The Sewol was in a known unstable condition. The El Faro was unseaworthy sailing into the path of a hurricane. The Derbyshire, Estonia, and Stellar Daisy all had latent defects that were not apparent to those who operated the ships. They were victims of a collective absence of mindfulness by those responsible for their design and construction.

Where are we today on the question of seamanship? Are we moving into an era where like Airbus we will depend on shipbuilders to design and build ships that manage themselves? Or are we dependent on the Boeing approach that relies on airmanship to override and apply manual skills?

While future newbuilding design from shipowners may deliver the autonomous ship of the 21^st century, will the shipyards have the capability to build a ship that can withstand the maritime environment? When we compare shipbuilding to the engineering capability of aircraft builders like Airbus and Boeing. We must ask if the maritime industry has reached the level of sophistication and the willingness to commit the capital to pull it off. The 737 Max story has pulled back the curtain to reveal serious problems in the Boeing MCAS software and the training required to understand how to use the system. Langewiesche put it this way; the pilots were; “weak in an essential quality known as airmanship.” Langewiesche illustrates that there is a fundamental difference between how Boeing and Airbus designed their planes. The founding father of Airbus, Bernard Ziegler, the French engineer and former military pilot chose the fly-by-wire approach. His view was as follows; “90% of pilots believed they could extract maximum performance from an airplane during emergency pull-ups away from the ground, but that only 10% actually could.” The Airbus solution was to automate the pull-ups and let computers do the job. Conversely, Boeing’s answer was to continue to rely on pilots. Ziegler decided to take on Boeing by creating a robotic airplane that would address the accelerating decline in airmanship and require minimal piloting skills largely by using digital flight controls to reduce pilot workload.

Langewiesche wrote about the challenge of training pilots in Asia, this was well known to Boeing, and in prior years they stepped in to assist China. Boeing found that Chinese pilots were flying by the use of prescriptive checklists with no ability to interpret; they referred to them as “rote pilots.” After introducing a new approach and a rigorous approach to safety, they enabled Chinese pilots to gain the mindfulness of airmanship that has now made China a safe place to travel. The Lion and Ethiopian 737 Max pilots were overwhelmed by the failures of a hidden system that they could not reasonably have been expected to cope with – they had no awareness of the MCAS system – even though all they needed to do was to flip two switches to turn the MCAS off. However, to do that meant that they not only needed to be aware, but they had to act very quickly.

In the airline industry, pilots train and are certified on each aircraft design, this explains why many budget airlines fly only one type of aircraft; this provides the airline with full operational flexibility and simplified maintenance. The Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320 represent the two workhorses of budget airlines like Lion and Ethiopian. In the maritime industry, seafarers must cope with a broad spectrum of shipbuilders and a requirement to cope with a diverse fleet not only in terms of ship type but the evolution of design over the 25-year age range of the 50,000 merchant ships in service at any moment. History tells us that disasters are not always the province of the over-aged or those that fly the flag of the fringe flag-states. Bad things do happen to good ships. In Eight Down, three of the eight sailed under US Flag, two were under the Red Ensign. Neither of the five could be typically be viewed as regulatory-light or sailing with poorly trained crews.

In my shipboard visiting as a chaplain, I step onboard each ship still with the consciousness of a former chief officer. As I observe the way that the gangway is rigged to general husbandry, I form an impression of the ship that I am visiting. I always enjoy my dialog with the crew and the ability to learn about their challenges. I have been struck by their reliance on the accuracy of shore-based information. This was highlighted in the case of the Stellar Daisy having to rely on the shipper’s declaration of the moisture content of the iron ore fines they loaded in Brazil. I have listened to chief officers of container ships tell me that the data on their cargo and stowage is sent from ashore. They are therefore totally reliant on the stability calculations generated by the software. However, that is calculated using the shore data. The recent capsize of the car carrier Golden Ray off the port of Brunswick, Georgia, USA raises the question of whether there is a missing link in the application of seamanship. Transverse stability is such a critical safety issue akin to the trim on a Boeing 737 Max, when the trim is right the airplane wings have a positive lift. In the case of a ship, a positive GM is essential to remaining upright. The case of the Sewol in 2014 and the tragic loss of 250 high school students who were on an overnight field trip is entirely attributable to a lack of transverse stability. The Sewol was a clear case of absent-mindfulness and a total disregard of seamanship; ships must always have a positive GM. In the Boeing 737 Max the loss of positive lift caused the planes to stall and nosedive. A condition that is at the root of airmanship much as a seafarer should be mindful about positive transverse stability; ships cannot behave like ships without a positive GM.

Based on my conversations with seafarers, the quantum of paperwork and ticking of boxes that the seafarer experiences is today more and more prescriptive. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Does this make our ships safe? Langewiesche’s article described Boeing’s observations in China, stating that Chinese pilots were initially trained in an entirely prescriptive method. When the Chinese pilots were confronted by a ‘black swan’ event, they were unable to respond because it was beyond the limit of their script. The inability of the Lion and Ethiopian pilots to deal with the unusual and unexpected seems to be the root cause of the 737 Max incident. The pilots on Lion and Ethiopian were not aware or mindful of the automated trim capability of the Boeing MCAS system. The solution to those pilots who were mindful was simple, switch the MCAS off. So, in those vital minutes as their 737 Max planes were stalling – their lack of airmanship failed them, and as a result, 346 people died.

There are lessons here for the application and importance of seamanship. Seamanship and airmanship are both about the skills to deal with the unexpected. In my seagoing career, I recall numerous times when I was confronted with the unexpected, everything from a stowage problem to extreme weather. Looking back on my training, I remember being asked during the second mate’s oral examination a question about how to rig a jury rudder. I am convinced that the purpose of this line of approach was to force us to be able to think beyond the expected. Being able to cope with the unexpected is the true essence of seamanship. Like air travel, the sea is unpredictable, and no amount of prescription can replace the role of active mindfulness, Long live seamanship.

The opinions expressed herein are the author’s and not necessarily those of The MARE Report.

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by Rev. David Reid MA AFNI

Rose George the British author of Ninety Per Cent of Everything (Henry Holt, 2013) describes the business of shipping as the system that delivers food on your plate, clothes on your back and gas in your car. Seafarers manage and guide the ships from port to port but for the most part when ships are in port the task of loading and unloading cargo rests with a shore-based workforce. There are some exceptions where specialized ships are capable of self-unloading, but even in these cases the ship has to liaise with a shore terminal. Tankers are the most predominant self-unloading type of ship because they use shipboard pumps to send their cargo into the pipelines that flow into the shoreside tanks. However, even though the ship is controlling the flow the refinery or tank farm will dictate the rate at which they can receive. In the case of loading even tankers and self-unloading bulk carriers rely on the shore terminal to provide the business of loading cargo.

Since the days of wooden ships driven by sail, the cargo carried by ships has required the skills of stowage and the art of stevedoring to fit cargo safely and efficiently inside the compartments of a ship. This work began as a physically challenging task of manual labor with cargo being carried onboard or passed across the ships rail. This process was improved by the use of rigging a derrick with lifting tackle, this allowed for heavier lifts and faster work. However, the early iterations still required manual winching of the tackle to raise and lower the hook.

The demands of world trade required more shipping capacity, this gave rise to steel-hulled cargo ships in the early 19^th century still powered by sail and the fast clipper ships that plied the ocean routes into the early 20^th century. The four-masted steel barque Moshulu now in service as a restaurant at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia represents a perfect example of the cargo ship of one hundred years past.

The relationship between seafarers and the small army of people that load and unload the ship has always been a symbiotic arrangement, the business of stowage while performed by the stevedores is performed at the direction of the ship’s deck officers. Stevedore managers are often former seafarers who left the sea for a shoreside job. Seafarers interact with the stevedores as they come onboard and when hatches need to be opened or cargo lights are needed for night work. The relationship between seafarers and stevedores is universal because it works in every port in every nation.

The system of handling cargo has changed dramatically with the introduction of mechanized handling systems that have reduced the need for the physical labor which was predominant until about the past fifty years. Today the movement of “general cargo” the term given to all manner of goods is the domain of the shipping container and its unit of measure the “teu.” Teu refers to a twenty-foot equivalent unit and the original “teu” was a steel container measuring 8 feet high by 8 feet in width with a length of 20 feet. The history of the shipping container leads back to unitization systems that began with the railroads who recognized that it was more efficient to move cargo inside a unitized container. In the early 1950’s the US Army created their CONEX box system, a system of unitized loads that enabled military supplies to be moved efficiently. Malcom Maclean is the Patriarch of today’s container revolution. In 1955, Maclean the owner of a US trucking company worked together with design engineer Keith Tantlinger to create a rectangular shipping container with twistlock fittings at each corner. The twistlocks allowed the containers to be easily lifted and secured – they remain the keystone of every facet of the global 21^st century container handling system. Maclean’s first containers were only 10 feet in length. Maclean’s initial interest in shipping was to create ships capable of transporting his truck semi-trailers up and down the US Atlantic coast corridor. However, Maclean realized that if he could separate the box from the chassis of the trailer this would be far more efficient, the invention of the twistlock to make a simple connection between box and chassis also provided a simple system for lifting and securing. To further his dream in 1956, Maclean acquired two World War 11 T-2 tankers and he converted them to carry his intermodal containers on deck. The first voyage took place in April 1956 with the SS Ideal-X which sailed from Port Newark to Houston carrying 58 of Maclean’s intermodal containers. In April 1960, Maclean’s shipping company became Sea-Land and went on to become one of the great leviathans of the global container industry. Maclean’s gift to the world was making his patents for standardized container design available at no cost to the International Organization for Standardization known simply as ISO. In so doing, Maclean enabled a super-efficient system of intermodal transport that is now embraced by the railroads with double-stack container trains weaving across the western US and trains connecting China and Europe under the Chinese Belt and Road network. The system of unitized container that began with the railroads has now come full circle.

Maclean’s intermodal revolution began 65 years ago and life on the docks around the world changed forever. Prior to the ISO container, all cargo was shipped either loose in boxes or crates or made up into unit loads on pallets. The task of loading and unloading the individual boxes and crates and pallets was the work of stevedores, longshoremen and dockers. The word stevedore originated in Portugal as the word “estivador” meaning a man who loads ships and stows cargo. In the United Kingdom the word for the work of stevedores was “dockers.” In the United States and Canada, the word for a stevedore was “longshoreman.” In the 21^st century the role of the stevedore, docker and longshoreman remains, however, today the size of the workforce is greatly diminished, and the physical labor has been largely replaced by mechanized handling methods. By some estimates employment in the ports dropped by 90% following the intermodal revolution. In the 1970’s redundancy threatened all of the port workers as the use of Maclean’s ISO containers expanded rapidly. The cost of handling cargo reduced dramatically due to a dramatic reduction in the need for large gangs of labor, in addition the efficiency increased making time in port less and reducing the time to market. Further savings came from reductions in damage and loss since the cargo was now sealed inside the ISO container from shipper to receiver.

In 1969, I joined a British general cargo ship in Brooklyn, New York. The London Statesman was under charter to the American shipping company States Marine Lines and employed in their US to Far East liner service. Each round trip from New York lasted five and a half months and no ISO containers were carried, every piece of cargo was loaded and discharged by multiple gangs of stevedores or longshoreman. The design of the docks in Brooklyn was similar to many US ports, the dock warehouse was sited close to the edge of the wharf and had two levels for receiving cargo. The outboard ships derrick was swung out to enable the cargo net to land at either the lower or upper level of the warehouse. Cargo in the net was then manhandled on to hand trucks and moved into the warehouse. [In later years, a wooden pallet would be used so that a small forklift could replace the use of hand trucks.] Onboard ship we could work up to nine gangs of longshoreman, each gang consisting of the ten men in the hold of the ship plus the two winchmen and hatch tender, four men on the dock and a foreman, eighteen in total. Every morning at 8 am, as many as 120 burly longshoremen made their way up the ships gangway to take up position in our holds and on deck. At midday they left for lunch and returned at 1 pm for the afternoon shift. This small army took over the ship every day, in the summer of 1969, we spent three weeks alongside in Brooklyn, there was no night or weekend work due to the high cost of overtime for the longshoremen. The bulk of our 15,000 tons of cargo was consumer products, each cardboard box carried the description of contents, we carried transistor radios, 8-track players, all manner of consumer goods from Christmas decorations to plastic flowers and clothing. This was the supply line that fed the main street stores of the time; Sears Roebuck and Woolworths – the forerunners of today’s Walmart and Costco.

Labor supply in ports is predominantly represented by trade unions with the pay, terms and conditions negotiated under master agreements with the shipping lines and stevedoring companies. The use of the word stevedore can therefore have different interpretation because the word stevedore is used as when referring to the name of the company that has been contracted to perform the service and when referring to the work of the labor gangs actually performing the work.

In our ports today, we have a much smaller workforce than the pre-Maclean intermodal revolution days of the 1950’s. The radical change has been the capital investment and quantum of mechanical handling equipment that now operates in the ports from the post-panamax gantry and mobile harbor cranes to reach stackers and high capacity fork-lift trucks. In the port of 21^st century the stevedores, dockers and longshoremen have traded in their cargo hook for a seat in a multi-million-dollar machine.

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By Rev. David Reid MA AFNI

In 1836, the American artist Samuel Morse created the original Morse code that would make possible the transmission of coded messages over the telegraph system. The telegraph system became the world’s first long-distance communication system. In 1844, the first telegraph message was sent from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland. By 1866 a cable laid on the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean made the first trans-Atlantic messages possible. These events occurred after the opening of the first seafarer missions on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1819, George Charles ‘Boatswain’ Smith opened a floating chapel for seafarers on the Thames in 1819. The Rev. John Ashley began the Bristol Channel Mission in 1839, creating the first model for ship visiting, that organization would later become the Mission to Seafarers operating around the world. In Philadelphia, the Seamen’s Church Institute opened the doors of its floating chapel to serve the needs of seafarers in 1843.

Today, those of us in maritime ministry are focused on the welfare of the 21st-century seafarer, striving to make a connection with all seafarers that we meet during our ship visits. Imagine the early days of the seafarer mission when the only communication system available was the postal service. Fast ocean liners transported all of the ship’s mail along with all international mail. This is the reason for the R.M.S prefix; R.M.S. Queen Mary referenced that she was a Royal Mail Ship. Airmail would not arrive until the 20th century. In the era before satellites and the Internet, seafarers depended upon the post to keep in touch.  Before the Internet, posted letters were the main link between seafarers and their families. International phone calls from landlines were costly and rarely used except in cases of emergency.

For a long period of maritime history, ships left port and remained out of contact until they reached their destination. In the late 19th century Lloyds had established signal stations at Gibraltar and Singapore or any point of land where ships routinely passed close to shore. As ships passed the Lloyds signal stations, they would communicate by semaphore flags and flashing lamp. Lloyds could then report the passage of ships to the owners, insurers, and charterers. Reports from Lloyds signal stations represented the best that was available in 1880. Radio communication was still over the horizon.

Wireless or radio communication would only arrive in the early 20th century thanks to the pioneering work of Nicolas Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor residing in Great Britain. Tesla had presented his forward-thinking ideas of wireless communication in 1892 and 1893. Marconi carried forward Tesla’s concept believing that there was a future for wireless communication. Marconi believed in this as a competitive alternative to telegraphy, which depended on wires to transmit and receive coded messages. One hundred years later, we now live in a world that Tesla and Marconi dreamed about, a world where wireless devices are increasingly interconnected.

Marconi focused his attention on the development of wireless telegraphy for the maritime world, realizing that if he could demonstrate a viable system, there would be no competition. On November 15, 1899, the first onboard wireless telegraphy communication took place from the American passenger liner, St Paul. The St Paul successfully sent a Morse-code message to an English radio receiver some 66 miles away from the British coastline. The world of maritime communication would change forever. Shipowners rapidly adapted the installation of Marconi’s equipment onboard their ships. However, Marconi would only lease this new equipment, and the Radio officers were known as Marconi men because they were supplied as part of a contract with the Marconi company.

The loss of the R.M.S. Titanic on April 15, 1912 proved the value of the Marconi men. The Titanic was fitted with the Marconi radio system, and the two young Marconi men, Harold Bride and Jack Philipps served as the Radio officers on the Titanic. They sent out the S.O.S. message by Morse code that enabled the passenger ship Carpathia to come to the rescue, saving many lives. The S.O.S. message consists of three dots, three dashes followed by three dots. In Morse code, the letter “S” is represented by three dots and the letter “O” by three dashes. Contrary to popular folklore, S.O.S. does not stand for “Save Our Souls” or any other meaning; it was chosen for its simplicity and clarity. It is also straightforward for a novice operator to send on a Morse key. Following the Titanic inquiry, legislation was introduced on both sides of the Atlantic to make the provision of wireless telegraphy a mandatory safety provision under the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, known as SOLAS.

From the time of the Titanic in 1912 until the late 1970s with the launch of global satellites the role of the ship’s radio station remained unchanged. The hardware improved in quality and reliability, but the fundamental system of sending and receiving messages in Morse code remained the same. Radio officers on merchant ships were part of the ship’s company and were nicknamed “Sparks,” because of the spark-gap transmitters that were initially used to create the signal. Sparks had his radio room just behind the wheelhouse always close to the team navigating the ship.

Merchant ships only carried a single Radio officer, while passenger and military vessels maintained 24-hour coverage with a three-watch system. The sending and receiving of a message involved a complex series of steps for the Sparks and something very different from the instant communication that is now possible in the interconnected world of satellites and the Internet. When the shipowner had a message for one of their ships, the message would be sent as a telegram to one of the powerful land-based radio stations around the world. For British ships this was Portishead Radio, callsign “GKA.” Every ship was assigned a unique call sign, British ships carried a unique four-letter callsign that began with the letter G.  Portishead Radio would transmit traffic lists at designated times through the day, the list would have the call sign of any ship for which they held a message. The ship’s radio officer would tune his receiver to Portishead and listen to hear if his ship was on the Portishead traffic list. The traffic list was step one. Once this was known, the second step was to open communication with Portishead radio by Morse code. This step was to advise Portishead that his ship, was ready to receive the message. [as an example we will assign the ship the call sign GABC.] Portishead would then initiate the third step to advise the ship’s radio officer that GABC was #22 on the list. The Radio officer would then have to wait until his turn to receive the message. Sometimes the business of getting to the third step could take hours, often frustrated by periods when signal strength faded due to atmospheric interference. Step four was the actual message, Sparks would transcribe the Morse code to words and would type up the incoming message; this would then be handed to the Captain.

In my own seagoing experience, I witnessed times when we were steaming along waiting for orders, perhaps awaiting the name of the discharge port, or instructions about the next voyage. Often, we navigated hundreds of miles in the wrong direction simply because we had not received the message. Once a message had been received, the business of making a reply was the reverse of the steps, requiring Sparks to initiate a call to Portishead and to find a time slot to transmit.

The working day for Radio officers was different from any other person on board; they typically worked two hours on and two hours off over a 16-hour day. They would adjust their hours to reflect traffic lists and atmospherics. Being a Radio officer was a lonely world spent with headphones listening to a constant stream of dots and dashes. Radio officers also knew of every communication to and from the ship. This meant that they always knew as much as the Captain. They had to respect the confidentiality of all communications. If a message came for a crew member announcing the birth of a child back home, Sparks was the first to know. This confidential relationship between the Captain and the Radio officer extended to the arrival of the ship’s mail. When the agent delivered the large envelope containing everyone’s letters from home, the Captain would hand the envelope to the Radio officer to sort out the official mail from the crew mail. Then the Radio officer would act as the ship’s postman and would bring the mail to the mess room and call out the names of those who had received letters. Sparks was the centric person of communication.

Radio room clocks were different from other ship’s clocks. They had two three-minute time zones shaded in red, from 15-18 minutes and 45-48 minutes in each hour. During these three-minute periods, all radio operators ceased transmitting and switched to the 500kHz distress frequency and listened for any distress calls.

Routine tasks such as receiving weather forecasts also relied on messages via Morse code. However, these came in a stream of alphanumeric code that the navigating officer would need to decipher and then plot on to the chart. Once plotted, the isobars would be displayed, providing a view of where the low-pressure storms were located. All of these tasks required patience and many man-hours to create something that today is digitally transmitted with real-time satellite weather data.

In 1979, I.M.O. introduced the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System known simply as GMDSS. The new technology brought an end to the need for a Radio officer onboard a merchant ship. For eighty-years, the wireless telegraphy system pioneered by Marconi using Samuel Morse’s code came to an end and with it the job of Sparks, the Radio officer. Satellite communications and onboard computers, the creation of INMARSAT to serve the satellite communication needs of shipping led to the loss of an entire department on a merchant ship. Today, the sending and receiving of messages take place instantly making the world of shipping safer and more productive.

As those in maritime connect with seafarers, they provide the human connection that Cal Newport, the author of Digital Minimalism, calls “Conversation Centric Communication.” Newport points out that no online experience can compare to the value of actual personal contact as in sharing a cup of coffee or a brief one on one talk. This is the reason why seafarer chaplaincy remains relevant in the 21st century; the work of ship visiting represents Newport’s “Conversation Centric Communication.” In the diminished crew size of today’s merchant ship, there are fewer opportunities for social interaction on board. The daily routine becomes one of standing watches, resting, and meals. Time in Port is kept to a minimum; fast turnarounds mean efficiency and a better return for the ship operator. For the seafarer, the time in Port represents increased work with extended watchkeeping, regulatory inspections such as Port State Control, and routine chores of taking stores onboard. In many cases, the time available to catch a few hours ashore is squeezed to almost zero. This is further exacerbated when port security and transport challenges place tough hurdles in front of our seafarers. Our ability to create a presence on board to visit and listen to them is our way to create the conversation opportunity, this is reminiscent of the pioneering days of the Bristol Channel Mission in 1839.

When we bring with us a portable WiFi Hotspot, we are bringing the magic of wireless communication that was inspired by the creative imagination of Nicolas Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi. Samuel Morse’s code has been made redundant by the use of the QWERTY keypad to tap out the email or text message. The keying of letters to form words and for those keystrokes to be wirelessly transmitted at the speed of light around the world has placed the tools of communication in the hands of many.

The next time that you find yourself disconnected from the Internet due to an outage or because of a remote location, remember the seafarer who experiences more time disconnected than anyone – the time they have when they are connected is therefore precious.

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Lighthouses are the friend of the mariner, and they have a long history of service to seafarers. There are some 21,200 of them around the world, according to the Lighthouse Directory. The earliest lighthouse structure dates back more than two thousand years to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, also known as the Pharos of Alexandria. The Pharos was built during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus from 280-247 BC. The structure rose more than 100 meters and was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

In the early days, the source of the light was from fire of burning wood or coal. In the 18th century, the Swiss scientist Aimé Argand invented the Argand lamp which revolutionized the early oil lamps by the introduction of a cylindrical wick which allowed air to flow around increasing the intensity of the light. The Argand lamp principally used whale oil as the fuel, and this was the standard means of illumination for more than one hundred years. By the late 19th century, the first electric lamps were in use, followed by gas lamps. The Swedish Dalén lamp invented by Gustaf Dalén became the lamp of choice at the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s.

However, the continuous improvement in lamps was augmented by the physicists and engineers who turned their attention to the development of lenses that could magnify and focus the light produced by the lamps. In 1823, the French engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel created what became known as the Fresnel lens. The first Fresnel lens was installed in the Cordouan lighthouse at the mouth of the Gironde estuary, the entry point for the port of Bordeaux on the French Atlantic coast. The light from the Cordouan lighthouse was visible for more than twenty miles. The Fresnel lens multiplied the power of the light by four times, and two hundred years later, the Fresnel lens remains in service at many lighthouses.

The ability to focus the light enabled the revolving lighthouse beam. This was a critical development because it allowed each lighthouse to project its own signature. To mariners positioned some distance away from the lighthouse the light would appear to flash at set intervals, this discreet code would enable mariners to identify correctly which lighthouse they were observing.  As this technology became available, each lighthouse was assigned its unique sequence of flashes, and these were shown on nautical charts. Today, there are “Light List” books that carry the details of every lighthouse showing their unique light sequences and design. The US Coast Guard has seven volumes of Light Lists that cover all of the US mainland and territories. The British Admiralty has a complete set of Light List volumes covering the World.

Lighthouses provide guidance to mariners both by day and night, many might assume that lighthouses are principally in use for night-time navigation. However, by day, they are used as place markers to identify a coastline and for navigators to take bearings and establish their position. For this reason, lighthouses are all different in design, they are painted in different colors and patterns. The colors and patterns enable navigators to readily differentiate one lighthouse from another. Here we need to think back to the era before ships were fitted with satellite positioning systems. When a ship approached the coastline following a long voyage across the open ocean, there was uncertainty concerning the actual location of the ship. Celestial navigation was dependent on being able to take navigational sights with a sextant, this required clear weather to observe the sun and the stars. On cloudy and overcast days ships sometimes sailed for several days without the ability to fix their position. The effects of current and weather could place them at variance with what navigators called their “dead-reckoning” position or “DR,” DR is navigator code for the best estimate. Therefore, a navigator approaching the coast during daylight would consult the navigational chart and key landmarks such as lighthouses would be used to confirm the exact position. Binoculars enabled the markings of a lighthouse to be observed and compared to the Light List. On most coastlines, the lighthouses are spaced so that the next one can be seen before the present one disappears from view. This allows the navigator to use them to determine position by taking the compass bearings of both and marking the location of the ship on the chart. At night the flashes from a lighthouse would identify the unique signature of that light.

For many years, lighthouses were manned by lighthouse keepers, and the construction of lighthouses included living quarters for the lighthouse keeper and his family. The lighthouse keeper kept vigil over the lamp, lens, and machinery. Technology and automation led to the phasing out of almost all keepers. In the US the last manned lighthouse was in Boston in 1998. In the same year, the United Kingdom bid farewell to the last manned lighthouse at the North Foreland in Kent.

Canada has retained 51 manned lighthouses for operational reasons in New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and British Columbia.

Today, many lighthouses are popular tourist attractions and are manned by a new type of lighthouse keeper, usually volunteers who serve as tour guides and running the gift shop and museum.

As a former navigator, I had considered leaving the sea in the 1970s with a possible career as a lighthouse keeper. The task of being the keeper of the light resonated with me because I knew how important that was for the safety of seafarers. However, before I could apply automation arrived and the job of a lighthouse keeper vanished from view. During a business trip to Finland in 2003, our Finnish hosts arranged for us to stay in a lighthouse that had once seen double service as a lighthouse and pilot station. At each level in the high column of the lighthouse, there were bedrooms where pilots had slept while waiting for a ship to pilot. The pilots no longer needed the lighthouse hotel, and it had been converted for use by tourists. That night, I slept soundly in the Kylmapihlaja lighthouse dreaming of what might have been had my aspirations of becoming a lighthouse keeper been realized.

Lighthouses have become a symbol for the way forward, and we, therefore, find many references to faith and our spiritual journey. This is captured by the words from Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” (NRSV) Also, in John 8:12, we find the words: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (NRSV) As chaplains who serve seafarers, the symbolism of the lighthouse and the keeper of the light resonate with our work to deliver a compassionate and caring presence to the seafarers at each of our ports.

Author: Rev. David Reid, MA AFNI

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