Port pastors still spreading the word to ship crews
Seafarers stressed: ‘They can’t have shore leave and they can’t go home’
The royal blue heritage building on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront stands out among the industrial buildings, looking as if it belongs in a mature Vancouver neighbourhood.
Inside, the Seafarers Mission on East Waterfront Road has a clubhouse feel. Couches surround a widescreen TV. There are foosball and pool tables and a canteen with chips, chocolate, drinks, instant noodles and a rack of souvenir Vancouver T-shirts and hoodies for sale.
Under the glass tops of the four round tables are foreign coins and bills, reminders of the far off countries that are home to the sailors who usually gather around them.
But instead of fresh spring flowers, the tables are decorated with poinsettias on their last blooms. The room is quiet and empty, as it’s been since early March and the COVID-19 health order.
The 25 to 30 crew members on each of the 3,500 ships that dock each year in Vancouver, carrying grain, coal, potash, electronics, auto parts and other goods, no longer disembark during the two or three days it takes to unload and load cargo.
Peter Smyth, an Anglican priest and senior port chaplain, and one chaplain each from the Roman Catholic and Christian Reformed churches would normally provide religious support to the crews at the Seafarers Mission or in the ships’ mess halls.
“We usually meet face to face with the seafarers,” he said. “But now we can only go up to the gangway.”
The chapel, with its carved wooden walls and stained glass windows, would in pre-COVID -19 times offer seafarers a place for prayer and worship, services for those who are sick or who died, or the blessing of a new boat. Easter services this year were cancelled.
Since COVID -19 disrupted global commerce in March, the crews — from the Philippines, China, India, Myanmar and other parts of Asia and from Eastern Europe — are facing indefinite extensions of their months-long contracts.
With the cancellations of air travel and the logistics of transferring seafarers under COVID -19 restrictions, crew exchanges are now rare.
“They can’t have shore leave and they can’t go home,” said Smyth. “It’s a bit like being in prison.”
It’s a global problem for the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 crew members on ships across the world, said Robert Lewis-Manning, president of the B.C. Chamber of Shipping, which represents ship owners.
Canada is not historically a country where a lot of crew exchanges happen, and about a dozen have taken place here since the pandemic hit, he said.
“Every one is challenging,” he said. Flights and visas have to be arranged and quarantines obeyed.
Keeping crews on ships is more to protect them from the coronavirus than residents in port cities because the crews are essentially in quarantine as they travel over long distances that take 14 days or more.
Lewis-Manning said Transport Canada allows crew members to disembark for up to four hours but many choose to stay on board.
Extending contracts much beyond their usual four to nine months could affect trade.
“You can’t trade if you don’t have healthy workers,” he said. Ship owners “are worried about the physical and mental health of seafarers, and as time goes on that will only get worse.”
And it affects crews waiting for work in their home countries. “For every seafarer that wants to get off a ship, there is one wanting to get on,” said Lewis-Manning.
He said owners and unions are working to find solutions, including providing safe facilities for crews near ships. “This isn’t going to go away anytime soon.”
Smyth said the Seafarers Mission still sends care packages to ships with chocolate, popcorn and magazines to the crew, and the pastors speak to crews from the gangway.
“The main thing they want is SIM cards,” he said. Some ships offer limited Wi-Fi but others may provide a satellite phone or nothing at all. So cellphones are critical for sailors to talk to loved ones.
“A lot of them are young and have young families.”
“It’s important that we continue to visit them,” he said, even if only as far as the gangway. “It lets them know somebody cares.”