Essential and invisible: Merchant sailors stuck at sea
Pandemic-related regulations keep many working beyond contracts
Brian Mossman says he has read Moby Dick nearly 200 times. The 61-yearold captain of the container ship Maersk Sentosa says he revisits the Melville classic nearly every voyage because each time reveals something new about the people who take to the sea: people like him and the two dozen merchant mariners on his crew.
Sentosa means “a place of peace and tranquility” in Malay, but Mossman says the 1,048-foot super carrier is more of a “floating industrial plant.” It runs around the clock, hauling cargo to 14 ports in eight countries, from the eastern United States to the Middle East, supplying embassies and military bases and delivering humanitarian aid.
The work is risky, demanding and essential — 90 percent of the world’s goods are transported by water — and merchant mariners typically work in months-on, months-off rotations to guard against burnout and the pervasive dangers of life at sea. But in March 2020, a global pandemic gave rise to new and unprecedented pressures: Shipping ports and airports closed. Cargo carriers prohibited shore leave for their crews.
And Mossman was faced with a simple fact: If one person became infected, the virus would spread greedily and easily in the close confines of the ship.
No lessons from Captain Ahab, his 38 years of seafaring or those of his forebears — a line of “able-bodied seamen” dating to 1757 — prepared Mossman for what came next: His crew was trapped aboard, with no certainty on when they could go home.
Mossman was forced to tell his mariners they had to keep working, a conversation that was replicated by captains and ship operators around the world. The U.S. Navy instituted a “gangways up” order that prevented military and civilian sailors alike from leaving their ships. Ports in even the most avidly seafaring nations refused to allow mariners ashore.
Roughly 400,000 seafarers were stranded on ships around the globe at the peak of the “crew change crisis” in late 2020, according to the International Maritime Organization; now, about 200,000 are stuck. Some have been at sea for as long as 20 months, though 11 months is the maximum time allowed by the IMO. The situation threatens to grow more dire in the coming months, industry experts say, as mariners desperately try to access to coronavirus vaccines, their situation complicated by a web of complex logistics and workplaces often situated thousands of miles offshore.
World leaders have called the crew change crisis a humanitarian emergency. It is also a cautionary tale about essential but oft-ignored global supply chains. Industry officials told the Washington Post there’s been an increase in severe injuries and mental health concerns — including suicide at sea — as mariners have yearned to leave their ships and return home.
The industry also is grappling with staffing shortages while seeing unprecedented demand for its services, a situation that worsened when a container ship ran aground last month in the Suez Canal and blocked the crucial waterway for nearly a week.
Mossman and his crew weren’t relieved until Aug. 5 — more than 10 weeks past their contract. Looking back, he said, it’s hard to say whether it was the best voyage of his life or the worst. He’s proud to have gotten the crew off safely, without illness or injury, but the stress took its toll. When he finally got home, he says, his blood pressure and blood sugar were through the roof. And the extra time away from his four children put a strain on the family.
He’s back out at sea now, though still unvaccinated. But between the new dangers at sea and at home, the situation feels like wartime, he says.
“Those people over there, our soldiers, our sailors, they’re depending on us to bring everything, from steaks to bullets,” Mossman said. “Who am I to say, ‘Oh I can’t go back, I can’t do this anymore’? Somebody’s got to do it.”
The pandemic’s disruption of the global shipping industry has robbed workers of some of their most basic rights, experts say. In December, the International Labour Organization ruled that governments had failed to uphold the minimum standards of seafarer rights as laid out by the 2006 Maritime Labor Convention, including access to shore leave, medical care and repatriation.
“This is an unprecedented humanitarian and economic crisis,” said Fred Kenney, the director of legal and external affairs for the International Maritime Organization.
As a result, workers are struggling to contain physical and mental exhaustion.
In a September crew change survey by the International Transport Workers Federation, 60 percent of seafarers said it was “more likely than not” that they or crewmates would be “involved in an accident that could harm human life, property or the marine environment due to fatigue while aboard.
“Extended time on vessels is worsening fatigue,” Allianz warned in its 2020 Shipping & Safety report, adding that “human error is a contributing factor in 75 to 96 percent of marine incidents.”
Any mistake or accident on the water can make waves throughout the global supply chain. The Ever Given, the Taiwanese container ship that became lodged in the Suez Canal, delayed roughly $10 billion a day of trade through one of the world’s most critical waterways for the movement of oil and manufactured goods.
The ship’s operator, Evergreen Marine, declined to comment for this report. Several U.S. federal agencies, including the Maritime Administration, the Committee on the Marine Transportation System and the Coast Guard, declined interview requests.
“I hope this incident will remind governments of the vital role that seafarers and shipping plays in keeping world trade moving,” Guy Platten, the secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, said in a statement about the Ever Given. “Seafarers must not be forgotten as soon as this incident is over.”
Marissa Baker, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who is conducting a mental health survey of U.S. mariners in partnership with the Coast Guard, said many have been reporting worsening sleep and deteriorating mental health. But she also said she’s seen a greater receptiveness to mental health resources.
“Every time I’m on a vessel, I always say, ‘Thank you so much for your service, thank you for your sacrifice, thank you for being here. Without you I have nothing, literally.’ ”
The tension workers feel in being “essential yet invisible” has surfaced repeatedly in the responses to the survey, Baker said.
“They’re a vital part of the supply chain, but it’s something most of us take for granted.”