Shoreblind

The commercial maritime industry does itself a disservice when it complains, as it does from time to time, that the world is seablind. It also misquotes; the term was first coined a few years ago by Sir Jonathon Band, First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, who was talking about Britain’s defence capabilities and cuts in military- particularly naval- spending. The mercantile marine, for want of a better term, has taken Sir Band’s term to heart but out of context. They think seablindness is supposed to mean that the general public everywhere is unknowing and uncaring about merchant ships and their crews and is ignorant of the fact that these carry, as everybody loves to say, 90 percent of everything.

I suspect that the public is not half as ignorant about shipping as we believe it to be. True, they may not know much about how a ship works or how many million tonnes of cargo is moved daily across the seas, or details about what a ship’s crew actually does. They may still not know that we carry 90 percent of everything. However, anybody living in coastal areas anywhere in the world would have to be physically blind not to notice the sea and the ships that sail on it. Or, indeed, the huge amounts of cargo- containers or bulk or oil- that nearby ports seem to handle. In many parts of the world, much recreational activity is centred around the water.  Inland seas, waterways and rivers, particularly in Europe, Japan and the Americas, are the much visible arteries of commerce in those countries. The economic and strategic importance of the Suez or the Panama canals to these countries is well known to their citizens.

Entire civilisations have been born right next to the water. The biggest and most important cities of the world, almost without exception, have been born where the ocean has met land. To say, then, that John Q Public is blind to the maritime world is a trifle disingenuous.

Actually, turning the accusation on its head makes more sense. A case can well be made that it is shipping that keeps its distance from Mr Public. The industry is structured to do exactly that: It is secretive to the extreme- what can one expect when the ownership of a ship is often hidden from even Masters and crews?

But that is not all. Shipping does not engage with the general population in any way whatsoever; it does not apparently feel the need to do so. There are no outreach initiatives and no advertising of the critical importance of what it does. Across the world, there is little attempt at any public relations. It would seem that shipping likes to live in its small, incestuous world. The same old members of the same old industry bodies talk to each other and do business with each other, often complaining, as in India, that the politicians do not give shipping its due. That the general public is blind to their importance.

Nobody says that it seems to suit shipping to keep the general public in the dark, or that it chooses for things to be this way. And nobody says that it is shipping that appears to be the blind one here. Also, dumb. For, if it made sure that the general public was educated enough to understand the importance, in their daily lives, of ships and shipping, then it would not need to pressure politicians all that much to make those policies or to support those initiatives that would make the industry thrive.

But shipping does not want to realise that. It is shoreblind.

.

.

Getting away with sucking.

So here I am, sitting with a screwdriver and some peanuts and wondering why shipping sucks for seamen. (Incidentally, I am also slowly veering to the hazy conclusion that while alcohol may not be the answer, it often helps provide a few.)

The cynical will say that I make noise about nothing- that shipping is just another industry, and that it is no different from all capitalist structures around that are predicated on the eventual exploitation of labour. And that seamen are just that, labour, regardless of rank. The optimists- and the deluded- will say, as always, that all is hunky dory in shipping and that a recovery is just around the corner, after which seamen will be kings of the realm. The realists will point out the cyclical nature of the industry but ignore the clearly unsustainable economic business model it operates under- where big money is to be made by buying and selling ships and not in operating them except in boom times, and where seamen are to be short-changed at every opportunity. (It sometimes seems that the entire shebang will become unsustainable and collapse if they are not.) 

But there are many cyclical industries, and the capitalist structure- unfortunately a universal given today- extends across all of them. Exploitation or not, I don’t see labour elsewhere being treated in such a cavalier fashion as shipping treats its seamen. What gives here; what is so special about shipping? Why is it that shipping treats its professional workers so badly? Why is it that shipping- a suited and booted international industry supposedly regulated by the IMO, a UN agency- behaves like a grimy middleman in a remote hamlet that supplies labour to some shady sweat shop in a nearby town?

Okay. My vodka and I will now tell you why shipping treats its seamen badly. It does this because it can get away with it. 

And it gets away with it because every single industry body colludes with it.

Shipping needs to be forced to learn many things, but the main thing it must realise- for its own good- is that it is answerable to its workers at sea. Unfortunately, as things stand today, there are no consequences for a shipowner if he doesn’t pay wages to his seamen- or pays them months late. Hell, there are no effective consequences even for breaching the basic legal duty of providing a seaworthy ship to the crew, forget the nitty-gritty of one sided contracts or other decaying international regulations. There are no consequences of circumventing or breaking even major clauses in maritime law, IMO regulations or the contract of employment. 

There should be. Owners and managers who break the laws that are supposed to protect seamen should be heavily fined or jailed, as the labour laws of many countries from where they operate allow; they should be made to pay for their crimes if these are proven. 

I am convinced that shipping needs an international policeman with a big stick if seamen’s working lives are to be improved- and incidentally, this is something that will make the profession attractive once again, raise professional standards and therefore result in safer ships and cleaner oceans- that old IMO refrain. It needs a new policeman, by the way- the existing ones are too emasculated. As things stand, shipping has no real international infrastructure that could allow this (IMO? Don’t make me laugh). All shipping has are grandiose sounding acronyms that are actually industry groups that do nothing except look after their own narrow interests. From international and national regulators to shipowning or shipmanaging bodies to unions, insurers et al, shipping is awash with the self-obsessed, narrow minded and the corrupt. 

In the absence of a real policeman, humans will do whatever they can get away with. And so shipping does.And so its seamen pay the price.

Should this be published, I expect many to come down like a ton of bricks on me, accusing me of many things, including of tarring everybody in the industry with the same brush. In my defence, I claim beforehand that I do not imply that shipping has no honest or well-meaning people; I claim with absolute conviction, however, that these are too few in number and are too powerless in the face of the odds stacked against them and- therefore and eventually- do not matter, because they fail.

I will also say, with the same conviction, that shipping will pay the price for its high handed, callous- and often downright illegal- treatment of its seamen sooner or later.  Some of it is being paid already, with the declining quality of crews. Some will be paid with each accident- and there is no doubt in my mind that there will be more of them in future than we are used to today.  

And a hell of a lot will be paid on the day when quality seamen become extinct. They will, you know. The older good guys will quit or retire sometime or the other. The new good guys aren’t coming out in numbers anymore. We know why: because they have realised that shipping sucks if you are a seaman. 

.

.

The perfect storm

To those who refused to see the writing on the wall, the perfect storm that has hit the Indian economy seems to have come from nowhere. To others it was inevitable- high inflation, slowing GDP growth, an out of control fiscal deficit, expensive populist government schemes and an almost complete paralysis of governance were all thunderous clouds clearly seen for long on the horizon. The rising US dollar today is a symptom of the disease that is probably going to get worse before it gets any better.

The maritime sector in India will continue to struggle for some time more, I think. Shipowners are in the doldrums already; the biggest, SCI, has been losing increasing amounts of taxpayer money, with numbers plummeting over the last four quarters. The company has reportedly generated a negative return of 44.45% on a YTD basis and may lose its ‘Navratna’ status, if media reports are to be believed. The offshore sector has been doing better than mainstream shipping in recent times; it may well continue to do so, but if it does, it will be the exception, not the rule.

Trade will slow down further, at least until the general elections are over. The numbers are worrisome already: the Indian Ports Association says that total cargo traffic at major ports in India rose by just 4.8% YOY and that too mainly because of a 6.7% rise in imports. Transhipment cargo is falling, and export of iron ore has plummeted, thanks to the ban on mining- it is down a whopping 70%. Increased export taxes are a smaller reason for this. To add to the misery of the mining companies and the ports that were set up to service them, ore production has inevitably fallen too.

Obviously coal and oil will continue to be imported in an energy starved country, but any further skewing of the import-export imbalance will have even greater repercussions on the Indian economy and its currency- and on inflation. I see the government doing more knee jerk or populist stuff in an election year to keep this under control. There are already stories going around about measures to ‘curb imports’; oil marketing companies with their mounting losses are screaming for a hefty rise in diesel and petroleum products. Ministers are busy telling everyone that there is no need to panic, and the blinkered are happy that the new central bank governor’s utterances after his appointment have seen stock markets shooting up in the last week or so. But one man, like one swallow, cannot make a summer.

I tend to agree- with one gigantic caveat- with those optimists who think that clarity will emerge after the general elections, when we hopefully get a functioning government that takes the decisions that need to be taken.

My caveat is this: provided the big C- corruption- is miraculously minimised.

Corruption has eaten away everything in India; the cancer ensures that the majority of Indians remain poor- and worse, without hope. It ensures that all our best laid plans come to naught. It has compromised the majority of Indians, including most of those of us who scream obscenely at it but who are secretly envious that somebody else has the opportunity to put his hand in the till. Many of us would do the exact same thing if we were in his place.

And so I cannot, for the life of me, see this country on a sustained economic growth path unless corruption is massively reduced from Indian public life. It is a herculean ask, sure, but, if this is not done, then we are doomed. We can have a few years of lopsided growth once in a while, but the chickens will come home to roost soon enough, as they have done today.

Unless corruption reduces, my only call on India- warts, ports, shipping and all- would be a sell.

.

.

Guns N’ Poses

(I wrote this piece more than two weeks ago and gave shipping time to prove me wrong before sending it in for publication. I needn’t have bothered.)

The saga of the Albedo- sunk off Somalia on July 6 after more than two and a half years in pirate hands, condition of survivors not really known- has more or less gone unnoticed except in the usual sections of the maritime press, and even that seems to be fatigued with seamen hostage stories. 

It appears, also, that the rest of the shipping community has become weary of striking its usual pose of concern and simulated outrage: there has been no clamour to pressurise governments to negotiate for the Albedo survivors release- or, for that matter, those of the Asphalt Venture who remain hostage since 2010- and after ransom was paid in mid-2011. Even the heart breaking letter written by the families of the Albedo crew begging Somali’s worldwide to pressurise their clan leaders to act has failed to generate any real interest. 

Maybe the poseurs in the industry are finally tired of the act. Or maybe, like Oscar Wilde, they are finding being natural a very difficult pose to keep up. 

Meanwhile, the EUNAVFOR folk seem to be running around like a bunch of sleazy paparazzi chasing Megan Fox on a beach, sighting an Albedo lifeboat here or there, but clueless about what actually happened on the Albedo, exactly how many crew survived and how many are still alive. Or maybe they know and are not talking. If so, why?

The mainstream media has concentrated more on the ‘last ship in Somali hands sinks’ story, ignoring the fifty or so seamen still held hostage by pirates in that failed State. A prominent section of the press in India reported, instead, that the MV Cotton was hijacked by Somali pirates when she was actually taken off West Africa! Such is the calibre of news reporting these days, or maybe it is just a reflection of the lazy interest shown by most of the general population when it comes to anything maritime.

An interesting thing is happening as West African piracy escalates in violence and spreads in area, with mother ships now being used and seamen being taken hostage in large numbers. What is noticeable is that there seems to be a subtle conspiracy afoot that downplays this menace. Media reports are nowhere as widespread or as strident as they are with Somali piracy and shipping organisations are not out there with their patronising advice for crews or their self-congratulatory press releases. If I were paranoid, I would think that shipping and its insurers have decided that higher reporting translates to higher ransoms, and acted as they usually do. To do this they are posing again- a different pose this time, but a pose nevertheless. They are pretending, even as everything is hitting the fan, that the problem is not so big. The other pose of concern for crew has been abandoned. 

Unfortunately, this development has also meant that there nothing being done to address the particular problems of West African piracy, including issues with corrupt officials in governments linked to either the hijackers or to the anti-piracy gravy train. The fact that Somalia is a failed State has some advantages for shipping and navies, who could do as they wished off the Somali coast. Countries around the West African rim will not appreciate their waters being treated in a similar cavalier fashion by EUNAVFOR or some such ‘international’ force. Hell, even carrying arms aboard merchant ships there can be a big issue. 

What all this means, sadly, is that Masters and crews are more on their own than ever before. One would have wanted the Somali piracy problem to have ended with a more generic solution, which could be rapidly and effectively applied everywhere else after adjustments for local conditions. But that was not meant to be, because shipping and its administrators- whether in governments, national and international administrations or in commerce- failed. They failed for many reasons, but the biggest reason they failed is that they did not care enough about ships’ crews. 

Instead of finding long term solutions to the men with guns that threaten seamen’s lives, they choose, instead, to strike a pose. 

.

.