Keep calm and sail on

Carl Martin Faanessen, CEO of Manila-based Noatun Maritime, reckons too many column inches are being spent exaggerating the plight of seafarers. “We are at risk of placing an entire group of highly skilled, adaptable and professional workers in a bucket,” he writes.

Can we take a moment and please stop placing seafarers in a victim role, very few of them have ever asked for?

There’s a whole industry that’s come up, focused on the strain of being a seafarer, away from home month after month, sometimes facing rough seas, geopolitical strains, and more.

Yes, they do face all of the above – but not all the time. Most seafarers I speak with, and that’s quite a few, are happy with their chosen career. While they themselves may not wish their children to follow in their footsteps, they have no plans to move ashore. And once you start digging, the stories of camaraderie, of shared experiences, of fellowship, of struggles shared and overcome, are many.

So many of them beam with pride at how they manage to take excellent care of their family, their parents, their siblings, and often a wide web of their relatives. This pride is gently tempered with gratitude. Gratitude for the parents who often helped them get their education; gratitude to the spouse who keeps the wheels turning at home all the time; gratitude to siblings and relatives who support the seafarer. And gratitude to their fellow seafarers who sail with them. All of this is in the picture above.

They tell of near-mythical sunsets with friends, of sunrises, of social activities. They also tell of the occasional feud, which is more often than not settled onboard. Yes, they tell of near-misses, of accidents – none of them try to wave away the risks of the job. But they know them; they are trained to identify, mitigate and handle them; they are surrounded by people who all share the same goal: To come home safe and sound.

In my experience, seafarers are no more likely to experience mental issues than any other occupation. In fact, it might be the opposite: Many of them are very resilient and highly adaptive. All these traits tend to self-select seafarers from the very beginning of their career. If you are not resilient, adaptive, and lack the ability to connect with people around you, you are unlikely to pursue a career where you are ganged up with a group of people for days on end.

I don’t wish to ignore or belittle the genuine cases of mental problems. These must be handled professionally and with empathy. But right now, we are at risk of placing an entire group of highly skilled, adaptable, and professional workers in a bucket, and I think that is misguided.