The Daily View: The unenviable life of the seafarer

The Daily View: The unenviable life of the seafarer
David Osler 26 Jun 2025 https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1153989/The-Daily-View-The-unenviable-life-...

EVEN by the nugatory standards prevailing for ‘International Day of the X’ events, the Day of the Seafarer doesn’t attract much public attention.

It’s just possible that a cheese and wine reception at Albert Embankment to mark the occasion is getting underway even as I write. That’s probably about it.

Yet the difficulties facing seafarers are very real. Lloyd’s List has regularly covered the plight of those abandoned, sometimes for months and even years, by rogue owners. This should simply not be happening in 2025.

Last week I attended a conference on seafarer criminalisation. The International Maritime Organization, the International Labour Organisation, the International Chamber of Shipping and the International Transport Workers’ Federation were all agreed that this is a very bad thing and that something really should be done about it.

But not if that means upsetting sovereign member states, you understand.

Only a couple of weeks back, I wrote about some research from the sociology department of Cardiff University. According to their academic studies, seafarers on merchant ships typically receive fewer rest breaks, less access to medical care and lower levels of shore leave than counterparts on cruiseships.

Problems include sleep deprivation and chronic fatigue, particularly on vessels with smaller crews.

These conditions were found to correlate with short-term anxiety and depression. More than 40% of senior officers in the cargo sector reported symptoms of mental distress.

On Wednesday, I have covered a report on crew claims from Gard, the world’s largest marine insurer. The findings make grim reading.

There has been a large increase in the number of crew death claims in the three years since the pandemic, and fatalities from suicides now outnumber those from accidents, the marine mutual reveals.

Just think about that. Seafaring is statistically one of the world’s most dangerous occupations. Yet more are taking their own lives than succumbing to workplace hazards.

Meanwhile, my colleague Joshua Minchin has been looking at the results of the latest Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, a survey of 140,000 people across 140 countries.

A third of ocean workers reported serious harm from severe weather in the past two years, compared to 20% of other groups of workers. In fact, ocean workers were three times as likely to name climate change as the greatest risk to their safety than other groups.

A couple of the boys I grew up with left school at 16 and signed up for “the merch”, as the job was known at that time. Back in the 1970s, in the days before cheap air travel, this was pretty much the only way for working class kids to see the world.

As for the legend of “a girl in every port”, let’s just say that I have listened to their accounts of that era with not inconsiderable jealousy.

Things are clearly not like that now. Seafaring was always a tough job and appears to be getting ever tougher. If you get to read this before the Day of Seafarer is out, raise a glass to the people who make this industry happen.