Doing the right thing out at sea can be a hard choice-A mariner’s tale. Pt. 1

To tell or not to tell. That’s a choice facing seafarers who must decide whether to report unseaworthy conditions, and how far to push the issue when nothing is done about it.

The following story comes to us from a mariner who recently was forced to deal with this type of situation. He asked to remain anonymous out of fears of being blacklisted.:

I was on a liner ship on the northern European trade. I’d been on the ship close to four months and was getting ready to finish up my tour.

Now, I’ve been in this business for almost 25 years and I’ve seen my fair share of rust buckets but this one was in a different category of disrepair.

The ship was basically a floating wreck. It was obvious the company wasn’t putting nearly enough money into maintaining it. I knew this because one of my main overtime jobs was to do PM’s (preventive maintenance rounds).

One of the major parts of my PM’s was to maintain valves all over the ship. I should say, to TRY and maintain valves. You see, they were in generally terrible shape. A bunch of them were so frozen shut from years of lack of attention that they wouldn’t budge even after I shot them full of grease and tried to work them loose with a wheel wrench. Some wouldn’t turn because they were bent. The sea chest valve looked like it was about to break off.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. One of the crew nearly fell into the water when a gangway wire jumped the sheave and it fell three feet before catching. Fortunately the crewman stumbled but stayed on the ladder. Other winch wires were frayed and were bone dry, probably hadn’t been greased in years. Mooring lines were badly worn, too, and it was likely just a matter of time before they would end up parting at the pier. Fortunately, I finished up my tour and flew back to the States before going through that scenario.

The attitude of the crew on the vessel was very lackadaisical toward the vessel’s unseaworthiness.

Despite telling the bosun and chief mate about deformities on several occasions, they would only reply “we’ll look into it.” But nothing would ever be done about it. Whether the lack of action was because the deformities were never actually reported or because the company did not follow up on the reports, I don’t know. All I know is that I became very uneasy living on a ship that I was convinced was a floating death trap.

My frustrations boiled over at the last safety meeting I attended. I was sick and tired of the empty spiel of so called “safety talk” on the part of the senior officers. When they would tell us “safety first” and to “always report any unsafe conditions,” it made my blood boil. The hypocrisy of it all. Generally speaking, no one said anything at these meetings, even though the unseaworthiness was no secret to anyone. The attitude seemed to be, “well, nothing bad has happened yet, so why worry about it?”

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