Flags of Convenience are modern day slave ships

For Cunard Cruise Line, the re-flagging of its Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth from UK to Bermuda registry, purportedly to allow “weddings at sea," was a move of convenience. Those ships are replacing the Union Jack that they’ve hoisted since 1840 with the so-called Red Ensign Group flag which covers a number of British territories such as Gibraltar and Cayman Islands. Even though they will be called British ships, they will not have an official UK registry.

For many seamen toiling away on FOCs, they live anything but a convenient life.

FOCs—Flags of Convenience—might just as well be called Hell Ships, Runaway Ships or Modern Slave Ships. Abandonment, deprivation and even death are known to be perpetrated upon sailors by some of the very FOC companies they work for. Mariners live in virtual indentured servitude and sail on unsafe ships while incompetent and greedy management counts its profits and governments look the other way.

These sailors have no voice. They fear speaking out, knowing they will be blacklisted from future employment-or worse.

A flag of convenience, or FOC, vessel flies the flag of a nation other than the country of ownership. Dubbed “runaway flags,” ship owners pay a nominal fee to the government of a non-maritime nation seeking to raise revenue. The owners then escape from safety regulations, inspections, tax laws and higher wages. Dishonest managers and registries make it almost impossible for authorities to hold owners accountable for mistreating crews and operating unsafe ships.

According to the International Commission on Shipping, “many seafarers are little more than slaves, with life at sea for many crew members involving physical and mental abuse, non-payment of wages, excessive hours of work and atrocious living and working conditions.” Those deplorable conditions include a diet of cockroach-covered food and the sharing of the same beds, known as “hot racks,” due to a lack of living space.

These are not stories from the eighteenth century British Merchant Navy, but are happening in recent years. In 1996, crewmembers of the Glory Cape jumped overboard while sailing out of Danpier, Australia because they feared for their lives at the hands of the captain who allegedly had them beaten, overworked and underfed. The radio officer was beaten so badly with iron bars that he drowned in the water. The captain and owner were never charged.

In the 2005 Sky 75 incident in New Zealand, 10 Indonesians walked off a Korean registered vessel after abuse and harsh working conditions.

According to a New York Times article, some international registries allow 98-hour work weeks. Cleaners on some cruise lines make $545 a month working at least 360 hours a month. The landlocked nation of Mongolia has a sizeable vessel registry as does blighted North Korea. Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands are the three largest FOC nations with a combined 11,636 ships of 1,000 DWT and above, according to Wikipedia.com. 60-percent of shippers use these so-called “open registries,” up from 4-percent in 1950. Some registries allow a change of flag within 48 hours with just a signature or on-line application from the owner. Other registries don’t even require the owners to reveal their identities.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) managed to recover $30 million in non-paid seamen’s wages last year. That’s a drop in the bucket of the real amount of non-paid workers who may be abandoned in foreign ports after their company goes bankrupt.

F.O.C. pirate fishing fleets ignore conservation laws and pillage fish stocks, threatening sea turtles, albatross and sharks.