‘So, Silvie, when you visit ships … ‘
‘Nippin, as I said to you, we don’t visit ships. We visit crew members.’
I’ve been coaching Silvie Boyd – a port chaplain – and it was the second time she had warned me against using the phrase ‘ship visits’ to describe her work.
This is not a wrong choice of words. For a professional who cares about the seafarers, in just those two words I have robbed her of moral truth.
You could do a full-scale Human Factors, Human Performance, or Human Element audit and come out at the other end without knowing the crew members, their hobbies, passions (element?), motivations, beliefs, superstitions, joys, sorrows, sufferings, frustrations, and all that makes them human. How ironic we still think it is ‘human’?
I’ll share with you a personal reflection that points to the Ethics of audits, inspections and all forms of ship visits. In more than 6 years as a safety inspector, I had never captured images of people having conversations, sharing experiences, enjoying a meal or having fun onboard. Instead, my photos and reports were stories of seized doors, leaking gaskets and corroded dampers. Even during maritime labour inspections, all that really piqued my interest was hygiene records, provision stores inventory and crew complaints procedures.
If you think these are made up stories, take a minute to review your own images of ship (or site or asset) visits. If images hold the secret doors to our imagination, there lies the (hidden) Ethics of an entire industry trapped in your images of ship visits.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a group of seafarers who were traumatised by the situation in the Hormuz Straits. Guess what were their concerns? Fear of death, lack of sleep, trauma, distress, a lack of focus, crew members not talking to each other and people fighting with each other due to their political differences.
We do not know if a missile will hit the ship, but we know for certain that a lack of focus or cooperation during high-risk activities are ideal recipes for collisions and explosions at sea. It is quite clear to me that the crew onboard don’t want more ship visits, audits and inspections. They need listening, understanding and the dignity of being seen as humans.
With escalating geopolitical tensions, energy crisis, and supply chains breaking down, one thing is becoming clear. Yet again an industry caught in a performative rat race to be seen ‘human-centric’ is inadvertently becoming less human.
I would go with the port chaplain’s advice. Drop the idea of ship visits; think about visiting the crew members onboard.
