Mother’s
Day Gift
Original Photos by
Barista Uno
The 10 most popular sea songs in Marine Café Blog
One thing can change the course of seafarers’ rights
10 quotes about mothers that will move macho sailors
The 10 most popular sea songs in Marine Café Blog
It is heartening to see many people visiting Marine Café Blog for its repository of downloadable sea songs and shanties. I hope to add more musical files to the database. In the meantime, here’s a list of the most downloaded songs to date in ascending order (click on the song titles to play and download).
One thing can change the course of seafarers’ rights
A torrent of words continues to swirl around seafarers’ rights. It’s a giant whirlwind that is constantly whipped up by the maritime unions and various NGOs. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has joined in with its own brand of rhetoric and sloganeering. Never mind if the issue of workers’ rights properly belongs to another UN agency, the International Labour Organization. Amid all the noise, one word hardly gets mentioned. Yet, in this single word can be found the path to a better treatment of seafarers.
10 quotes about mothers that will move macho sailors
All mariners, presumably, love their mothers. What kind of man does not? Even when one gets older, marries and has his own family, the emotional bond remains. Fond memories linger even after one’s mother has passed away. In a sense, the umbilical cord is never really cut. The following quotes are some of the most powerful on the subject of mothers and their capacity for making sacrifices and for loving selflessly and unconditionally.
The 10 most popular sea songs in Marine Café Blog
One thing can change the course of seafarers’ rights
Recent Posts
A wonderful trio of lighthouse poems by women
I recently came across three lighthouse poems which should delight anyone who loves lighthouses. All were written by women. Does that really matter? Feminists and literary critics would probably say ‘No’. However, there is a difference between men and women in the way...
Five mindsets that beget the exploitation of seafarers
What gives rise to the exploitation of seafarers? Is it greed or lack of empathy? Is it 21st-century materialism? Is it the predatory infrastructure that has been built around the seafaring profession through so many maritime regulations? Surprisingly, the answer was provided by the Buddha more than 2,000 years ago.
Some immortal lines about the hard life of seafarers
Who can truly know what a seafarer’s life is like? Surely, none but a person who has spent some time at sea and worked his ass off on board a ship. But thanks to nautical writers, the curious landlubber can have an insight into that life and perhaps feel a bit of empathy with seafarers.
The following are excerpts from some of these writers. Although they describe conditions faced by sailors in earlier times, the quoted passages should resonate with present-day readers. The truth is that the sea is still a dangerous place, and life is still hard for many mariners — notwithstanding all the noise about their rights as workers and as human beings.
The art of Gustave Doré: Spicing up a classic sea poem
Excellent poetry, it could be argued, does not need to be complemented by art. This seems true in the case of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about a mariner who unleashes a chain of misfortunes after killing an albatross. In a 2009 review of the poem published in the British newspaper The Guardian, Carol Rumens spoke of its hypnotic power: “The scenery remains thrillingly hellish, while laced with photographically realistic meteorological effects, and the narrative drive is irresistible.”
Why publish such a powerful poem with illustrations? It’s a reasonable question to ask, to which one could reply: WHY NOT, if the artist happens to be Gustave Doré (1832—1883)?
10 standout maritime websites that are worth a click
In this day and age, maintaining a website seems imperative for most businesses. But it’s not just a question of having one as some people might think. The following are 10 maritime websites that stand out because of their design and, more importantly, the way their content is organised and presented for the benefit of site visitors. They call to mind the words of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, as quoted in an article in The New York Times: ”It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Steamships and steamboats: A lost age reclaimed in art
In mid-June of 1819, the SS Savannah sounded the death knell for the Age of Sail when it completed the first steam-powered voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. True, the historic hybrid vessel relied on its sails for most of the journey. But this was the start of something big. Steamships and steamboats would eventually become ubiquitous — making passenger sea travel easier, expanding commerce and even changing the nature of naval warfare. The maritime Age of Steam would also fade away but not completely, thanks to the artists who drew inspiration from it.
A litany of sins against seafarers, on land and at sea
There is never a dearth of news reports about seafarers being cheated, abused or otherwise mistreated. The whole thing goes on and on, in spite of the many bleeding hearts in shipping. The following is a list of the myriad ways in which the rights of mariners are violated, both on land and at sea. Ironically, some are being overlooked or ignored by the maritime press and by those who profess love and compassion for seafarers.
What’s wrong with the campaigns vs. depression at sea?
After several posts about the subject, I thought I would not have to write again about depression at sea. But some maritime charities continue to beat the war drums. They try to paint depression as a scourge on today’s seafarers, something that has to be defeated like ISIL or Al-Qaeda. Promoting mental health amongst those who work at sea is commendable. So what’s wrong with these well-intentioned efforts to combat seafarer depression?
The irony of time revealed in maritime photos
Time, it is often said, changes everything.. This is not exactly true. As the following pairs of maritime photographs show, some things change dramatically after the lapse of many years and others, little or not at all. The American-British poet T.S. Eliot was right. “Time the destroyer is time the preserver.” he wrote in The Dry Salvages, the third poem of his famous Four Quartets.
Shell fantasy: Six camera and mind compositions
As any avid shell collector knows, seashells are the hard exoskeletons (external coverngs) of marine molluscs which serve both as their home and their armour. They are the remnants of creatures that have long passed away. As a photographer, my aim in this set of pictures was to try to give seashells a new kind of life and vitality. These are actual photographs, not manipulated digital images. I hope you enjoy viewing each one.
Gift Ideas for
Mother's Day
