There is nothing wrong with bandwagons per se. In fact, they are often necessary in bringing about change as the whole world is witnessing in the case of women’s rights and climate action. The problem arises when people are swayed by rhetoric, not reason, and unthinkingly hop onto the wagon just because it is fashionable to do so. Unfortunately, this is happening with the bandwagon that carries the banners “Wellness at Sea” and “Seafarer Mental Health”.
After writing about seafarers’ rights for almost a decade, I felt drained and defeated. The abuses against seamen were continuing. It was as if ILO Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (the so-called “bill of rights” of seafarers) had never existed… I began to realise that writers who speak candidly on seafarer issues would never receive popular support.
In 2019 the shipping industry almost went crazy over wellness training and the issue of seafarer mental health. The noise from the charities was so loud that it seemed like depression at sea was some kind of an epidemic worse than the Ebola plague. It did not help that the conformist maritime press amplified their frantic messages and slogans. Marine Café Blog refused to be suck in by all that frenzy.
Why an alternative maritime dictionary? Firstly because language is a living organism, constantly evolving and adapting to the times. Secondly because existing definitions of certain words and phrases may not exactly correspond to reality. In fact, they sometimes...
The personal attacks on Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, have highlighted the current state of the climate change debate. It is no longer a dialogue or even an argument that people are having. It is a verbal brawl. Those on opposite sides...
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. ~from the Tao-te Ching (translation by Stephen Mitchell) The shipping industry is trying hard to reduce emissions from ships. Well and good. Global warming is bad enough...
Marine Café Blog stopped using maritime press releases long ago. There is just too much of them. They come rushing like the waves in Winslow Homer's 1891 painting Watching the Breakers (pictured above), flooding the in-box of journalists to subsequently see the light...
Every seafarer should have a personal copy of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW). After all, it is the bible of the merchant marine. Seafarers are obliged to meet the STCW's minimum standards on...
Marine Café Blog is now on its 11th year, having turned a decade old on 25th August 2019. Instead of looking back, I would much rather talk about things to come. As H.G. Wells said in his 1902 philosophical lecture, The Discovery of the Future: “It is possible to...
What is the difference between a boat and a ship? I am posing this old question again because, try hard as I may, I cannot find a satisfactory answer that would put the matter to rest. If the conundrum can befuddle seafarers and other maritime professionals, what more...
The establishment, according to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, is “the people in a society or a profession who have influence and power and who usually do not support change”. The last part of the definition is significant. The establishment is rightly seen as slow...
The way language is used by the maritime community has always been of great interest to me as a writer. I believe I was the first to criticise the buzzword “the human element” to refer to seafarers. Back in 2012 — when the shipping industry had swallowed the phrase...