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Manliness and machismo: Great quotes for seafarers
Filipino seafarer remittances: 3 ways to stop the stealing
Tower of Babel: The term ‘seafarer’ in various languages
Manliness and machismo: Great quotes for seafarers
To be brutally frank, most men have a constant need to validate themselves. They do so in a myriad of ways. Some may go into bodybuilding; engage in numerous casual sex affairs; or speak and act arrogantly. Others express their manliness in more subtle ways, such as driving around town in an expensive SUV or displaying their awards and trophies in their offices for visitors to admire..
It’s a kind of psychological weakness from which many a seafarer is not exempt. Indeed, the obsession with manliness is common in the still-male-dominated world of shipping. The following are some memorable quotes about this male phenomenon.
Filipino seafarer remittances: 3 ways to stop the stealing
The short-changing of Filipino mariners on their remttances seems to be an incurable disease. Dishonest manning agents have been at it for decades. They convert the dollars to pesos at less than the prevailing foreign exchange rate. This means less money in monthly allotments for the families of seafarers. The total annual take for those with sticky fingers may well run to millions of dollars. The following are three ways to put a stop to the stealing, but each one, unfortunately, is not without problems.
Tower of Babel: The term ‘seafarer’ in various languages
Unless one is a polyglot, searching for the equivalent of ‘seafarer’ in different languages can be a daunting task. According to Ethnologue, the leading resource on world languages, there are 7,139 known living languages. Perhaps not all of them have names for ‘seafarer’, but even a partial list of such names would call to mind the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Tugboats at work in awesome old photographs
Manliness and machismo: Great quotes for seafarers
Recent Posts
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.
Leontine (Leo) von Littrow: A gifted woman and her seascapes
When it comes to art, it is talent — not gender — that matters. However, the fact that Leontine von Littrow was a woman is worth mentioning. This gifted Austrian painter lived at a time when the world of art was dominated by men, often to the prejudice of women. In fact, early in her career, Littrow began signing her works “Leo von Littrow” just so they would be included in art exhibitions.
The ageless charm of lighthouses in old drawings and prints
We have been so spoiled by colours that many of us may overlook the power of monochrome art. The following drawings, etchings, engravings and lithographs of lighthouses lack the usual colours that mesmerise the eye. Yet, they all bring out the beauty and splendour of lighthouses. They are a testament as well to the skill of the artists who were fascinated by these structures.
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