Water, Water Everywhere Should Make Consumers Think—About 11,000 Stranded Sailors at Hormuz
When the Amazon driver leaves an order at the doorstep, many may not be at home to give a quick, appreciative thank-you as the carrier races off to the next stop. Probably no thought was given to the ships and sailors who shipped goods to Amazon and America’s big-box stores in the first place. But gas station visits today have probably made customers grateful and well aware that an oil tanker and its crew may have been stranded in the Persian Gulf off the Strait of Hormuz and yet found ways to elude Iran’s shore batteries and mines to reach refineries and local stations.
A shout-out to mariners who’ve transported the world’s goods and services is long, long overdue. For centuries, in fact.
To particularize the current situation at Hormuz, some 2,000 ships and 20,000 sailors aboard tankers and cargo vessels were initially stranded in the Persian Gulf by April 21, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Contrary to laymen’s beliefs that each ship is crewed by hundreds to carry out dozens of essential responsibilities, the complement generally involves only 25-30 sailors, including the captain.
By early July, most captains of the 500-600 remaining ships and their 11,000 sailors refused the tempting and high-risk alternative route past the United Arab Emirates and Oman, recommended by the United Nations and the U.S. It was not only tripping freshly laid mines, but Iran’s “forceful response” to any ship’s failure to use its “Route of Authority ” out of Hormuz. Aside from an Iranian vessel running aground off Oman on July 1, three tankers were attacked two days later by “projectiles” and an Iranian drone. Up until then, 258 ships in the previous week eluded that “response”, but the event immediately stopped traffic.
That probably never would have happened in the first days of shipping in ancient times when merchants kept captains on a short leash no matter the dangers of the sea. Shipping started when Phoenicians (today’s Lebanese) in 1500 BC loaded up Mideast goods —cedar and metalwork, glass, incense, papyrus, textiles, purple dye, and a 22-character alphabet—for months of trading up and down the Mediterranean and East-Africa.
Add China in1405 AD with its vast “treasure fleets ” selling silks, porcelain, and lacquerware to Taiwan to customers up to the Persian Gulf in exchange for spices, ivory, medicines, and pearls. Some fleets were nine-mast junks (one mast was 400 x150 feet), interestingly manned by 27,000 sailors and soldiers, and accompanied by supply ships, patrol boats, and transport craft for cavalry horses.
Now, the 1,638 nautical miles between Beirut and Barcelona might take 25 to 50 galley rowers two to three months’ time to reach their destinations. Yankee whalers serving on small schooners in the 1800s might be gone for at least six months. Or three to four years if on a 325-ton, three-mast whaling bark like Herman Melville’s Pequod in Moby-Dick.
And before Yemen’s 2024 Houthi Red Sea attacks against Israeli transport and Iran’s closure of Hormuz interrupted ship passage, a tanker sailor usually served a six-month round trip , say, between an oil pickup in Saudi Arabia around Africa to delivery at Japanese ports.
Historic documents and novels attest to the grueling life of a merchant seaman under ordinary circumstances. In the centuries before steam power in the early 1800s, galley survival meant pulling an oar with five others at a pace by “coordinated strokes at 30 to 40 per minute for sustained cruising.” And sharing that 10 x 4-foot bench for work, meals, socialization—and sleep. The addition of sails increased duties to mending sails, checking ropes, and the eternal jobs of swabbing decks, and scraping barnacles from hulls, plus laundry and housekeeping chores.
Today, a tanker’s or cargo ship’s electronics has complicated and expanded jobs far beyond such basic and vital needs. It requires constant checking of communication devices and other systems is even more essential to operations than in previous decades. Anchored for months in the Gulf above the Straits keeps sailors’ bodies and minds nearly occupied during their watches. On daily schedules are regular maintenance of an oiler’s pipe couplings, pumps and valves, engine room overhauls and repairs, monitoring cargo equipment and storerooms—and in this war, checking readiness of fire-fighting equipment and drills.
Another aspect of shipboard life of every age is discipline, whether for personal attacks, coups, damage—or especially when the vessel is becalmed or lying at ports too long. Resentments and mischief emerge.
But because any voyage carries life and death consequences for everyone on board, discipline has always been harsh and immediate, from 1500 BC to the late 1880s until the 1958 Merchant Shipping Act . Cat-o’-nine-tails floggings, keelhaulings, and hangings from the yard arm were common punishments for centuries.
For example, in the early 1700s, a Huguenot galley slave on a French ship reported:
“The Comite, who is master of the slaves and a tyrant much dreaded, stands always at the stern, near the captain, to receive his orders. There are also two sous-comites who carry whips of cords which they exercise without mercy on the naked bodies of the slaves. When the captain gives the word for rowing, the comite gives the signal with a silver whistle. The slaves, who have their oars in readiness, strike all at once, and beat time exactly. This they continue, without requiring further orders, till by another signal of the whistle, they desist in a moment. The comites exercise their whips like furies, while the muscles of the slaves, all in convulsions under the lash, pour streams of blood onto the seats.”
Today, the captain is still the judge, jury, and enforcer for crimes or minor infractions. Most are familiar: inciting mutiny or causing “damage to the vessel, cargo, or equipment, or charges which threaten the life or safety of persons on board” and “refusal or omission to perform duties necessary to save the ship or any person on board.” Add the charges of “assaulting the master or fellow crew members, delaying the voyage, desertion, refusal to join the ship or sail without reasonable cause, absence from duty, neglect of duty, or willful disobedience of lawful commands.”
Punishment today must follow the Merchant Shipping Act, most of which allows confinement and a diet of “water and 1,000 calories, with full rations every fifth day, until the disobedience ends.” Sometimes “forfeiture of pay” is applied. Whether any of the Hormuz sailors have committed such offences such as desertion has yet to be revealed, but serving in a war zone would seem to offer sufficient policing.
Requiring three meals per day obviously is a vast improvement from merchant ships 200 years ago when crews might be stranded “for weeks, even months , [when] no whales would be seen.” Yet in both cases, heavy work schedules trigger heavy appetites. Whalers’ suppers might include “greasy pork, hard biscuits, and cockroach-laden molasses. Other fare included “salt horse” (heavily salted beef, pork, or horse), beans, rice, or potatoes.”
On the other hand, Homuz sailors not only have refrigeration for food supplies, but supply ships and dozens of enterprising small-boat vendors from coastal Iran and Oman. They sell fresh fruit and vegetables, water, beverages, and other items whenever missiles, drones and jet attacks pause over that narrow waterway or Iranian gunboats suddenly appear. Even so, shortages of regular food, water, and medicine supplies are now being reported as well as rationing on some ships and voluntary intake by crews .
The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) in late June released plans to shipping companies and captains about how to safely exit Hormuz once the U.S. and Iran agree on terms. Recent mutual resumption of hostilities , however, continue to postpone such liberation. The emotional stress of war and waiting for evacuation of remaining ships down the Hormuz Strait is taking its toll. Many might identify with the hopeless wretches shown in Theodore Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa .
True, sailors today can send emails and letters and make calls to loved ones and friends. Many also have personal entertainment: Karaoke machines , laptops, DVDs, television, and radios. Relief also comes from talking to priests sent by the global Mission to Seafarers. But as one sailor said about such temporary escape from their grim reality:
“I have seen Iranian drones and missiles flying at low altitude. I also hear the sound of fighter jets, but we can’t identify which country they belong to. What scares me the most is the thought of an intercepted drone or missile falling on us.”
Said another:
“In terms of mental health, [we] are anxious about what will happen next . . . Many feel that if given a chance, they would sign off and leave by any means. Many seafarers also have pending wages, which adds to their stress and frustration. Physically, the mental strain has led to fatigue and tiredness.”
A monumental historic parallel with such stress and fear has to be with most of the U.S. merchant marine crews in World War II, according to current data in American Merchant Marine at War . A total of 1,768 ships were “sunk, damaged, captured or detained by torpedoes, shelling, bombings, Kamikaze attacks, mines, etc.”
In early May, the seafarers global union (International Transport Workers Federation ) reported that it had: “received more than 2,000 requests for assistance from seafarers in the Gulf since the war began. Half have been about pay and contract, a fifth were repatriation requests and a tenth were concerns about food, water or fuel. The ITF has assisted repatriation for 500 seafarers.” Moreover, a lawsuit has been filed by three Thai sailors against a shipping company after an attack left them with traumatic stress disorder, ending their seafaring careers. A win could mean setting a precedent to terrify shipowners ordering captains to risk running the strait.
Overall, consider the millions of seafarers past and present—especially those stranded in the Persian Gulf — their bravery, skills, strength, and endurance through wars, lightning strikes and storms, unending calms, heat and cold, uncharted areas, hijackings, and health problems. Centuries ago, many were slaves and captives, but many were volunteers seeking high wages and perhaps escaping troubles at home.
The astounding prediction is that most of the Hormuz sailors will sign on to future voyages. And the ultimate question for thousands of years is “Why?”
One undeniable inducement, however, has always been the sea’s great seductive power, making ordinary men seek its exciting, if dangerous, life. Perhaps poet John Masefield’s “Sea Fever” still explains its hypnotic spell:
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
