Inside the World Trade System: Personal

The idea of travelling on a cargo ship seems so far-fetched that the only way to deal with it was to make the plan work on paper and then go through with it without thinking too much about the personal implications. I had to leave myself entirely open to what might happen, since I had nothing to base my expectations on. Various jokes were made about the likely behaviour of the Filipino crew, jokes that turned out to be wildly inaccurate and probably racist too.

What I discovered on board was the international division of labour in shipping, or perhaps what we might more accurately call the ethnic segmentation of the marine labour market. On our ship the officers were East European and the crew were Filipino, with only a few exceptions. The senior crew had trained during the communist era, learning skills that would then enable them to drive the capitalist trade machine. They welcomed us into the small community and shared with us all their knowledge of the ways of the sea and the workings of their ship. We stood on the bridge watching the pilot guide us into and out of some of the world's large container ports. It was a remarkable experience.

Our best friend was the 'reefer man', largely because he had the best English of the officers. Every container ship needs a skilled mechanic and electrician to maintain the health of the 'reefers' that bring us our bananas. The word 'reefer' comes from the fact that these containers (the white ones you see on lorries) are refrigerated, having their own cooling system driven by electricity. Every day in the tropics Valentin, the reefer man on our ship, had to go down to what he called 'hell', the container hold, where temperatures rose to around 50 degrees, to check that the containers were functioning.

The days of joining the merchant marine to see the world are over. When the ships are in port the corporate owners are losing money, so the crew are busier than ever, working with the robots and automatic cranes to load and unload containers as quickly as possible. They rarely leave the ship while in port except to work on the quay; during my 14 days at sea I was the only person who left the port area. At sea the officers and crew work on regardless of conditions and had some horror stories to tell as soon as the waves reached above 4 metres. They were brave in this physical endurance, but also in the mental endurance of months spent in a tiny space far away from family and friends.

I know that my perspective on trade has been changed and that I will feel differently when I see a container on the road or see the imported fruit in the supermarket. We are the consumers of the world: we earn money in other ways to pay people from countries where wages are lower to do the heavy lifting to support our lifestyles. Every time you eat a banana or a melon you rely on that huge energy-intensive system where human lives are spent in sad and lonely work.
.

Tweet

Inside the World Trade System: Technical

The lengthy hiatus in posts is the result of my spending two weeks aboard a cargo ship without an Internet connection. The lack of connection was an interesting experience in itself, but seeing the global trading system from the inside was even more remarkable.

Before boarding the 170m vessel that would bring us back to Europe from Brazil I had seen the extraordinary documentary 'The Box that Changed the Britain' so knew something of what to expect from the vast logistical complexity and technological sophistication of the global trading system. But seeing the huge machines lift 40-tonne containers as though they were match-boxes was truly impressive.

The first thing we learned was metaphorical rather than technological. I cannot remember now many times I have been told that things cannot be changed because it would be like 'trying to turn around a supertanker'. Well, from the vantage-point of a ship of similar size I can tell you that it can be turned around in little more than its own length, as we were when leaving our berth in Natal. Somehow this proof that the metaphor is nonsense cheered me immensely, undermining another ideological block to the rapid structural changes we need to make to the global economy.

The largest port we visited was Rotterdam, which is actually three ports in one with another one under construction and a third on the drawing-board for 2020. Altogether these ports span 50km of land, much of it reclaimed from the sea, it is only the fourth largest port in the world. Our ship, the MV Homere was 'small' at just 170m long. We saw ships three times the size, capable of carrying 12,000 TEU and there are plans to build ships nearly twice this size. Physically this is overwhelming but the energy it takes to construct and maintain such facilities is horrifying.

The reason for my cargo-ship passage was to hitch a ride on a voyage that was already committed and so reduce my carbon impact. Although this may have worked at a personal level it was reduced to absurdity by the flights taken by the 23 crew members who made my journey possible. The shipping company that employs them flies them home after each 42-day contract from wherever they are to wherever their home is. Since our crew had more Filipino crew than Romanians (the two countries that make up the majority of the world's fleets) this meant at least 15 return flights to Asia to enable my air-free passage plus a slightly smaller number of European flights.

.

Tweet