Why is there such a hatred of ships and shipping all of a sudden? A fine fat merchant ship, laden with the goods we need, was once seen as benign, something to be welcomed, with people who managed ports waving beguiling offers to her owners.

Today this inbound ship is regarded almost as an agent of destruction, like the French brig which brought the Black Death into the Port of Weymouth in the intestines of her rats, all those years ago. Are there horrors lurking in the ballast tanks that will destroy all natural life in our waters? Men with chemical suits need to probe the recesses of the chain lockers, lest the sludge in the bottom contain some fell pestilence. It could be that in the upperworks of the ship will be found the larvae of frightful insects that will destroy our forests, like Gypsy Moths or horned beetles.

Is the crew, standing on the poop and forecastle in their boilersuits, composed of potential terrorists, with weapons of mass destruction in their kitbags, pornography on their laptops and narcotics hidden about their persons? Better not let them ashore.

And what about the miasma being exhaled from the funnel; death dealing emissions which shorten the lives of everyone living within ten miles of the shore? And that’s before we get around to computing the tonnage of CO2 that this ship is contributing to the destruction of the planet. Even a ship sitting around with nobody aboard her and all shut down is an object of hatred and concern.

The Californian Reserve Fleet, moored for years and apparently harming nobody is to be classified as “hazardous waste” by the ship-haters who dwell in that eccentric state.

Perhaps we should start fighting back, publicly rejoicing in the “transport miles” that enable us to enjoy a New Zealand

onion 12,000 miles from where it was grown, six months before we can eat the home-grown variety.

Stop pussyfooting about with polite murmurings about the small environmental footprints of ships, and tell the spavined, sandal wearing, left-wing, polenta munching, vegetarian green creeps that if it wasn’t for ships they would be freezing in the dark and eating each other to stay alive. Let’s stop being so reticent about the value and virtues of ships and the skills and brilliance of seafarers and shipowners. Let’s tell it how it is, and how, with a little more fine tuning and investment, ships can be made even more efficient and “sustainable”, and world trade flourish again.

It would help, of course if we weren’t so set in our ways about making shipping is as cheap as possible, which precludes having our own flags on the sterns and employing people who weren’t foreigners. If the countries in which the greens are bellowing loudest actually were major shipping nations, in which there was genuine awareness of maritime matters, the aforesaid ship-haters would be told to shut up, or ship out, rather than have their hyperbolic utterances treated with such reverence.

One Response to “Target practice”

1. Ryan Skinner
   February 12th, 2010 @ 6:43 pm

   A good Friday evening post, that one!

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