But there are still cases of exploitation, and the international workforce employed by the global shipping industry can throw up quite a few of these.

Seafarers’ Rights International is a new organisation which aims to improve the lot of seafarers and ensure that their entitlement to human and workplace rights are at least as well-defined as for those workers ashore.

Mind you, most seafarers wouldn’t thank you for a reputation as  “sea-lawyers”, who are seen, not as earnest seekers after rights but as troublemakers. So one cannot be entirely surprised that a survey commissioned by the SRI on access and availability of legal advice found that about a quarter of seafarers polled said that they feared to seek legal redress, lest they find themselves out of a job.

Not “rocking the boat” is a saying which is used extensively by landsmen, these days, but its maritime origins are apposite, and in a labour force which remains overwhelmingly casually, or agency employed, security of employment is not something seafarers tend to take for granted. Accordingly, seafarers tend to think twice or three times and knock on wood before ever engaging in some sort of contract dispute with their employer.

The survey found that seafarers would like more information on their rights, but one can understand why they might be reluctant to going in to bat on such matters. When there are unions who can look after the rights of members, well and good, but there are a large number of the unrepresented at sea, and likely to remain so.

Of course it would be good if seafarers were more secure, but the nature of seafaring doesn’t seem to work in favour of labour stability.  So perhaps we should all encourage the SRI and its championship of best working practice, especially in an industry constantly worrying about where its workers are coming from.

This Saturday sees the first Day of the Seafarer – an online campaign to bring awareness to the 1.5m mariners around the globe.

This also provides an opportunity to be specific about the issues facing seafarers.

A major problem aboard vessels is fatigue, which is most common on smaller ships with few crew members.

Minimum safe manning may be sufficient for some trades and areas, but it might not be valid in regions with dense traffic. Navigating a coastal vessel in European waters with two watchkeepers including the master might be permitted under the safe manning certificate, but the ship’s trade, routing and port calls could erode the ability of the watchkeeping officers to get enough rest.

The MAIB (Marine Accident Investigation Branch) Bridge Watchkeeping Safety Study report has in the past noted that most accidents around the United Kingdom happened when there was only one officer on the bridge, and that the principal cause was fatigue. MAIB has stated that undermanning is an issue needing corrective action at the IMO,

Through the STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers) convention.

Unfortunately, there were no STCW changes on watchkeeping levels at the IMO Manila conference of 25 June 2010.

Resolution 6 of the Manila Conference reaffirmed that any decision relating to manning levels is the responsibility of administrations, i e flag states and vessel operators, taking into account the principles of safe manning adopted at IMO.

This, quite often, means that the manager or owner makes the call on whether watchkeepers are sufficient in number, well-trained and competent.

It is a highly unsatisfactory situation.

The changes proposed by the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency, on behalf of MAIB, were important and in my opinion necessary to cope with the problem of fatigue, for all vessel sizes and types.

Attention, as said in Death of a Salesman, must be paid!

No surprises then when his utter exhaustion caused the Mate to miss the important alter course position as the Chinese Shen Neng 1 headed for the open sea.

There was a lot else besides in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the grounding, but the name of this ship can be posted on a considerable and growing list of accidents in which fatigue has played a major part. All very well earnest recommendations going to the company about “fatigue management” – but until we start realising that people of flesh and blood, rather than automata, are aboard ships, there will be no real change in this age-old problem of the ship (and the charterer) coming first – always.

The poor old Mate, and the Master of the ship still face criminal charges for their contribution to the accident, but can’t we see that the whole system is rotten to the core? We are constantly being told that the aviation world is very different to that of shipping, but there is never any question of an inadequately rested pilot heading off into the bright blue yonder. There is an enforceable system that nobody will dream of circumventing. In shipping we have regulations, which we just haven’t got around to enforcing, and if we did, the screams of the terminals and charterers, and possibly even shipowners would split the skies.

It is clear that senior officers have to be up and about, as the terminals feel no responsibility for the safety of ships they are working, and will be threatening to put the vessel offhire if the ballast can’t be pumped fast enough. The choice, then is to man ships with sufficient manpower with the necessary experience, or to ensure that the ship is held over so that the crew can be properly rested. What is so terribly difficult about that?

An unmistakable warning, it is hoped, will be given to the merely unwary (rather than the criminal or worse) by the ignition of a huge bang and a flash which is a characteristic of the device, which is a plastic and aluminium projectile which can be fired with some degree of accuracy, by a 12-bore shotgun into the path of a stray.

Ferry masters who have to take their ships through waters heavily populated by weekend yachtsmen will probably be quite envious of the Coast Guard’s new weapon, while those alert watchkeepers concerned about the number of ships motoring about with nobody apparently awake on the bridge will probably be checking to see if these “warning tools” are to be more generally available.

It is a serious problem. It is not that long ago that a ship heading towards the breakwater at a UK South Coast port, apparently at full speed was boarded by a pilot who leaped onto the deck of the fortunately deeply laden ship in the nick of time, to discover the exhausted captain fast asleep in his chair in the wheelhouse and nobody else awake.

There was a DVD clip doing the rounds which showed a coaster, once again with not a soul apparently awake, crashing spectacularly into the rocky breakwater of a Spanish port. A bit of less than lethal high explosive could have saved a lot of steelwork, embarrassment and bad language.

It used to be an auxiliary role of lighthouse keepers and the crews of lightships to fire explosive maroons if they saw ships heading towards the rocks. Day or night these were very explosive indeed, and quite effective. Sadly these human guardians are all long gone, which is a pity considering the number of a. incompetent boaters and b. somnolent watchkeepers on merchant ships. An enormous explosion ought to wake up the soundest sleeper, even in his or her air-conditioned wheelhouse.

Of course, in the case of the US Coast Guard, it is boaters operating with fell intent in security areas, that they are worried about. The next shot, in the event that the craft does not stop and communicate, is likely to be rather more lethal.

Without doubt, it seems that the human element played a significant part in the various procedures that prefaced the upwelling of the gas and the initial explosion.

There was something rather familiar to mariners about the human reactions to the various tests that were apparently being run to check the stability of the situation. Problems were identified, but those in charge went down the very human route of assuming the best and that the tests might be inconclusive, rather than an indication of impending disaster.

Human beings tend to be… er..human. You probably don’t evacuate the house and call the Fire Brigade when the burned toast activates the smoke alarm.

It was said not that long ago that the most useful piece of equipment on a vessel’s bridge was the packet of Blue Tac, which was used to neutralise all those pesky alarms which kept going off all the time, making the watchkeeper’s life a misery and disturbing the equanimity of all.  But what happened when the alarm was not false? Cue for great rolling of eyes , hands spread wide.

There is a very human trait that tends to make us always think the best of a situation. Don’t worry -  it’s just a false alarm, we mentally reassure ourselves and most of the time it is. It isn’t exactly helped by our need to rely on remote sensors for so much our technical lives.

Engineers are no longer walking around enginerooms feeling bearings, sniffing and listening to the beat of the exhausts. Instead they rely on the alarms on the bridge to send them cursing down the stairs to find, 9 times out of 10, that nothing is wrong.

The master of a fast containership probably goes against his instincts as a seaman as his ship plunges into a thick fog bank, sort of assuming that his radars have picked up the pathetic echo of a wooden fishing boat. If they haven’t, well there is a lot of sea and he will probably get away with it.

We assume the other ship has seen us, that somebody aboard knows the rule of the road and that it will all work out for the best. Our experience which tells us that whatever assails us is probably a false alarm sort of cancels out the precautionary principles we know we ought to follow. But the charterer is screaming, the port is waiting,  the customer’s patience is running out. It’s probably just a false alarm……

It will usually be some short sea operator running lean-manned ships with master and mate working watch and watch, and dropping with exhaustion a fortnight into their tour of duty.

These people tend to fill in their hours of rest returns in advance which is a giveaway, and nobody is that surprised when the poor old mate falls asleep the moment he sits down in his posture-perfect chair at the start of a six hour watch.

So it was something of a surprise to see the proprietor of a large blue containership A.P.Moller-Maersk A/S of Copenhagen fronting up to the beak to plead guilty to eight charges of failing to provide adequate hours of rest for the crew of its  Maersk Patras, and one charge of failing to improve the situation.

The company was fined £18,500, plus costs of £4,439.27.

It stems from an MCA audit in September 2009 aboard the vessel in Bremerhaven which revealed that the Master, officers and other crew members had not been having the required periods of rest as prescribed by international agreements.

The company was informed of these concerns, but failed to correct matters and the breaches continued. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but not unreasonably, and in January this year an Improvement Notice was issued requiring the company to rectify the situation within the next month. This failed to elicit any action, hence the prosecution.

This is significant and not only because it was one of the world’s biggest shipping companies which have been prosecuted, and which ought to provide a clear message about what is not considered acceptable.

Some might consider that the UK have been a bit “unilateral” on the issue of fatigue, but they have been provided by the UK MAIB with long and gruesome list of ships which have come to grief because of fatigue and there is a justifiable wish not to see the “big one” in the form of a latter day Titanic occur in UK waters.

And as the prosecutor said in the Newcastle court, “the hours of rest regulations are not just a bureaucratic exercise, they are about safety”.

But it is also food for thought for all those other companies operating big, hard-pressed ships through a multi-port rotation with long pilotages in European waters.

Maersk is a decent company and it is unlikely that it was pushing its crews any harder than others rushing their deep sea vessels around tightly scheduled port programmes. “A strong message to the industry” is being sent by this conviction, said MCA Marine Surveyor Neil Atkinson.

You bet it is.

I agree that the proliferation of vetting officers, port state control inspectors, trades union compliance people, and sundry other “cops with badges”, are part of a hydra-headed problem that just seems to grow and grow. I share your sense of grievance, and, after all, I do not work aboard ship.

I don’t think it’s a question of politeness, although that commodity is in short supply. It is a question of addressing the problem of how “ship’s business” is conducted, in a constructive way. The ever-growing burden on the ship’s officer seldom, nowadays, gets the high-profile attention that it deserves.

The problem of job satisfaction isn’t going away. Officers complain about micromanagement by those ashore. The expanding load of compliance paperwork has been a problem since the Marpol convention brought port state control into prominence.

In a way, we are victims of our own failures. The biggest failure has always been our inability to solve problems in a concerted way. This has led to what might be called a layered approach. Successive, uncoordinated layers of regulation — a sort of multiple belt-and-braces attitude — has a lot to do with the worrying number of experienced officers that are now abandoning seagoing berths.

Take tankers. Flag state control failed to deal with tank cleaning explosions and oil spills. The industry responded with its own vetting programmes. IMO presented us with Marpol. The port states launched their own elaborate overlay of “control” practices, on both a national and regional basis. When this was not deemed enough, in came the ISM Code. When terrorism appeared after 9/11, the ISPS Code was added, plus national “maritime domain awareness”
Regulation, particularly in the U. S. A.

I’m not finished. Then came the International Labour Organisation’s Maritime Labour Convention. The individual conventions on such subjects as ballast water and emissions are also either here or on the way. Each has brought with it additions to the shoreside boarding parties, which our correspondent identifies with youthful cases of acne and other postadolescent skin problems. No wonder experienced officers are being driven ashore!

One is increasingly wary about accepting all the health related advice that pours unendingly out of the various media. A glass of red wine will keep your arteries from clogging up, but give you a greater chance of contracting prostate cancer.

White wine promotes brain function, but will give you liver disease.

A protein-rich diet will give you gallstones, but blueberries will prevent heart disease. Butter is bad for you. I just give up and eat what is put in front of me, thinking of vegetarian teetotallers who have met an untimely end.
Just occasionally, you read of a health revelation which could be significant.  For a long time, as long as the issue of fatigue has been debated in a marine context, people have wondered about whether fatigue, and extended periods of sleep deprivation, could have long-term health consequences.

We have read about the symptoms of fatigue, and the fact that it takes a lot more than one night’s sleep to restore one’s mental functions after a tour of duty on a ship where the master and mate work watch and watch in an intensive ship operation.

“Having to be gradually reintroduced to society” was a description by a shipmaster’s wife after her zombie-like spouse came home after his tour, and how she nursed him back to normality.

The officers’ union Nautilus, which clearly reads widely, draws attention to a study in the academic journal Sleep, which publishes details of an extensive study by the Department of Community Medicine in which the sleeping habits and the health of more than 30,000 adults were surveyed.

Cardiovascular disease of all kinds was twice as likely to occur among people who slept for fewer than seven hours per night, compared to those who slept for more than this number of hours. And if you slept for fewer than five hours per night the risk of heart disease was doubled.

These are still early days, but just suppose the link is made between sleep deprivation and a shorter life. The implications for an industry, significant bits of which still try and defend the indefensible regime of watchkeeping in lean-manned, intensively run ships surely cannot be avoided?

Isn’t it time we got beyond the arguments about costs, and even the dangers of ships with exhausted watchkeepers running aground or bumping into each other? It is worth looking back to those early fears that were expressed about the risks of exposure to asbestos, and remember how this ultimately developed. There may be more to hours of rest than a mere time-sheet.

It was masterfully summed up in the Business Times of Singapore by its correspondent David Hughes, who noted the various reactions which ranged from that of the Anglo-Dutch officers union Nautilus, whose spokesman described the agreement on hours of work and rest as something of a sell-out, to the International Shipping Federation, which seemed to consider the same as a reasonable compromise.

David, who is a master mariner,  also pointed out the fact that nobody seems yet willing to tackle the problem of utterly exhausted master/mate teams in hard worked European ships, despite the numbers of accidents that have occurred where people have fallen asleep at the critical moment.

It is difficult to establish a reasonable balance from these different poles of opinion, with a fairly difficult debate revolving around what constitutes a “reasonable exception” to hours of work and rest regulations.

Clearly, if the safety of the ship is going to be compromised if the crew won’t get out of their bunks, citing their excessive hours, such a refusal might be considered unreasonable. But if the crew is only just numerous enough to keep the hours of work/rest legal in the most favourable circumstances, then is not the employer pushing his luck to demand more from the hard pressed seafarers? If the “compromise” agreed in Manila is to work properly, then there is good faith required from all sides.

Curiously, the Manila conference could, in some respects, be regarded as a mite premature. Sure, there is much disquiet about the seafarer’s working week, and whether sufficient is being done to prevent fatigue-induced accidents, but equally there is important research being done which ought to throw a bit more light and science on the reality of fatigue and stress aboard hard worked ships in intensive operations, that ought to bear upon a more mature approach to manpower levels aboard ship.

Warsash and Chalmers Universities are wiring up officers on simulators for days on end to get some real facts about how people operate.  Of course employers want to keep their costs down, just as employees would like to be paid more for less work. Human nature wants more beer in bigger glasses.

But there is a desperate need to address the realities of risk, with ships being manned to the absolute minimum, and no account taken of the human cost in terms of long-term health of excessively hard working individuals, such as senior officers. We may be a little short of this appalling phenomenon identified in Japan of people quite literally working themselves to death, but we really should not be heading in this direction. Some common sense in terms of providing adequate manpower for the work that needs to be done is long overdue.

Recently retired from the Irish Navy, Captain Robinson says that he will work hard to counter mariners’ feelings of “disenfranchisement from society”, particularly where they are treated badly after a genuine accident.

The new President, who spent many years in command of Irish naval vessels, lined up in his sights politicians , some media and ill-informed members of the public, who say profoundly stupid things after a marine accident and deserved to be shot down in flames. And when the ill-informed are holding forth, Captain Robinson will, he says, make sure that people live up to the IMO’s Fair Treatment Guidelines, and make sure that seafarers are able to get a fair hearing at the IMO itself over matters like criminalisation and general bad treatment.

Mariners will wish him well, because somebody needs to bang the drum for seafarers, and when everyone is saying how reprehensible it is that there is oil on the sea, the reality of the achievements of modern mariners need to feature in a powerful counterblast.

Of course it is not news that so many ships arrive in time, their cargo and passengers safe aboard, but to listen to some ill advised folk, you would think it a miracle that they arrive at all. So let’s encourage Captain Robinson to go on the attack, which is the best form of defence, and help to bring seafarers in from the cold.