In the company of eight thousand boxes and a gallery of soft-porn
All the sailing around the world hasn’t satiated the wish to travel for these sailor’s. Marius will be heading for a week long holiday to Turkey with his girlfriend as soon as he is done with this trip, Léonard is dreaming of mountains; Gunduz, another Turkish-Romanian helmsman, is thinking of long cycling trips in the Carpathian, while the master has organized a sailing trip for him and his son within two days of going back from these seas. Perhaps, life on the ship has further intensified this urge to travel. Ismael had told me, “We go all around the world, Shanghai, Singapore, Santos, but I only see these cities from what I can see from the bridge.” While the Indian and Filipino ABs often don’t have the right visa, the officers don’t fare much better. Dragoslav, had told me earlier, “Money, money, money; all the company can think about is money. At ports, the company has to pay for every minute, so it’s always rush, rush, rush. I will be lucky if I get to stay for more than twelve hours in Hong Kong. Sometimes, in China, it’s less than six hours. You can only to hope to see a city if that port is very inefficient like in Brazil or if the port-workers are on strike, as it often happens in USA. Sometimes, I miss my days working in tankers. Those ships are not that efficient yet and we could spend up to a week at ports of call.”
The officers are relaxed tonight. They talk about their other skills; the master is a table tennis player of some repute; Yves, the third engineer is a master skateboarder; Sylvain, the Chief Engineer, is the champion of darts. They offer to show us a movie on piracy, Captain Phillips. But while they go about setting up the screen, a white curtain with magnetic ends to fix to the roof, they realize that the Hollywood movie has been dubbed in French and there are no English subtitles. As we bid the officers goodnight, the master says, “Sorry about the movie. But let me at least tell you a seaman’s joke. We talk about Jacques Cousteau and how great he was in the seas. We say Jacques Cousteau’s treated octopuses as pet cats, rubbing their backs every time he came across one.”
When we wake up the next morning, there is land all around us, the hills of Southern China. The water has become murky and the falcons are circling around the ship in a state of frenzy, looking for prey. Our trip is coming to an end. I look fondly at the subtly decorated rooms and walkways and feel sad about the ship’s eventual fate. Even if it doesn’t meet a grisly accident, the ship, once its utility as a ship is over, will be beached, scavenged bitterly, noxious chemicals poured into, fired and drilled through, cut out; as these the metal monsters with grand names disappear forever into nameless scrap metal.
We say goodbyes to the stewards and the cook. Pipa, the avuncular second steward, shows off his Mandarin, “Ni Hao (hello), Nu ren (woman).” When I ask him if he knows what the word is for ‘man’ in Mandarin, he shrugs and bites his teeth. “Don’t blame me,” he says, “It’s because of them. I am supposed to be a mechanic. But they asked me to only wash dishes here. What can I do? They are French.”
Doru, the chief steward, looks stressed, “There will be a change of master in Hong Kong. I have to prepare his room before he comes. I don’t know if I can do it in time.”
On the bridge, the pilot has already arrived. All the officers have gathered there. The air is tense. A small ship called Xi-Rong is not responding to radio calls. Collision seems possible. The master is shouting over the radio, “Xi-rong, Xi-rong, please respond.” We move towards starboard, but so does the other ship. “Xi-Rong, Xi-Rong, what are you doing?” There are too many ships around limiting our ability to manoeuvre.
Container shipping still remains a relatively accident prone business. Between 2010 and 2013, 8.3% of container ships met with accidents; most common being collisions with another vessel (31.8%), machinery failure and loss of hull integrity (28.5%), stranding (17%), and explosion and fire (11.5%).vi
A collision will probably not cause fatality but it could jeopardise the career of a master. In a recent incident, Philip Deruy, the master of CMA CGM’s Laperhouse, committed suicide following his ‘landing’ by the company after Laperhouse’s collision with a coaster ship.vii Deruy, who was off-duty at the time of the collision, had written in an email, “I have no future. It is intolerable.” We escape that fate today. Xi-Rong never responds but manages to swing towards port at the last minute. The master gives us his trademark wolverine grin.
The green hills and skyscrapers of Hong Kong begin filling up the horizon. The master walks over to us, “This is a beautiful port. Though, I will consider the Brazilian ports as my favourites. There is so much greenery there and after weeks in the ocean, your eyes crave for some vegetation.” Even he can’t escape mentioning property in Hong Kong, “Look at that lighthouse, there is a residential bungalow next to it. I don’t know if it is worth one hundred million or five hundred.”
We sail in through the narrow channel lined with panoply of containers in their strong colours. Tug boats that have just guided other ships give out puffs of black smoke to announce their achievement. I spot the gantry cranes warming up in our anticipation. Finally, we dock, and the pilot gives the master a heavy pat on the back and says to him, “Well done, but remember that you may be a master, but once I come on-board, I have the right to scold you.” The captain introduces us to the pilot as his son and daughter. The pilot, a jovial Hong Kong native, was a captain once, but has now managed to become a pilot. “It is more stressful,” he says, “On a day we have to steer three or four large ships. But then, I get to stay with my family.” To become a pilot is to reach the pinnacle of a shipping career, unless one can be Gianluigi Aponte, the founder and owner of MSC, the second largest container carrier company in the world. Aponte was once a captain, but together with his wife, he bought a small cargo ship for five thousand dollars of borrowed money in 1970; through astute ship buying and deal making, MSC became one of the top ten shipping companies within a mere decade. Today MSC boldly proclaims, “Land covers a third of the earth – we cover the rest.”