New Zealand Company of Master Mariners

Since the days of Mark Twain, the San Francisco Bar Pilots have had it good. Thanks to outsized political clout and highly specialized training, this elite cadre, currently numbering 56 ship captains, has enjoyed monopoly control over the San Francisco Bay since 1850. State law requires a bar pilot to guide every large vessel — be it a luxury liner, a
billionaire’s yacht, aircraft carrier or cargo ship — in, out and around the San Francisco Bay. Most of the ships are docked at the Port of Oakland.
For decades the pilots plied the Northern California waters with almost no public scrutiny. That’s because they did so largely without major incidents and at no cost to taxpayers. Their salaries and benefits are set by an obscure state commission and paid entirely by ship owners. The state Legislature is tasked with approving the salaries, and routinely
gaveled home raises over the years for the pilots with little push back. It helped that the pilots, through their association, contributed more than $100,000 to mostly Democratic candidates and causes every two-year state election cycle.
The annual income of the 55 men and one woman who proudly call themselves San Francisco bar pilots has risen from about $150,000 in 1990 to $451,336 last year for a job one pilot argued in a court fight with the Internal Revenue Service amounts to part-time work — seven days “on” and seven days “off” duty. They fly business class to France every five years for mandatory training and enjoy a pension that is fully funded by ship owners and requires no contributions from them.
Then on the foggy morning in November 2007, one of the bar pilots slammed the cargo ship Cosco Busan into the San Francisco Bay Bridge, touching off a massive oil spill that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean and brought the pilots and the commission that oversees them a load of scrutiny.
Now, the mariners are running into political turbulence in Sacramento after decades of smooth sailing in the capital. Shipping companies, farmers, state Chamber of Commerce representatives and others are exploiting the new-found political vulnerability to successfully oppose pilot requests for raises while demanding more legislative oversight.
The Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun — which licenses and oversees the pilots — operated with virtually no oversight from lawmakers, according to a state audit prompted by the 2007 disaster and released in 2009.
The Legislature in 2009 placed the commission under the authority of the Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency and its entire membership and executive director were replaced. Two bar pilots, two representatives from the shipping industry and three public members now comprise the board. The latest political setback happened Monday
when the Assembly transportation committee tabled a pilot-backed bill that would have required owners of ships larger than about 1,150 feet to pay the equivalent of 150 percent of the typical fee to add a second pilot to help guide the large vessel to dock.

“We don’t believe it is fair to increase the salaries of people making $451,000 a year at the expense of farmers and Californians trying to feed their families,” Crystal Jack, a lobbyist representing the California Grocers Association and several large state agricultural interests, said at the outset of the hearing. Several legislators were clearly concerned with raising the pilot’s level of compensation and sent the bill back for more negotiations.

Both sides agree that two pilots should man the biggest vessels. But the ship owners say the pilots are paid by the size of the ship and already receive higher fees for handling the larger vessels. The pilots said the fees aren’t enough to compensate for the work done by the second pilot.

One pending bill could put tighter controls on the commission or even eliminate the panel, 172 years after the Legislature’s third-ever act created it to bring order to the chaotic bay during the California Gold Rush. “They have been around so long that no one knows what they do until something happens,” said Assemblywoman  Alyson Huber, a Democrat from Lodi, who introduced a “sunset” bill that could put the board out of business unless the Legislature acts to keep it alive. Huber said she believes the board plays a vital role in keeping Northern California waterways safe by having pilots take control of large ships from captains unfamiliar with the treacherous currents, weather and geography of the San Francisco Bay. But she said her bill is necessary to ensure the commission receives proper oversight.

Huber and shippers’ representative Mike Jacob deny the pilots’ charges that they are attempting to do away with the commission or San Francisco bar pilots, named so because of the dredged bar they must cross to get large vessels to port. Capt. Bruce Horton, the top pilot and “port agent,” said he believes much of the negative attention is being driven by the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association in an effort to reduce the fees paid by ship owners, which amounted to $50 million last year. Horton said he believes the Huber bill, backed by the shippers’ lobbyist, is designed to replace them with less expensive pilots licensed by the federal government. “For the shippers, it’s about the bottom line,” Horton said Wednesday aboard one of the pilots’ utility boats, which ferries the captains from the bay-front station house on San Francisco’s Pier 9, the heart of the city’s waterfront, to
ships at anchor in the bay and to another pilot boat anchored 11-miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge. There the bar pilots board incoming ships by jumping onto a rope ladder and scurrying up the vessel’s side, one of the most dangerous aspects of the job. Horton said the average age of the pilots is 52 and each has worked about 11 years in sailing before becoming a bar pilot. They also undergo intensive training that finishes with a test that requires the applicants to fill in aquatic landmarks, buoys and other significant parts of the bay from memory. He said the generous compensation is needed to attract the top captains to a congested waterway beset with high winds, changing currents and fog. “We are well compensated because we are at the acme of our profession,” Horton said. “This is not an entry level job.” Source : Businessweek

Issue 4 On Deck March, 2012

Craig Eason writes in Lloyds List – Thursday 23 February 2012

It takes 100 years to create a revolution in shipping.

One hundred years ago the first oil-powered ship, SELANDIA, was handed over to its Danish owners, marking the demise of steam power and the start of the era of diesel and heavy fuel oil.

It was also 100 years before SELANDIA that COMET, the first commercial steamship, left a Scottish shipyard in 1812, introducing a new form of propulsion to beat sail and herald the end of the huge clippers.

Today the same sort of comments are being made about gas-powered shipping, after the first gas-powered ferries in Norway heralded the start of a regional drive to make the use of liquefied natural gas more widespread.

While the change from steam power to diesel was a triumph in efficiency and cost, and the development of LNG fuel is being touted in the same light, it is important to look at how far shipping has come since SELANDIA was launched in 1912 by Burmeister and Wain, a shipbuilder with a yard in Copenhagen. The shipbuilder was also the engine maker.

Vessels have grown in size while improving fuel efficiency and operating costs. Fuel costs in recent years have been rocketing, but according to some this is a very recent phenomenon as fuel in 1912 was virtually impossible to come by and likely to be expensive.

SELANDIA was powered by two small engines. They were gas oil engines, the fuel stored in relatively large fuel tanks in the vessel’s double bottom. The vessel was designed to sail from Denmark to Bangkok and back again without needing to bunker. Facilities were available in Singapore, but were not relied upon.

Critics of gas-powered shipping point to a similar problem with LNG availability. Diesel was available only in selected ports, making it a suitable fuel for vessels on liner trades. It was 20 years before tramp shipping turned from steam to diesel.

MAN Diesel manager Otto Winkel says SELANDIA was unique also in that its two engines were fuelled by a refined oil, and not a residual product as is the case with the majority of two-stroke engines. The fuel for SELANDIA’s first voyage actually came from eastern Europe.

The small vessel would probably have been known as a Bangkokmax as its dimensions were such that it could sail up the Chao Phraya river.

It also was designed to have no visible funnel, a way of acknowledging the change of environmental performance without really having any strong thought for environmental stewardship.

MAN Diesel and Turbo, which B&W became after it was bought by the German MAN engineering group in the 1980s, has been celebrating 100 years of diesel shipping this month, but also commenting on the future of its engines. It has pointed to the modern engine and the development of dual fuel engines.

However, just as tramp vessels took to oil power 20 years after its first use on SELANDIA, the widespread use of LNG will also take some time as the bunkering capabilities have to be more widespread before operators on the spot market feel comfortable about using such ships.

Lloyds List Monday 23 January 2012
Facing Up To Life As A Surviving Captain by Michael Grey

WHO would be a shipmaster, as everyone from the media to his employer bites chunks out of the reputation of poor Francesco Schettino, late of Costa Concordia ?

A century ago, perhaps the prospect of such a life as a survivor occurred to Capt Edward John Smith as he walked back into the dark and abandoned wheelhouse of Titanic before his ship slid into the deep.

“If I ever lost a ship, I would make damn sure I went down in her,” said a master I sailed with one evening as he finished writing up his night orderbook and took the cup of cocoa I had made for him.

He had reached this gloomy conclusion, he told me, after reading the harrowing account of the formal inquiry into a collision in which a master, who lost his daughter in the incident, then had his certificate suspended (Crystal Jewel/British Aviator collision)

My captain’s assessment was probably right, when you consider how people who take on the vast responsibilities of command are treated when things go pear-shaped.

The master is the man or woman who carries the can and whose conduct falls under the spotlight after a disaster. Whether the incident was due to ill fortune or misjudgement, parties jostle to declare open season on the master’s behaviour and reputation.

Lawyers’ perfect hindsight will dissect the master’s every action. Survivors’ evidence will provide grim personal stories that can be taken out of context to prove professional negligence of one sort or another. Inevitably, the odds will be stacked against any rational assessment of one man’s conduct in extremis.

Witch-hunts of the past have left surviving shipmasters as wrecked as their ships from the treatment they received. Who recalls the vilification of Capt Rugiati of Torrey Canyon , exhausted, suffering from tuberculosis, being harassed to meet the tide at Milford Haven, yet “entirely to blame” for the stranding that ushered in the age of the superspill.

Remember Capt Bardari of Amoco Cadiz , who carried the blame for the grounding of his disabled very large crude carrier , which nobody could tow clear of rocks off Brittany.

Recall Capt Kirby, senior master of Herald of Free Enterprise , not even on board his ship when it came to grief in Zeebrugge, but persecuted and prosecuted nonetheless.

It is a long list of people, whose lives and careers have been wrecked like their ships, survivors who then faced judgement for their actions, in modern times mostly in criminal courts.

These days, of course, nobody waits for the court of inquiry or trial before drawing their own conclusions about the obvious incompetence, negligence or even cowardice of the master. All those cellphone cameras, wielded by citizen journalists, provide us with “evidence”, even though that they are in the hands of individuals who almost certainly have no idea of what is going on and no inkling of the complex events taking place in an evacuation.

Can any survivor, as he or she gives their breathless recollections to camera, be in possession of anything other than a fragment of the whole picture?

It is so very easy to allege that there was panic or a lack of proper instruction, amid inevitable confusion, to a media that will publish these words instantly, with no counterbalancing view from somebody with a better idea of the reality.

Let us acknowledge that it takes a well-informed cruise passenger to be able to distinguish between the various senior officers of the various departments on board these huge ships.

The “captain” that some breathless survivor has allegedly seen chatting to a blonde in the bar before the accident, may well have been the chief purser, chief environmental engineer or just a barman with a lot of gold on his uniform. Almost certainly there will be very little context in the way that these fragments are then delivered.

In this most human story, the hunt is on for heroes who can be lauded or incompetents who can be roundly condemned. National stereotypes are meat and drink for the tabloids. The fact that almost no reporter has any clue about ships or shipping tends to encourage them to focus on things they do understand. Heroism. Cowardice. Blame.

An allegation, even a hint of cowardice, or of failure to abide by traditional mores of “women and children first” fills a lot of airtime and printed space.

Of course, the fact that the professionals mostly will not talk, possibly because they have a professional future to consider, leaves the questing scribes with those who want to get something off their chests. Along with the experts who, it is fair to say, are markedly less expert now that maritime expertise is a minority pursuit in former maritime countries.

Will there be any objective assessment of what went on before or after a marine accident? It very much depends on who is doing the assessing.

Despite the laudable efforts of the European Maritime Safety Agency, too many countries in Europe still cling to their old habit of investigating through judicial or criminal law. We need to know what happened, so we can prevent it happening again.

Finding somebody to blame and throwing shipmasters in jail will not get us anywhere.

Issue 3 On Deck Sept. 2011. FO

Seafarer Criminalisation Rears Its Ugly Head
Wednesday 19 October 2011 Lloyds List
The Rena oil spill off New Zealand has highlighted where blame will be apportioned by John AC Cartner

THE sickening odour of the criminalisation of yet another master is wafting in New Zealand’s vernal breezes. The scenario, depressingly clear, is well writ in the past. The master of Rena will be hanged. It is as summer following spring or, as in these cases, as injustice is piled on injustice in a sort of inverted compurgation.

First, there is a navigational difficulty, usually followed by collision (Marmara Princess and Beau Rivage ) or a grounding (Erika ). Then comes the pollution of black oil of some species (Exxon Valdez ).

During the pollution, the festivities of detention, drumhead trial and public hanging of the obviously guilty by the lynch mobs and the environmental vigilantes occurs. They have already decided as to the fault-worthy. Shouts of a sort of inchoate revanchism fill the air and ether. But there is no Zola with a handy “J’accuse!” in this Dreyfusian analogue.

Arrest follows by the local constabulary (Full City ) who round up the usual suspect — the master — and detain on either an improperly applied law or, if the state is lucky, a nice obsolete one (Zim Mexico III ) specially dusted off for the occasion.

A kangaroo hearing before a magistrate who knows not the difference between a navigational consequence and spilling his tea then occurs (Hebei Spirit ) with an outrageous bail set by the same. The master is then detained (Prestige ) for fear he will flee until the bail is met.

Rationally and evidentially founded or not, the prosecutor plays the tune well to a supposedly neutral magistrate — who puts the clearly subhuman and irretrievably sinful pile of flesh of a master behind bars. This is accompanied with some kind of tacky hyperbole for the press to consume then trumpet (Exxon Valdez ).

Earlier in our history there were three kinds of trials. There were trials meting the King’s justice which had some kind of predictable order.

There were Trials by Combat where one rider with a well-sharp’d lance and pointy tried to impale the other before meeting the same fate. God punished the guilty by bringing him to His expansive bosom as the consolation verdict. The innocent who lived was set free by lesser beings who concluded the more fortunate mortal had been saved by an opposite and equal application of divine grace.

Then there was Trial by Ordeal. Even the name gives one pause. Dunking stools; tossing the accused into a lake, hands tied behind, before a jeering crowd observing the miracle of learning to swim immediately; walking through fire to demonstrate that overnight God could grow one an asbestos integument, and other similar social phenomena made trial by ordeal a singularly creative judicial enterprise offering great public entertainment. If the accused died, innocent or guilty he was going on to a better place than this vale of tears. If he lived it was clear-cut: he was innocent because God was with him as surely as with Shadrach, et al. (see, Daniel, 1-3) in the furnace. Until recently, the King’s justice eventually out-competed the others and prevailed.

Now Trial by Ordeal is returning in indirect form — it is called Trial by Press. It too offers great public entertainment. The baccalaureate story-of-the-day journalists come along in these cases to fan the flames using prosecution press releases and dead aves counts until the next titillating le scandale of sex, money and corruption in self-described high places arrives — with more and better news-selling titillations.

The wretch in jail is forgot. Masters are rarely titillating. Justice has played out its game for now. There is no hope. The master, merely homo sapiens, has been convicted and awaits the public hanging.

The next phase is Fate by Finance. The master has been found guilty in the press for his clear and obvious moral defects. The press and people have had their public expressions of television-flamed outrage over the dead birds as heard for a day. Now real courts come along. Justice is a function of who hires the better set of lawyers.

The state has the full faith, credit and weight of the government to support it with unlimited budget for a nice juicy case everyman can understand. Here, pollution is best. Try a good pollution case and one can get a real job outside the prosecutor’s office when it is over.

The master? He has the policy-limited coverage, if any, of the P&I. The owner might grudgingly chip in a little. Now the master is in the full clutches of finance. It shakes him as a hound does a fox. The owner does not care because his money is not endangered — the laws are quite conveniently tilted so no liability attaches to him if he uses only half his brain. The crewing agency or union does not care.

They are not responsible. The master is now a press-created embarrassment. The banker, the shipper, the buyer of the cargo, the seller of the cargo do not care — they are covered. The prosecutor sees an opportunity to further career aspirations. Who cares now? The now utterly powerless.

Those who have been stripped of career, money and good repute then discarded to a footnote in a history or law book or blessed anonymity. Persons such as Capts Schroeder, Hazelwood, Madouras and the like care. These are the only people on the planet who know what is really happening.

They understand from experience: masters make good press, are expendable, and certainly not worth remonstrating for to the company who has sided with the state. They have been described in at least one eponymous doctoral dissertation thus: “masters: Pawns of the Financial System.”

The trials are show trials. The conclusions are foregone. No matter how much the defence tries to believe in the man being tried, it understands full well this is Trial by Ordeal in another guise. Prosecutors nowadays use the full arsenal: threats, lies, snitches, prevarication, bad laboratory work, coached witnesses. Sexism even has a place if well done.

In Zim Mexico III , Capt Schroeder was prosecuted by a female apparent man-hater before an apparently man-hating female judge. Each had gone to the Historical Redress School of Sexual Justice it seems.

Conviction is all. Justice, if served, is a nice by-product but not necessary. The Trial by Ordeal was abandoned in the middle ages and replaced by Trial by Compurgation.

Trial by Compurgation required the accused to swear on a stack of Bibles his innocence then to have others, good men and true (usually 12) swear the same. This somehow seems better than the unholy alliance of press, money and prosecutorial and judicial indiscretion which hangs masters.

Perhaps we should bring it back for balance in the dismal state of justice for any master. Parents: do not let your children grow up to be masters.

John AC Cartner is a lawyer and solicitor practising in Washington and London. He is certificated as a master mariner with no restrictions. He is the principal author of The International Law of the master (2011) Informa/Lloyds Press, www.intermaster law.com

Merchant Navy Day was celebrated in various ports today 03 September 2011.  In Wellington the service was arranged by the Department of Internal Affairs and was held at the National War Memorial which has limited seating. The official party included Hon Dr W Mapp representing the Government, Ian Dymock representing the Merchant Navy Association  and members of the Diplomatic Corps.

Master Mariners were represented by Captains Ron Palmer, Graham Williams, Peter Attwood, Ifor Owen, John Brown, Lew Henderson, Mike Pryce, Tim Nicol and Kees Buckens from Auckland who was also representing the Nautical Institute.

The following Prologue was read by Rear Admiral David Ledson Chairman MNZ, Chairman National War Memorial Advisory Council
Today is New Zealand’s second Merchant Navy Day – a day that recognises the serviceof merchant Sailors in the past – and especially in the two World Wars.  However, it also acknowledges the important contribution that the ‘Merchant Navy’ continues to make these many years later to the prosperity and security of our country.
Two historical facts are especially relevant to Merchant Navy Day.
ln the First World War around 14,661 merchant seamen lost their lives. ln honour of this sacrifice King George V granted the title ‘Merchant Navy’ to the service in 1922.  Prior to this it had been referred to variously as the Mercantile Marine, the Merchant Service or the Merchant Marine.
September the 3rd is the chosen date for Merchant Navy Day because it was on that date in 1939 that the first merchant ship casualty of the Second World War occurred – when SS ATHENIA was struck by torpedoes fired from the German U-Boat – U30.
The Veteran Merchant Mariners whom we especially acknowledge and honour today are not bound by a common birthplace – some were born in New Zealand – and others overseas, including in the United Kingdom and Australia.  What binds them is their shared experience of life at sea- across the world’s oceans – in the Second World War.
The convoy battles of that War were as bitter and terrible in their own way as any other – but they were fought largely out of the sight of landsmen –  what one does on land is evident, what one does at sea leaves no evidence.
Consequently, the vitally important role played in the Allied victory by the ships in those convoys is sometimes overwhelmed by the stories of Allied efforts on land.
Nonetheless, the historical reality is that while the Navy, Army and Air Force may have provided the fists that fought the enemy into submission, the Merchant Navy played a crucial role in supporting the sinews and muscle that sustained the physical effort.
Each of the main sides in the Merchant Navy’s battles of the Second World War paid a high price- one for defeat and the other for victory.
While German U-boats sank around two thirds of the total allied tonnage lost – it was at the cost of 793 U-boats and some 28,000 submariners; 75% of those who served in U-boats during the war. On the Allied side, around 4, 7OO merchant ships were sunk and some 30,000 merchant seamen were killed aboard convoy vessels,
About 130 of those men who died are known to have been New Zealand merchant seafarers -and in the words of New Zealand History Online:
‘The age of some of the victims is striking. As a civilian industry, the Merchant Navy naturally contained employees who were younger or older than those in the armed forces.  For centuries,seafarers had embarked on their careers when barely into their teens, typically as deck or messboys, or as apprentices (trainee officers). Fifteen New Zealand teenagers are known to have lost their lives during the war, including Thomas Burke and Edward Walls, two 15 year old deck boys on the Port Hunter, which was torpedoed off west Africa in 1942. These two teenagers were almost certainly the youngest New Zealanders killed in combat during the 20th century”
There is a well-known saying by the poet and philosopher George Santayana which is often used on occasions such as this.  ‘Those who cannot remember the past arecondemned to repeat it.’
However, this represents but one view of how we should regard history. There are some events from the past that we need to remember so that we can honour those who were caught up in them – and acknowledge their service to our country – by passing on their stories from one generation to another. So I ask those of you here today who are still directly involved with the ‘Merchant Navy’ – will you pass on the stories of the men of the Merchant Navy of the world wars to the men and women of today’s and tomorrow’s  Merchant Navy?.

And, as you contemplate what your answer will be, I ask you to look at the Veterans with us today, and think about what they have experienced and what they have done in relation to this quotation from the Ancient Greek statesman Pericles, “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others”.

Finally, to the Veterans – You have written your chapter of the Merchant Navy’s story- its tales are stirring ones and you can be proud of your place in them.

Wreaths were laid on behalf of the Government of New Zealand, Government of Australia, British High Commision, Federal Republic of Germany, Republic of South Africa, New Zealand Shipping Federation, Merchant Navy Association, Russian Convoy Association, Royal NZ Navy, Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association.

Participants departing from the National War Memorial

In Auckland Merchant Navy Day was celebrated at Voyager Maritime Museum, for the second time. There were about 150 people in attendance, including members of Master Mariners, Museum personnel and Volunteers and a contingent of Young Mariners. The attendee’s were greeted by John Downie, a Museum Volunteer with his bagpipes.

We were welcomed by Murray Reade, CEO of the Museum and then Reverend Bill Law, President of the Auckland Merchant Navy Association and Honorary Padre to the Auckland Branch of The New Zealand Company of Master Mariners began the service. ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ was the first hymn. Captain John Frankland, Warden of Auckland Master Mariners gave the reading. This was followed by the Seafarer’s 23^rd Psalm. Bill Law then talked of his visit, with his wife, to the War Grave site in Singapore. He related how his wife burst into tears at the sight of so many gravestones with “Known only to God” as an inscription. She whispered to Bill “Their Mother’s knew them”. Bill carried on to relate facts about War losses and the extreme youth of all too many of the casualties. One was as young as 14 years and 5 months. The Padre from the Seaman’s Mission conducted a prayer.

The assembly was then moved to the Memorial Plaque in the Ocean’s Apart gallery and the ceremony of dedication of the wreath, which was laid on a table below the Plaque, the Last Post, followed by the ‘Ode’ delivered by Captain Tony Payne, a ‘Lament’ on the bagpipes, ‘Reveille’ and the closing prayer by Rev Bill Law.

Last year was good, considering it was held so soon after the Government’s decision to honour the Day. This year was so much better and the Museum staff had done a great job of promoting the event.

Two articles from Lloyds List

A seven-hour wait imposed on 2,000 elderly cruise passengers demonstrates how unwise it can be to question US border enforcement bureaucracy

By John AC Cartner

Wednesday 13 July 2011

THE events that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center showed the reality of the US government’s distance from the world. Police control and abuse of any person has become an art form in fully-propagandised and bizarrely theatrical attempts to secure borders from foreign aggression by controlling all residents or entrants. Residents deal with abusive government knuckle-draggers and their contracted lackeys daily. Aliens are subjected to worse doses of narrow-minded xenophobia from the border enforcement services.

Now comes the gross and wanton abuse of a group of 2,000 retirees by a US government-trained and organised gang of strutting macho types in flak vests. These sneering public salarymen also wear armbands and use attack dogs. The 2,000 retired people had become egregious state-threatening security risks — instantly. The abuse of those coming into ports is especially well practised.

The P&O cruiseship ARCADIA departed Southampton on April 12 on a 15 port, 72-day voyage to Europe, the Caribbean, Central America, the Panama Canal and the US West Coast to Alaska. The UK pensioners had been vetted by US immigration on first arrival with the submission of the standard forms for passengers requiring multiple entries. Subsequent arrivals occurred with ease. Southbound to Panama, the vessel called Los Angeles — the 10th US call.

Clearly the control weenies expected fully-obeisant grovelling when they sent a gang-squad of eight to clear 2,000 passengers. What were the ministerial morons thinking? By deliberate under manning they were contriving to guarantee a set-up of the exercise of free speech for which they could punish those speaking.

Upshot: Seven hours of confinement for 2,000 elderly people without toilets, drinking water or places to sit. However, the immigration inquisitors imposed that on the group indiscriminately. Hence, 2,000 waited seven hours.

The crime? Contempt of cop. Some 38 passengers questioned whether or not the security measures were wholly necessary for a group of elderly people cleared routinely nine times before on the same voyage. This was apparently done without due kowtowing, forelock pulling, hat removal and boot licking required by the rules of etiquette of their government betters in such situations.

Thus the passengers got the full Monty: fingerprints of both hands; retina scans; detailed checks of passports; questioning as to backgrounds. The ancillary punishment: herded as animals; made to stand in temperatures up to 80 deg F with neither food, water nor toilets. The expected results? Some fainted. Others were merely confused. All were abused. One woman asked a strolling uniformed punk about toilet facilities, to be told: “Do it over the side, we won’t mind.”

Then a little more perversion to increase the delay. The computers — so said those kindly folks behind the immigration counter — broke.

Class warfare is alive, well and bureaucratically and lawfully entrenched in the US. The “we of the government inside against those people out there” mentality prevails. The bureaucratic hive is fully informed of the state of the combat and intends to keep the upper hand now it has been won.

The government does not hesitate to use any method, howsoever questionable, to intimidate, induce fear, trample civil liberties and cause gross inconveniences when the dull little minds of its mediocre hirelings are ruffled — or simply for their own perverse delights. Seafarers know a good deal about this. Paying passengers are not immune. Why? The public clowns can pervert the system — and do.

We have seen the genital gropings of airport passengers defended by former FBI hack ‘Airport’ Johnny Pistole operating the Transportation Security Administration. We observe the absurdity of his Transportation Worker Identification Credential. The country has become security crazy. Everyone is a security risk, whatever that means to the assessor of the risk within the government and howsoever perverse he or she might be. Aliens are security risks simply because they are aliens.

What is interesting about the P&O matter: with travel, an eight-hour shift was fully consumed; precisely no more and no less. One supposes overtime was not allowed. One also supposes the managing superiors were fully knowledgeable about the goings-on of the gang of eight. Teach these people who can afford such a cruise a lesson. About what? American rustication, rudeness, crassness, frontierism and arrogance? The old saw, “Europeans view Americans as Americans view Texans” was verified empirically yet again by the official buckaroo set resident in Los Angeles.

What could P&O do for its customers? Very little, lest it be a target of the same revenge. Revenge against companies costs and the bureaucratic class know that. Companies, then, suddenly become quite circumspect knowing that there are many passengers coming their way but that they have to deal with the US government toads regularly and frequently.

P&O said: “The delay in immigration procedures was largely to blame on issues with the Customs and Border Protection computer systems, not aided by the verbal approach that a minority of our passengers, clearly frustrated by this delay, took with the local immigration officers.” Further: “The US has a record for the most stringent and thorough security and entry requirements in the world, and they felt the need to enhance their security checks further, which they have the power to do.”

And do it they did. Another shameful step down for the Sweet Land of Liberty.

John AC Cartner is a maritime lawyer practising in Washington DC. He holds the US Coast Guard’s unrestricted master mariner certification and is the principal author of The International Law of the Shipmaster (2009)

Ten years of bad treatment of seafarers and those with legitimate reasons to visit ships is enough

By Michael Grey

Thursday 14 July 2011

HAS security become something of a nonsense and even something of a scam? It is may be worth thinking of these things as we approach the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist outrage which rewrote the way security was defined.

Some might say that security has become utter nonsense, as they watch elderly people struggling with their shoes in airport security checks, with no discretion or vestige of common sense given to the people manning the electronic detectors.

As somebody always selected for a more intensive search because of a metal knee, I now refuse politely to take my shoes off unless a chair is provided and recommend this strategy to anyone thus handicapped.

But these are but momentary inconveniences to air travellers. It is those who have anything to do with ships these days who have a permanent reminder of rigid, unthinking and mostly nonsensical security rules, in the way authorities interpret the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.

The members of the International Ship Suppliers Association, for instance, have become so frustrated at the security hoops through which they must jump that they are going to raise the matter at the next meeting of the International Maritime Organization’s Facilitation Committee, whose purpose is , er… facilitation, which the ISPS Code seems determined to prevent.

The association cites practical difficulties, where every single person going in and out of a port to board a ship has to have individual certification, a matter frequently laden with bureaucracy.

ISSA president Jens Olsen points out this is often a money-making exercise, as these certificates have to be bought, and in some places “large amounts of money” have to be paid to take supplies in and out of a dock gate. This is a scandal and abuse and has nothing to do with security and is all about people cashing in on the residual fear of terrorism, which has never been an issue in the shipping industry.

When the ISPS Code was rushed into place, amid the protestations that it was not in any way going to harm international trade, the practical issues of implementation tended to be left to people who either “love to say no” or saw it as a revenue raising exercise.

In far too many places, they also seemed to fail to understand — maybe they never knew — that when a ship came into port there were all sorts and conditions of people who had a perfectly legitimate reason for boarding it.

The person delivering the stores that had been ordered by the agent was just one of these welcome callers. Why should his company have to pay a “toll” to deliver the groceries or the essential spares?

When the radar breaks down, why should an electronics expert have to plead on his bended knees to some jobsworth minding a private wharf to permit him access, so as the ship can depart in a seaworthy condition?

What possible reason could there be, other than some mind-numbing and nonsensical excuse, for denying a technical superintendent an essential visit to his own ship?

And so the stupidity goes on, all around the world.

But these are occasional, albeit important, callers to a visiting ship. What about the sheer bloody-minded misery that is visited upon the crew in so many countries, with routine denial of shore leave, unreasonable visa requirements and idiotic conditions attached to people joining and leaving ships.? Much of this owes its genesis to the fallout from 9/11, when it might have been thought that it had been captured bulk carriers rather than aircraft which had been the chosen transport mode for the suicidal Islamist terrorists.

At the time it might have been appropriate to examine maritime security, although all the endless debates about terrorists employing a ship like a guided missile and Bin Laden’s phantom fleet have been ridiculously far-fetched.

But in the pain all this ham-fisted security has caused to people who live and work on ships, the over-reaction has produced a tangible and negative effect upon their quality of life and we ought to be remedying this forthwith.

To some security minded person who will immediately write in to the editor and accuse me of taking a terrible threat lightly, I would just suggest that he provides the evidence — any evidence — of maritime terrorism over the past 10 years.

He might also answer my inquiry as to how he would feel after a voyage, with the ship wrapped in razor wire and with the accommodation locked down for a passage across the Indian Ocean, the crew on treble watches, he arrives in a port where some officious official tells him that there will be no shore leave, and no visitors permitted to the vessel.

Let us take the security bull by the horns. Ten years of this bad treatment of seafarers and those with legitimate reasons to visit ships is enough. It is time to revisit ISPS and to relax those rules and regulations flowing from the code that are over the top and bear no relationship to actual threat.

And in this process, we should not only hear from the security experts who have a vested interest in maintaining their activities, and in some cases lucrative businesses, but also the people who have been on the receiving end of their rules and regulations and who deserve to have their views strongly represented.