The World Moves With Mariners

Glimpse of what a Seafarer faces https://youtu.be/05wAt4UyibE https://youtu.be/FPt4M3Wrr5w Forget any romantic notions of life on the ocean wave – most modern-day seafarers are simply ‘prisoners with a salary’ It was only late afternoon, but already dark and stormy, on the Thursday of the week before Christmas 2009, when the cargo freighter Danny FII approached the Lebanese port of Tripoli en route from Uruguay to Syria. She carried 18,000 cattle, 10,000 sheep and 83 humans, including four passengers, and had been converted from a car carrier into a modern-day Noah’s Ark. Danny FII was not a new ship, but it was modern, because her crew was international: a British captain and chief engineer, 59 Pakistanis, some Filipinos, a Lebanese and a Syrian. Though she was Uruguayan, she flew another country’s flag. She was a typical member of the 90,000-strong fleet of freighters that sail the seas, bringing us 95 per cent of everything that we consume. Eleven miles out from Tripoli,