Do ships actually follow the Maritime Labour Convention?

[James Curry]

If you want to go to sea for a bit of adventure forget about joining the likes of Merchant shipping. They want you to work for peanuts. Little or no time ashore these days. Almost no social life. Some container ships are in and out of port in 8 hours. There is certainly no job security worth talking about. Try this , if you can get away it will be the chance of a life time.

https://www.oytsouth.org/about-oyt-south/ either that or some other such organisation, tall ships etc!!!
A life at sea is a wasted life if you do go give it 5 years at the most. IMHO

[Ivan Cloherty]

It all boils down to whether or not you have a yearning to go to sea, if you have not, it is not the place for you. It is not a place where you can, when you finish your shift go for a stroll up the road, it is not a place when in a storm or other inclement weather you can shut yourself off when you finish your shift, whether your cabin be it sole occupancy or not, it will gyrate, roll and pitch and you'll have to place yourself in a feotal position to get any kind of comfort as your bunk tries to eject you. If you are not prepared to suffer these consequences of a seafaring life and learn to live with them, then you will be a danger to yourself and more importantly your shipmates. If you are worried about conventions then forget it, stay ashore and keep those at sea safe.

[Louis the fly]

Thinking about the case today with the BBC and some pervert, they keep referring to the victim as a child, he was 17 at the time. That means most of us on this site went to sea at 15-16 and some younger than that, we were all children!!!, and sleeping in 4-6 berth cabins with men, wow, we were child labour !!. How the world changes in a relative short time.

Just think of the danger we would have been in if we had chosen to join the church instead of the MN.

[Johnny Kieran]

A life at sea today is nothing like the old days. I'd get a HGV licence and go trucking for a living if I were you.

[Keith Tindell]

James ref 11, when I retired , I had my own sailing boat, and had qualified as RYA yachtmaster, and did some volunteer work on the John Laing , very rewarding work, to see some of these young people, who had in many ways been trouble, come together as a team. One guy who had got himself in to a lot of trouble , really took to the task of sailing the ship, we came from Ireland round to Southampton. He enjoyed the rough weather that we encountered, and later took sailing qualifications, and ended up working for the trust, so the sea can change people.

[cappy]

As said earlier i would have gone for nothing probably ......but if a 16 year old today you couldnt pay me enough to go on the things they call ships ....iether containers or anything else at sea ...the days of our times for most of us were the last of an era never to be seen again......R683532 Cappy

[j.sabourn]

#17 I think we are all assuming Asdov is a young fellow , and by his name has an Arabic background .if he is as I think he will be well attuned to parental duties who do look after their young so what he is being told by his parents is well meaning on trying to look after his welfare and maybe he wants a second opinion. My father was the same stopped me going in the RN at 15. Stipulated I had to go as apprentice in the MN or go with him building houses for others. The closest he ever got to going to sea was the coasting passenger boat Newcastle to London once a week. However his best mate was John P Hogg who you probably met maybe on the Cragmoor .That probably put him in a better frame of mind . We really do not have the ability to give him the advice he maybe wants to hear as we don’t know his circumstances . Maybe. Is just as well he hears the truth such as it is. Got you’re email thought you might have been away gallivanting . Cheers JS

[Tony Taylor]

As said earlier i would have gone for nothing probably ......but if a 16 year old today you couldnt pay me enough to go on the things they call ships ....iether containers or anything else at sea ...the days of our times for most of us were the last of an era never to be seen again......R683532 Cappy

There's a program on Sunday nights, channel 5 at 21.00hrs, about the MCA. One of the items last night was an issue reported by the Tyne pilot about the pilot ladder being unsafe so the MCA paid a visit and ended up detaining the vessel for ten days until numerous defects were sorted.
It was clear from the start that the master was lying about things and as they were were inspecting the steering gear the chief engineer vanished. The vessel was berthed at Technip site in Walker and someone from there got involved in the discussion on the bridge and I thought that his attitude was quite threatening, I may have misheard him but I thought he was more or less telling the MCA they had no authority over the vessel, I bet Technip was non too please with the resulting delay.

[cappy]

#17 I think we are all assuming Asdov is a young fellow , and by his name has an Arabic background .if he is as I think he will be well attuned to parental duties who do look after their young so what he is being told by his parents is well meaning on trying to look after his welfare and maybe he wants a second opinion. My father was the same stopped me going in the RN at 15. Stipulated I had to go as apprentice in the MN or go with him building houses for others. The closest he ever got to going to sea was the coasting passenger boat Newcastle to London once a week. However his best mate was John P Hogg who you probably met maybe on the Cragmoor .That probably put him in a better frame of mind . We really do not have the ability to give him the advice he maybe wants to hear as we don’t know his circumstances . Maybe. Is just as well he hears the truth such as it is. Got you’re email thought you might have been away gallivanting . Cheers JS

pleased you got the email .......i like the word gallavanting ........ .......dont no many who would gallivant with an 83 year old.....but keilder is one fine place to visit and of course canny shields ........lol ......keep well john ....R683532 cappy

[j.sabourn]

#19 was the pilot one of the Purvis’s Tony ? JS