Pay

Pay was one of those illusions created by ship owners.
You work your ass off for a pittance, but of course the ship owners must make a profit !!!!!

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Originally Posted by happy daze john in oz

You work your ass off for a pittance, but of course the ship owners must make a profit !!!!!

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Well anyone who went into any kind of business not to make a profit would be bleddy stupid. Personally I am glad shipowners made a profit otherwise I would have had no ships to sail on, new ships have to be paid for somehow.

It is usually for any industrialist or the likes of a shipowner it is his workforce who makes the profits for him. I have seen the true profit records for tax returns for a well known shipowner itemised from the end of world war 2 to the late 1950s . The lowest claim for tax purposes were wages and food but about the only thing the shipowner had control over. The highest claim for a ship is depreciation on hull and machinery next is insurance. Bringing up the lowest claims have always been wages and feeding. I was on a small vessel for a number of years on bareboat charter to the government for 10 years but I was only there for 4 before being moved on , the owners had no outlay or very little for the ship and she earned 10,000 pounds a day. The same with the Bisco ships which were on even more plus very generous overtime simply because they weren’t paying for it.A 10,000 ton trampship in 1948 if she had 2 cargoes a year then the second cargo was as near as can be said all profit. All my time on trampships I can never remember having only two cargoes a year. I dont decry my 50 years in the industry but honest enough to say it should still be there if had been managed better by the country and political will , it was a necessary factor and still is for any island country. Britain no longer rules the waves and never will again unless it is in some swimming pool with a wave making machine in it. Cheers JS

The only reason I went to sea was for the adventure, I only realised how bad the pay was when I left it. You get kind of hooked on a life at sea as a young man, and it becomes very hard to jack it. I was lucky when circumstances caused a serious rethink about the future, and listened to my Dad for a change.
I had the best of both worlds thanks to him. Think I posted about that some time back.