We did this

[thomas michael]

hi des #8
good morning, thats typical of the italians, they will sh** on anyone if they think they can get away with it, and its only when they know they can not, then they throw their hands up.
tom

[Lewis McColl]

#11 Just wondering did you ever sail on foreign flag ships with multi national crews?

[J Gowers]

I always thought if someone had invented a Tenants Thistle empty beer can detector you could just follow the lines of cans on the seabed from Europe to the PG and back.
To my shame I remember chucking all sorts of rubbish over the sides of ships in the 70s and 80s. It was the same as drinking and driving everyone seemed to do it during those times and never thought anything wrong with it. You would never dream of doing anything like that today.

[John Arton]

Dumping crude oil sludge directly into the ocean would, prior to MARPOL 72, would have been a fairly common practice, one my first trip to sea, after tank washing direct to sea, no oil discharge monitoring equipment in those days, we would then scoop out and dump to sea any remaining sludge.
Not condoning the practice but think on this,
When the Torrey Canyon ran aground on the Seven Stones rocks and spilt her cargo, initially the RAF tried to bomb it to set it alight, it was a dismal failure. The lighter fractions evaporated off leaving the heavier thick sludge behind floating on the surface which caused the beaches and sea and bird life to be covered in it. Yet within a couple of years nature had done it's work, breaking up the sludge floating on the surface, leaving the sea and the marine environment in pristine condition. A similar condition occurred with the Amoco Cadiz spillage. Removal of the sludge polluting the beaches and oyster beds meant that in a relatively short time nature had returned the beaches to their pre spill condition and the oyster beds were thriving, though there is still to this day a flooded quarry filled with floating sludge that was removed from the beaches and dumped there.
Nowadays ocean pollution by oil is very small but pollution by plastic is horrendous. Bottled water, who the frigging hell needs it in developed countries, take away coffee, why?, Polystyrene food containers, plastic shopping bags etc are all products of an era that comes after many of us had left the sea and the growth in the use of and wanton disposal off, belong in the main to those born in the 60/70's onwards coupled with the growth in population in countries that either could not or couldn't be bothered, to put the infrastructure in place in order for the disposal of these products to be done without polluting our oceans and rivers.
Rgds
J.A.

[Tony Taylor]

#11 Just wondering did you ever sail on foreign flag ships with multi national crews?

US flag, capt. American, mates Honduran, Spanish, engine room Thai, cook Indonesian, deck crew Pakistani, Indian, philipino

[J Gowers]

#15 Sounds a bit like some of the drilling rigs I worked on. One rig had 25 different nationalities and everyone worked together with no problems.

[Lewis McColl]

US flag, capt. American, mates Honduran, Spanish, engine room Thai, cook Indonesian, deck crew Pakistani, Indian, philipino

Tony the question was for Thomas Michael , but thanks for you reply.

[j.sabourn]

#15 .. Tony you would probably find that there was more than one American citizen on board the vessel, depending of course the year and the changes since I was on US flagged ships. The US of A still had the legislation on the agenda long after the UK gave it away to suit others about citizenship laws sailing on their flagged ships. Their presence had to be a certain percentage of the crew. I mentioned in another post as when I was master on the Dickerson Tide , we carried the US master and Chief Engineer signed on as 2/mate and 3/eng. I went on leave and had a frantic phone call from the ex master to come back as his twin brother had died in the states and the US coastguard would not let him leave the vessel , but would if I returned to replace him. Something to do with the paperwork no doubt , but apparently I could be considered as a temporary US citizen , maybe as having been on the ship so long. Anyhow I returned and he was very grateful and got home ok for the funeral. There were If remember right 10 of us altogether so 2 would be 20% of the crew , so something like 20% may have been the ruling to sail under the American Flag. Cheers JS

[j.sabourn]

#16... you would have found it a bit different if working offshore In Australia 1990 to 2000. All foreign labour including OIMS Barge Masters and everyone were only allowed a work permit to remain in the country 3 months and had to leave at the end of that period , this was if Australian labour could not fill the post. American rigs of course used to replace their top men with their own nationals , but nearly everyone else was Australian , this was monetary sense as the cost of flying foreign nationals in and out would have been expensive , plus the fact the unions frowned on any foreign work force.Today however the same as the shipping all things have changed , for the better or worse depends on your own feelings on the subject. Cheers JS.

[J Gowers]

#19 I was working offshore Indonesia at that time. It was on an American flag drillship I was C/E with British ticket and the 2/Es and 3/Es were Indonesian the rest of the marine crew (mates and engineers) were from the US. However after two years we changed to Vanuatu flag but the crews all stayed the same. As far as I am aware the only countries that had strict regs on the manpower working on rigs in their respective countries was as you say Australia and also the USA.