Life on the ocean wave...

It was with some trepidation that we’d boarded our container ship the Theodor Storm for the ten day voyage from Singapore to Brisbane. We were the only two passengers on the 30,000 tonne vessel, joining a crew of Russian and Ukrainian officers and Fillippino merchant seamen. Relations amongst the crew seemed entirely amicable but tensions on a voyage at the end of last year led to the Fillippino bosun killing the Russian second engineer. ‘He wouldn’t have died’ noted Pavlo the Ukrainian second officer who had joined the crew since the incident, ‘but he was left injured for several hours unreported’. Nice.

We sat on the ship for 36 hours in Singapore whilst loading was completed having been encouraged to board somewhat prematurely by the enthusiastic shipping agent. Instead of sipping cocktail slings in town, we had an extra day and a half on the ship watching cargo being loaded. Hmmmm.

Once at sea we quickly found a routine based around mealtimes, at which we were fed within an inch of our lives, which combined with our slightly sloth-like existence threatened to swiftly undo the travelling weight loss of the last six months. To stave off the return of looming fatness we embarked on a regime of intensive table-tennis sessions, deck walks and avoidance of the tempting lift, instead making the effort to walk up and down the six flights of stairs between our cabin and the galley. Well, some of the time at least.

Other recreational activities included learning Spanish from the gravely tones of a series of Michel Thomas CDs, whale-watching and extended drunken sessions of karaoke with the Fillippinos. The music was inexplicably accompanied by what looks like home videos that sought to enhance the audio-visual pleasure of the experience. The film for KC and the Sunshine Band's ‘Please don’t go’, starred a spectacularly be-mulleted Lionel Richie look-alike who mooched about imploring his girlfriend not to leave. The video then cut to footage of his beloved looking mournfully through a wire mesh, apparently trapped in the chicken run at the end of the garden. Weird.

We found it fascinating talking to the crew about their lives and how spending months away at sea at a time affected them. Pavlo showed us some pictures of his historic hometown of Odessa on the computer on the bridge, discretely skipping the mouse over the folder entitled ‘Playboy Calendar Album’. For the Filippinos a life at sea was comparatively lucrative if ‘very boring’ rued Rene, who was 30 but looked 20. ‘When we go home we say you are ‘Millionaire for a day’’ laughed his friend Lito, ‘You make a big party with all your family and friends. After that you must be careful’ he smiled ruefully. ‘When people come to the house and ask for me I tell my wife to say ‘He is at sea!’’ he chuckled, thus avoiding acquiring a retinue of hanger-ons. ‘This is a good ship though’ observed Rene, ‘Much better than an oil tanker’ he said referring to the terrible hydrocarbon fumes and vapours that pervade those vessels. ‘We call that ‘Killing me softly’’.

They earned around US$1300 a month but at some cost to their relationships, especially their reproductive cycles. Rene once went to sea for a 15 month stretch and came back to a wife and year old daughter he’d never met. Other seamen had problems (or semen problems) conceiving during their short stints at home and some vow not to return to sea again until their wives are pregnant.

Whilst english was the official language of the ship, the range of accents aboard (Ukranain, Russian, Fillippino and Fi’s Scottish brogue) made for some entertaining pronunciation and comprehension challenges. On a previous voyage one of the Fillippino crew had suffered a serious accident at sea and the ship was met in Brisbane harbour by an ambulance. ‘Don’t worry mate’ said the Aussie paramedic ‘we’re taking you to hospital today’. Instead of the expected reassurance the poor invalid immediately began to panic. Misinterpreting the Australian twang he’d heard that he was being ‘taken to hospital to die’.

We were given a tour of the ship to familiarise us with our new home. The vast engine room was hotter and noisier than a dark drum and bass club. Afterwards it was clear why the Russian engineer who worked in this mechanical nave was so quiet at mealtimes, 12 hours a day in 3 four-hour shifts in this punishingly loud and uncomfortably hot space was hardly conducive to being ‘chatty’. We stood on a metal grille above the massive spinning drive shaft, all gleaming, greasy copper before it passed through the ship’s hull to the propellor. Spinning the blades at a bewildering number of revolutions per minute the brutal behemoth of an engine burnt through a monstrous 100 tonnes of diesel a day. So much for low carbon travel*.

The ship ripped along at over 22 knots, or just over 25 miles an hour. This may not be enough to arouse Jeremy Clarkson but you can waterski at this speed. Having seen the titanic jacuzzi effect of the huge propellor at the stern I’m not sure you’d want to attempt it. At the bow we enjoyed the sensation of speeding through the water in almost total silence as the engine was a mighty 170m behind us. However just being on deck felt like getting buffeted in a gale, as great blustery gusts ripped across the water. Despite this wind whipping the waves stayed mercifully low and gentle, unlike our queasy first crossing of the Bay of Biscay.

All the crew seemed to have Bay of Biscay anecdotes, calling it ‘The Ship’s Graveyard’. Alec, the Russian Chief Officer described one storm where ‘We lost 22 40-foot long containers over the side, with another 20 broken loose and shifting dangerously around on deck’ he reminisced. ‘A gangway was ripped from the side of the vessel and repairs took over a week. It was lucky no-one was hurt’ he added with considerable understatement. ‘The best thing was one of the damaged containers was full of chocolate! And all the crew…’ he grinned gesturing cabins chocka with contraband candy.

Our pacific (with a small ‘p’ before some smartarse points out we were actually travelling through the Arafura Sea) passage was thanks to those millions of unselfish shellfish and coral beasties that make up the Great Barrier Reef. This pile of dead chalky animals and it’s living crust, along with the conveniently placed archipelagos of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea meant our whole passage from Singapore to Brisbane was excellently (say this in a Monty Burns voice it sounds better) sheltered, almost approaching millpond status.

A pilot joined us close to midnight near Booby Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. His job was to steer us through the treacherous tidal reefs, narrow channels and shallow shoals of the Torres Straits between Cape York and Papua New Guinea. ‘What are you doing here?!’ he expressed in surprise when spotting Fi in the darkness of the bridge. ‘What’s wrong with the plane?’ came his response after we’d explained. The following morning he pressed me further about the climate change angle of our trip ‘Is it happening?’ he probed sceptically. As a marine pilot I would have hoped he might be a little more aware of rising sea levels. ‘I think it is just another way to make money’ he concluded, ‘like drinking milk, they told us to do that too!’ I hesitated to point out that failing to tackle climate change will probably have more serious repercussions than not imbibing enough cow-juice and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change might be just a little more venerable and august an institution than the Milk Marketing Board. ‘I went home to Poland at Christmas’ he continued in appropriately ruminative fashion, ‘and there was no snow to go skiing! It was all grass!’ he exclaimed. Go figure Einstein.

For more pictures of our cargo ship journey click here.

*Note; The UK Department for Transport recommended figures on carbon emissions for bulk carrier vessels are 0.63g/CO2/passenger/km. In contrast a long haul flight emits 210-330 g/CO2/passenger/km (short haul flights emit between 330-460g/CO2/passenger/km – these figures include radiative forcing effects) i.e. travel by bulk carrier is up to 500 times more carbon efficient than flying.)