Majestic Monotony

Inside each ship there is a human story that encompasses a personal, social and political discourse. The maritime industry has become invisible to the general public: Ports are far away from cities, sailors seldom go ashore and we only hear about ships when disaster strikes. Yet 90% of world goods travel by sea. In January 2014, as part of a larger project documenting life at sea, we traveled along the Finnish coast on the Thule, a small bulk-carrier. The Thule is a microcosm of today’s shipping industry. It is an older German-built and flagged ship, now chartered by a Finnish company and operating mostly in the ice-bound seas of the northern Baltic with a 10 man crew from Germany, Eastern Europe and the Philippines. Some of these men have been living and working together for almost two decades, sometimes literally not leaving the ship for over a year. Despite their cultural differences, language barriers, generation gaps and even dietary idiosyncrasies, the crew has created an accommodating work atmosphere that seems to transcend their diversities with an affable acceptance. Work on a cargo-ship is dictated by an industry ruled by the bottom-line. It is monotonous and often grueling. However the hardest part of life at sea remains being away from home. Older crew members on the Thule told us about facing the prospect of a bleak retirement having never had the opportunity to create a family. Meanwhile younger members of the crew, expressed their regrets about missing out on vital moments of their own family’s lives: births, graduations, weddings and even funerals. Even though work on ships resembles the monotony of industrial work onshore, what connects the men of the Thule to over a million other sailors on ships around the world, is that profound respect for the majesty of the sea that is only discovered by living on it. Many of those on the Thule attest to the fact that even if they stopped working on ships tomorrow, they would forever remain sailors.