What life is like on the stranded ships of the Gulf

{"text":[[{"start":4.95,"text":"An oil tanker captain in the Gulf gives the word on his radio, and up in the bow, hundreds of metres away, the first mate lets the anchor go. The plunging chain roars like the iron drums of doom, and a high singing whine rings through the whole ship. The deck vibrates underfoot until 50 tonnes of anchor hits the bottom. The mate calls on the radio: “One shackle up and down.”"}],[{"start":31.05,"text":"This means the chain is now vertical. One shackle is 15 fathoms, fathoms are six feet, so we have about 27 metres of water between us and the mud and shell seabed. The captain now backs the ship as the chain rumbles out twice more. Then the mate locks her off and that’s it: a couple of dozen men and their ship, which is their home, their job, their safety — and, here in the war zone, their mortal danger — are a massive sitting duck for who knows how long."}],[{"start":59.5,"text":"It is difficult to communicate with them now, and impossible to name them. “Ship owners see no benefit in letting crews speak with the media, but they do see risk,” says Mark Dearn, head of communications for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, one of the more effective union voices in an industry notorious for its routine infringements of workers’ rights and safety, and for blacklisting those who step out of line. "}],[{"start":84.8,"text":"Around 20,000 seafarers are thought to be currently trapped in the Gulf, which has been under blockade since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February. Many have little or no access to the internet, so their families — from whom they can be absent for nine months and more — can only pray for them. Many crewmen are Filipino, and observant Catholics, and they are praying too. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":108.15,"text":"“God, I’m tired but I trust you always,” one posted this week. He has been away from home for 136 days. At sea, things can always get worse. In the Gulf, the crews of ships at anchor are the lucky ones."}],[{"start":122.4,"text":"“We are stranded here in Iran near Hormuz,” reads one communication passed to me. “We were on our way to BIK [Bandar Imam Khomeni, Iran’s key container port] but we were drifting earlier in the morning. We didn’t have GPS because of jamming and spoofing. No news yet.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":139.8,"text":"As curt as a message in a bottle, it contains nightmares. “Drifting” means they are in water too deep to anchor. This has compensations — seafarers say “Land is danger, sea is safety” — but only while it is daylight and the weather is calm. "}],[{"start":156.8,"text":"Without GPS, they can fix their position only with a sextant and a paper chart, which some ships still carry and many do not. Otherwise their lives depend on dead reckoning, luck, judgment and experience — and on being missed by the missiles and drones. "}],[{"start":173.60000000000002,"text":"“No news” means everything: global events, sailing orders, families, futures, the next hour, day or month. The conditions of crews on trapped ships were cited this month by President Donald Trump, who framed his aborted attempt to break Iran’s blockade as a humanitarian effort to help “people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong”."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• A dockside view of a huge container ship anchored in port, with shipping containers stacked on its deck and cranes nearby.
• A bearded man in orange overalls and a hard hat sweeping the deck of the ship, with the sea and other ships in the background.

"}],[{"start":198.15000000000003,"text":"This is a rare moment in the history of seafaring. No one outside the industry thinks about the crews whose work brings us everything we have and all the goods and fuel upon which our lives, globalisation and normality depend. To have the US president on their side is unusual indeed, though his words of support have yet to help them."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":218.60000000000002,"text":"Once you have travelled with seafarers, as I have severally, on many kinds of ships, you never forget them, especially when war, storms or disaster bring them to the news. I was a lifeboatman and thought of joining the navy; my uncle was a warship captain; and in another life I was a second officer on a container ship. “What will the crew be doing on your sister ship off Iran tonight?” I asked a friend, a senior engineer, who is in direct if intermittent touch with colleagues there.  "}],[{"start":251.40000000000003,"text":"“Karaoke,” he said, “and a barbecue at the weekend.” Some captains dread the barbecue. Men stand around, bereft of wives, girlfriends, friends, kids and beer, but at least they can rig fairy lights and play music. A ship with Filipino crew (which is most of them, the other main nationalities in crewing being Chinese, Indian and Indonesian) will usually have a karaoke machine aboard. They will be playing up and down the Strait of Hormuz tonight and tomorrow, as men and boys sing their longing rock about lost sweethearts, their flip-flops gathered outside the crew lounge door like a pack of small dogs listening."}],[{"start":289.50000000000006,"text":"When he found out that his ship was bound for the Gulf, my friend signed a “refusal to sail” notice and left the ship — along with the armed guard who saw them through the Red Sea, their defence against pirates. Those who chose to stay must have felt doubly vulnerable, seeing them go. "}],[{"start":306.70000000000005,"text":"“We have only learnt of the situation in the Gulf through social media, no single message from ship owner or principal,” my friend writes. “At first I thought, I will sail with the ship, but when I ask [about the] policy of the company regarding the situation in Strait of Hormuz, then the fear sets in me, because they seem like [they have] no plans at all in my understanding. They just wait and see if the situation will get worse or settle down.”  "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• Two engineers work among machinery and pipes, one crouching in white coveralls and ear protection, the other in orange coveralls.
• Narrow corridor on the deck of a ship, flanked by stacked shipping containers on both sides with metal grates on the floor.

"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

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"}],[{"start":333.00000000000006,"text":"Unanswered questions and coldly economic decision-making are normal in this industry of nearly 2mn people, responsible for moving more than 80 per cent of goods traded worldwide. I sailed with a young man who crewed a stationary tanker, a floating gas station, for nine months in the heat of Dubai. He was never allowed to go ashore. “How did you survive?” I asked him. “Watch DVDs,” he said, “Go crazy!”"}],[{"start":357.50000000000006,"text":"Most jobs in the industry make you glad that you don’t do them. Counting containers on and off in port for hours, when you’ve already worked a full shift. Watching pipe couplings as oil is pumped aboard is numbing and feels endless: the man detailed to do this is forbidden to take his eyes off the couplings for a second. Like the watchmen on the bridges of every ship in the Gulf tonight, staring out at the darkness in silence for hours at a time, he must be ruthlessly strong with himself, fighting sleep. Day and night, your life and those of your shipmates depend on individuals’ concentration and resolve. I saw it a thousand times, in so many jobs and moments. "}],[{"start":400.00000000000006,"text":"Then there is the engine room, where the engine, even in neutral, is an insane screaming monster the size of an eight-bedroomed house living in the massive cavern of the ship’s guts. In 40C heat, you cannot hear yourself yell with or without ear defenders. "}],[{"start":416.00000000000006,"text":"Now imagine the whole ship is rocking 20 degrees one way, then rolling 20 degrees the other, and you’ve not had a hot meal or a dream for three days, because the ship is pitching and slamming too much to sleep. The cook cannot use the galley stoves. Now, can you unscrew a tiny nut in a mesh of burning hot metal? Can you unscrew 50 of them? Can you turn your mind away from the missiles, the drones, the fighter jets and all the terrors of the night while you do it? "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• Two men cooking in a stainless steel ship’s galley, one in a chef’s white smock and the other in a striped T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.
• A man wearing a chef’s white smock and apron stands in a stainless steel kitchen.

"}],[{"start":445.65000000000003,"text":"Seafarers understand and feel for each other. At the same times on every ship, watches are changed, meals eaten, stores counted, decks washed, fears and longing nursed in cabins. Sailors say that only the Mission to Seafarers, the sea priests found in major ports, really understand their lives, their griefs and losses and needs.  "}],[{"start":466.3,"text":"The Mission has priests in the Gulf ports who are in daily touch with crews in the Strait of Hormuz. One agreed to answer my questions on condition of anonymity; everyone is scared of anyone being identified. I asked how the seafarers are doing."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":481.45,"text":"“They are living in fear, constantly worried about what might happen next. Many seafarers have shared that they have seen missiles in the sky and witnessed interceptions from their ships. These experiences have increased their fear and emotional stress.”"}],[{"start":496.65,"text":"Although the captain — the “Old Man”, as they call him — is the ultimate authority, the cook holds a singular place. My captains addressed them as equals: the ship’s morale, efficiency and pleasure rest on three meals a day. (One cook I sailed with was a woman, the only one our captain had worked with in 30 years at sea.) The galleys of ships can work as free-speaking spaces. Cooks and captains use it as a back channel for passing feelings from the lowliest oiler and wiper up to the captain, who will probably never speak personally to junior crew.  "}],[{"start":531.15,"text":"“On many ships, supplies are gradually running low,” the sea priest said. “In recent days, some seafarers on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have reported that they are reducing their food intake. Food shortages are becoming an increasing concern on several vessels.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• A man wearing white coveralls and hard hat sits on a chair aboard a ship, framed by a doorway.
• An illuminated screen inside the shop displays the words ‘injury free days 646’.

"}],[{"start":547.35,"text":"The consequences for crews’ wellbeing are predictable. “In terms of mental health, they are anxious about what will happen next . . . Many feel that if given a chance, they would sign off and leave by any means. Many seafarers also have pending wages, which adds to their stress and frustration. Physically, the mental strain has led to fatigue and tiredness.” "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

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"}],[{"start":568.15,"text":"When all this is over, most of the men trapped in the Gulf now will go back to sea. When the trauma passes, many — especially the senior navigators and engineers — will relish their profession again. I loved going up to the bridge of my first ship in the small hours of the night, to chat quietly with the second mate, our faces dimly lit by the glow of dials, buttons and the light of the AIS, the automatic identification system, upon which our ship appeared as an arrow on the electronic chart. We both loved ships and oceans and the vast world that only seafarers know. "}],[{"start":603.8,"text":"Step through the door of bridge into the desert heat and the Persian starlight of the deck, and you can feel and smell the wind, the Shamal, which blows down the Gulf out of the north-west, from Iraq. My uncle, Rear Admiral Roy Clare (Royal Navy, retired), first crewed a frigate, then commanded two destroyers and the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible and its strike group on operations here over decades. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• A man in white overalls, looking straight at the camera, stands on the ship’s deck in front of a fixture wrapped in a green tarpaulin.
• A close-up of coiled rope in front of a red fire hose box mounted to a ship’s wall.

"}],[{"start":632.4499999999999,"text":"My uncle loved his profession, the sea and ships, but he sees this theatre of operations in the same terms that Trump’s admirals and generals must have used when briefing the president on the impossibility of winning a sea fight against Iran. Each time my uncle brought a warship through the Strait, evolving technology meant the flight time of missiles from the Iranian shore was shorter."}],[{"start":654.9999999999999,"text":"“You have seconds now,” he says. Iranian coastal batteries range you with a radar sweep, alerting your ship’s sensors, which are at readiness to counter-fire. Missiles in their tubes are milliseconds from ignition. Data management systems packed with live maps of a battlefield that ranges from Yemen to Tel Aviv and up to the edge of space feed the ship’s weapons. "}],[{"start":678.2999999999998,"text":"“As a metaphor, it is rather like the conflict in Northern Ireland,” he says. “We will always be very large and visible targets, while it is very hard to do anything about an opponent dug into that rocky coast.” "}],[{"start":690.7499999999999,"text":"An old technology, sea mines, remains horribly effective and difficult to counter. The effectiveness of their threat is disproportionate to their cost, because, as my uncle points out, “If you say you’ve laid a minefield, who is to say how big it is? The only way to tell is to count them in the water.”"}],[{"start":708.2499999999999,"text":"Ironically, before the fall of the Shah, men who later captained navy warships for the Islamic republic were trained as young officers in Dartmouth, alongside Roy Clare’s peers in the Royal Navy. He recalls asking an Iranian warship by signal lamp if such a man was aboard. “I am,” the Iranian captain signalled back. The descendants of these sailors, the current generation of captains and warfare officers, know each other’s capabilities well.   "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

• The stern of the container ship Panda 006 docked in port, with stacked blue shipping containers visible above.
• A rainbow and clouds are visible through large windows, with sunlight casting a shadow on the interior wall.

"}],[{"start":734.6499999999999,"text":"With any luck, the seafarers’ prayers will be answered soon. At some point, as the world economy creaks, the cost of oil climbs and inflation rises, the US and Iran will come to terms, we must hope. "}],[{"start":748.7999999999998,"text":"When that happens, the most wonderful sound will echo across the waters of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The heavy, mighty clanking of anchor winches will be clearly audible between ships lying close together. The chains will come up coated with mud, sand and shell, which will splurge all over the decks and require spraying and mopping by patient men, hot in boiler suits and hard hats, their eyes scrunched up against the glare of the desert sun. Their anchors weighed, the big ships will move slowly forward, then faster, and at their pace the world economy will start to turn again. "}],[{"start":783.7999999999998,"text":"The alternative is a nightmare, for seafarers especially: more missiles, more drones, more war, more waiting, more fear, more prayers. We should not forget, in peace or war, that these merchant ships are the homes of men, fathers, sons and brothers, who do the work upon which everything we do and are depends.  "}],[{"start":804.8999999999999,"text":"Horatio Clare is the author of ‘Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men’ "}],[{"start":812.0999999999999,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":827.1999999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1778915952_6423.mp3"}