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By Michael Grey* Will what we used to think of as “normal” ever return? Black swans used to be rare, but now they are coming by the squadrons, like migrating geese, as one daft occurrence succeeds the last in bewildering succession. There is a world shortage of lorry drivers, as they all opt to drive […]

  By Michael Grey* The results of an inquest in the UK on the deaths caused by a tram coming off the rails gave one pause for thought. The driver, it had concluded, had suffered a “microsleep” at the very moment he should have been applying the brakes and the tram had rushed on with

  I have always been terribly enthused by Oliver St.John Gogarty’s poem The Ship and its first stanza – “A ship from Valparaiso came/ And in the Bay her sails were furled,/ She brought the wonder of her name/ And tidings from a sunnier world.” It came back to me last week reading about all

    By Michael Grey* Nobody should be surprised that there has been something of a fight back by ship operators after the World Maritime University’s research earlier in the year showed up widespread “adjustment” in the recording of seafarers’ hours of work and rest (see A Culture of Adjustment). It was a shocking report,

  By Michael Grey* There will be few seafarers today who sail off to the Gulf of Guinea with a light heart and cheerful demeanour, any more than they did a couple of hundred years ago, when disease was endemic along its shores. It is a different sort of blight today, with the depredations of

  Taiwanese Ping Shin 101 on which occurred the murders at sea described in this gut wretching article by investigative reporter Ian Urbina*.   Photo Credit: Fish-I Africa The men are helpless in the open water, clinging to floating debris, tossed by the rolling ocean waves. Several large fishing ships circle. None of the victims have life jackets, but no one makes