Notre Forum

By Michael Grey* Decades ago – with the country suffering a government-appointed “wage freeze” and half the workforce out on strike – there was a cartoon which seemed to resonate with the afflicted of that era. It featured a well-fed and suited boss sitting at his desk, glowering at a miserable-looking supplicant, who was clearly

    By Michael Grey* It may offer less in the way of adventure, while an enthusiasm for foreign travel is universal these days, but the sea career still remains attractive to a surprising number of young people. Those organisations offering scholarships for cadet training report there is still plenty of demand out there, even

By Michael Grey* As England battled Saharan temperatures, the depredations of climate activists and queues of multitudes trying to escape by air and sea, I returned for a week to my Northumbrian roots. The train ran on time, and while it may not have offered the silver service of yore, its extraordinary speed and friendly

By Michael Grey* It’s those darned “stakeholders” who are the trouble once again. It is one of those words which was unknown in an earlier era of free speech, when you could be quite clear about identifying those you were talking about, without having the lawyers or twitterati on your back. Now it has become

By Michael Grey*  It was the annual “Day of the Seafarer” last week, not that anyone outside the maritime world actually noticed, although some institutions, managers and maritime employers made kindly pronouncements about the value of these essential workers. It came a few days after the publication of the latest Mission to Seafarers and Standard

Do you know the name of the first navigator who used « weather routing » on his voyage from Europe to faraway lands and back? It wasn’t Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Juan Sebastian Elcano, Walter Raleigh or any other famous name from the XV or XVI centuries. It was a much lesser-known figure. Antón de Alaminos,

  *Par Michael Grey Les inquiétudes sincères ne cessent de s’exprimer quant à la fréquence des incendies à l’intérieur des conteneurs, qui se poursuivent toujours au rythme d’un événement grave toutes les six semaines en moyenne. Cette statistique ne semble jamais changer d’une année à l’autre, et cela ne rend pas justice aux événements moins

By Michael Grey* “She’s not answering her helm, Pilot!” It is not what anyone on the bridge of any ship wants to hear from the helmsman, particularly when the ship is very large, approaching a bend in the channel or some other nail-biting element of the passage from berth to sea. We don’t yet know

By Evan T. Bloom* Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had tremendous impact on international relations globally. While the Arctic has generally been immune from external political pressures, the shocking developments in Ukraine led the seven states other than Russia that are members of the Arctic Council on March 3, 2022 to take the unprecedented step of formally pausing

Par Michael Grey “They are lovely people who are going through hell”. It was a surveyor from DNV, who we happened to meet at Odessa airport, as we clutched our cardboard exit documents in the queue for what served as a departure lounge, whose words came back to me this week. It was a freezing

Par Alice Rogoff* Pendant huit ans, depuis que des «petits hommes verts» anonymes de Russie ont envahi la Crimée, le Conseil de l’Arctique a continué à fonctionner sous l’illusion de la «collaboration pacifique» des nations arctiques. La Russie, avec sa moitié de la masse continentale de l’Arctique, est restée membre en règle du conseil et

  Par Michael Grey* Vous seriez pour le moins extrêmement en colère si votre voiture s’arrêtait brutalement et que la gentille personne des services d’urgence levait les yeux du compartiment moteur et vous disait que le moteur avait été détruit à cause du carburant qui vous avait été fourni par la station-service. Vos sentiments pourraient

By Michael Grey* In the compromise that dictates the design of a ship, you don’t have to be cynical to observe that the needs of the crew come last, after the cargo, machinery and anything else that might remunerate the owner. The crew, it might be said “just fit in where they can”. It has

By Michael Grey* It is funny how different items of news mesh with each other. Cop 26 is over, thank goodness and the thousands of delegates have jetted off to their homelands, leaving a heavy smell of jetfuel over Argyll, but what we are learning to call “the supply chain problem” remains. A queue of

Par Michael Grey* Dans ce monde où la signalisation de la vertu rivalise avec le besoin de blâmer tout le monde, peut-être ne devrions-nous pas être surpris de l’enthousiasme croissant à deviner la prise de décision de quelqu’un d’autre. Les coupables sont clairement dehors pour le capitaine du Zim Kingston de 4526teu, qui, fin octobre,

The shipping industry needs to set ambitious targets to help prevent global climate catastrophe, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) cautions in a new position paper launched today. There are currently more than 50,000 cargo ships on the world’s oceans, the majority of which run on low-grade, heavy ‘bunker’ fuel. Together, the ships emit as

Par Michael Grey* « Suis-je un homme – ou un animal ? » C’était une question dramatiquement posée par un énorme chauffeur de camion sicilien sur un traversier qui transportait son camion plein de légumes sur la route de nuit jusqu’à Gênes. Il s’agissait d’un tout nouveau service, conçu pour déplacer les marchandises des autoroutes nord-sud du pays

Par Michael Grey* L’une de mes missions les plus heureuses a eu lieu dans les années 1970, lorsque je me suis retrouvé à temps partiel « rédacteur maritime » du nouvel hebdomadaire pour enfants « Speed ​​and Power ». C’était un rôle merveilleux, avec un lectorat sur lequel on pouvait compter pour répondre vigoureusement à à peu près tout

By Michael Grey* The United States has one of the world’s longest coastlines, its landmass is penetrated by large numbers of navigable waterways, so you might think that it would be a world leader in initiatives that will move transport from congested roads to under-utilised water. Simple geography suggests that, given half a chance, the

  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