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By Michael Grey* According to my calendar, this was written on World Peace Day, which could occasion a hollow laugh, but might be joyfully celebrated by a few folk who live “off-grid” and don’t get out much. It took place in the same week as the IMO’s annual World Maritime Day, which this year had, […]

By Michael Grey* The doorbell rang just as I had taken a huge bite of my lunchtime sandwich. I opened the door to find a young man festooned in lanyards and wearing a T-shirt revealing himself to be an environmental activist. “Hi-how are you?” – he enquired, oblivious to a large sign adjacent to the

By Michael Grey* A ship which can charitably be thought of in the autumn of her days. A cargo known to be problematical and with which there will be no second chances should things turn nasty. Two life rafts and two survivors out of a crew of 24 after the vessel horrifyingly took reportedly just

By Michael Grey* Without delving too deep into any debates about gender, some of us are better than others at « multi-tasking ». But the arrival of hand-held, portable communication devices has led to us all, at some time, communicating, when our attention should have been upon something more urgent. It is why many governments now ban

By Michael Grey* There is an open season on merchant mariners at present, and not in a nice way, with the warring parties around the Strait of Hormuz accompanying their confusing messages with a willingness to fire into innocent merchant ships in international waters. At least twenty seafarers have been killed in these incidents, which

By Michael Grey* On the occasion of last month’s “Day of the Seafarer”, I wonder how many of them felt properly appreciated. As members of a largely invisible workforce, in most of their home countries, it would be forgivable if this annual event was greeted with no more than a shrug. Even those trapped behind

By Michael Grey* As this is being written, and if nothing more untoward occurs, the little expedition ship Hondius is due to arrive at Rotterdam after her grim encounter with the deadly Hantavirus on her latest cruise in Southern waters. The crew, who have been operating this ship in what appears to have been heroic

By Michael Grey* “Hormuz commanded the traffic along the shores of the Indian Ocean, linking what are now Oman and Pakistan, as well as the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz up to Basra in Iraq.” It was “a dust blown port with no natural resources, but with as many as 40,000 inhabitants.” Seeking some

By Michael Grey* It was in the 1950s, during an earlier Middle East crisis, that the wife of a British Prime Minister complained that the Suez Canal was flowing through her sitting room. Today, of course, we have a different watercourse dominating the news and it is difficult to consider anything else. Nevertheless, we must