I've been on 6 ship visits so far: 1 car ship, 3 container vessels, 1 oil tanker, and 1 scrap metal ship. Each ship had a completely different character, and completely different needs. 60% of all seafarers are Filipino, and that proportion holds roughly true for most of the crews I've seen. The remaining 40% could be any nationality: Greek, German, Ukrainian, Polish, Indian, Sri Lankan, Jamaican, Romanian...it's amazing to me that the crews are able to communicate in English well enough to run a ship! I've seen some pretty substantial language barriers, but I guess the simple fact that the ships do run is a testament to the human ability to cross all manner of communications barriers.
The visit to the oil tanker was a particularly interesting experience, not least because I was terrified I was going to be blown up. The tanker terminals are in Bayonne, across the channel from Port Newark (NJ geography is incredibly mystifying to me, and I'm only just beginning to make any sense of it), largely because their cargo is so, well, dangerous. Security is incredibly strict, for obvious reasons - visitors can't take cell phones, cameras, or any other electronics aboard, because the tiniest spark might cause a chain reaction. The ship itself was a maze of pipes and hoses (I was convinced with every step I took that I was going to trip, disconnect something, and cause the death of the entire population of New Jersey), but home to one of the most hospitable crews I've met thus far. Perhaps because I was accompanying a Filipino chaplain, they were so enchanted by our presence that they fed us a feast including, but not limited to: dried, fried mackarel (surprisingly tasty), rice, squid, mashed potatoes, bean soup, cabbage soup, and homemade donuts. I'm going to have to learn how to say no to at least some of these delicacies; otherwise I'll be the size of a whale by December!
The other fascinating (and equally terrifying!) visit today was to the scrap metal carrier. Unlike the tanker terminal, where everything is painstakingly clean and regimented, the metal management terminal is utter chaos. Think cranes dumping deafening loads of every kind of metal imaginable, metallic dust everywhere (it was really quite difficult to breathe), construction vehicles scurrying about madly in the dusty haze...just walking to the gangway involved taking your life in your hands. The ship was similarly chaotic - the captain was in a towering rage when we arrived, and the crew were both painfully homesick and extremely frustrated that they had been denied shore leave. We were only aboard for about half an hour before the furious captain kicked us off, but it wasn't an easy situation to behold.
It's the constant suspense and mystery that I love so much about my job - I love that you never know what you're going to find when you board a ship. Hell, it's impossible to know which ships are even in terminal at a given time (you would think, that with all our sophisticated technology, the NY/NJ Port Authority would manage to compile a digitized, up to date ship list, but no...Ships are constantly delayed or rerouted, and figuring out which one is where is an endless guessing game)! I love that, in one workday, I can feast and laugh aboard one ship and counsel (albeit terribly inexpertly and probably not that effectively) homesick crewmen aboard another. To continue the trend of total randomness: tomorrow, my workday will consist of singing karaoke with maritime veterans in the afternoon, and schmoozing with potential donors to SCI on a Hudson river cruise in the evening. As I said, I absolutely love it.
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