Maritime labour

Summary

ABSTRACT.Seafaring has always been a dangerous and isolated livelihood. Shipowners nowadays can recruit from low-wage countries far from the ships' home ports, and sometimes far from the sea; deep-sea fishing boats are sometimes manned by semi-slave labour. Owners use flags of convenience to avoid safety regulations and to undermine the International Labour Organisation, but port states may enforce regulations adopted by international agreement on shipping frequenting their ports.

RÉSUMÉ.La navigation a toujours été un gagne-pain isolé et dangereux. Les propriétaires de navires peuvent aujourd'hui recruter dans des pays aux bas salaires, éloignés des ports d'attache des navires et parfois même de la mer. l'équipage des bateaux de pêche en haute mer travaille souvent dans des conditions proches de l'esclavage. Les armateurs utilisent des pavillons de complaisance pour passer outre les règlementations de sécurité et nuire à l'Organisation internationale du travail(OIT) mais les États portuaires peuvent renforcer la législation adoptée par accord international sur les bateaux qui fréquentent leurs ports.

The sea has seldom been a barrier to the movement of people or trade. It has served as a means of long-distance communication and a source of food whenever reliable vessels could be constructed and crewed by competent seafarers. When Captain Cook met with the Polynesian priest navigator Tupaia in Tahiti during 1769 he was told of 130 distant Pacific islands which Tupaia knew from his voyaging and ancient oral history. Tupaia drew a chart showing seventy-five of these that would be of interest to Cook. They were distributed 2,500 miles east and west from the position of Tahiti, and he described some of their products and people. Tupaia knew the relationship between sea, ship and crew in traversing such distances with accuracy and safety.

This chapter focuses on these three components with emphasis on the crew in the period from the mid-19^thcentury to the present. It considers seafarers on merchant vessels, and then, because of their different functions, the crews of fishing craft. The period includes the great changes in technology and organisational structures that came about in the transition from sail to steam, and the intervention by nation-states and international bodies in the regime of labour at sea.