COLUMN | The continuing problem of abandoned ships and the crews that become stranded [Grey Power]

They are an embarrassment to the shipping industry, whose institutions tend to change the subject when the problem is raised.

Flag states and consular services get rather shirty when their assistance is requested and some suggest that because they represent only a tiny minority of the global fleet, there are more important things to think about.

But abandoned ships, and the plight of the unpaid and unfed seafarers left aboard them, do attract attention and reflect badly on everyone.

You might argue that companies go bankrupt all the time, with their workers losing their jobs, and it is regarded as regrettable but a feature of any capitalist society. But abandoned ships are rather different.

Left in a foreign port, with no means of support, food running out and the ship’s services gradually running down, each of these vessels represents a web of human complexity, as the owner effectively disappears into thin air.

The individual crewmembers, unpaid, possibly for months, may find themselves dependent on the welfare agencies, if these are available, or charity, while the lawyers work out what to do about the ship.

The situation is also getting worse each year. According to the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), more than 300 ships were abandoned last year, more than twice as many as in 2023, this rise reflecting the pattern over several years.

With rare exceptions, most of these abandonment cases have involved ships owned by operators that charitably might be described as “marginal,” or, less politely, as the bottom-feeders of the shipping world.

Their owners will be difficult to identify in the shadowy world of brass plates and international skullduggery and having walked away from any obligations they felt free to deny, will doubtless be perfectly able to set up again.

There is invariably no mystery as to what has gone wrong. The ship has broken down, or has been detained by port state control over issues that the owner cannot afford to remedy. Or it has been arrested by some interest – a past charterer, bunker supplier, providore, repairer, port authority or some other wronged party – because of unpaid bills.

Then the owner, metaphorically shrugging his shoulders at the futility of trying to untangle the financial problems, has vanished into the ether, sadly (or perhaps happily) leaving these troubles behind.

It will be somebody else’s business to propose any solutions. The port will be engaging its legal officers as the unpaid dues mount up, and the process of detaching the crew from their ship slowly grinds on.

The ship will be sold, and that may be easier said than done as the lawyers for the various unpaid interests argue about their various liens. The ship may be of little more than scrap value, fast deteriorating as the crew, without stores or the wherewithal to maintain it, become more concerned with their day-to-day survival.

They hang onto their berths, for that is invariably the only way their lien for unpaid wages can be maintained. If they get off and somehow can repatriate themselves, their chances of any wages are likely to be lost. ITF inspectors, welfare staff, visibly age as it all drags on.

The ITF blames this miserable situation on flags of convenience, and the ridiculous fragmentation of responsibility this financial ruse affords and of course it is hard to argue with this.

None of the various interests, flag, ship manager, crew manager, agent, can be pinned down to represent the crew, who were probably hired on the basis of an email or telephone call, which is no longer answering its number. And so, it all drags on.

There have been umpteen attempts to devise some workable formula that can be implemented to mitigate the misery of those caught up in abandonment cases.

During an earlier shipping downturn, there was a scheme proposed for some sort of fund to be subscribed by the industry, which could be drawn on to patch up these holes in the process, repatriate the crew, and see them paid.

Perhaps understandably, it was suggested that this would merely encourage the financially imprudent to shirk their responsibilities even further. And why should the good guys, who take their responsibilities seriously, have to be milked to pay for the blighters who do not?

There have been proposals for flag states to require a sort of modest bond to be paid, additional to the registry fees, that could be held against the financial failure of the company it is registering. That falls down when one considers the competitive nature of these flags and the inability of many of them to determine the viability of those knocking on their doors.

Should states in the crew-supplying regions be rather more careful in their regulation of who might be setting themselves up in this role? There is certainly room for improvement, witness the cases that come to light of seafarers paying some shifty outfit for a job on a dubious ship – an obvious candidate for abandonment, further down the line.

But there ought to be solutions, for the sake of shipping’s reputation, if nothing else.