The seafarers who bring us everything and get almost nothing in return

Here's something most of us never think about: 95% of the goods we use every day arrive by sea. Not by shipping companies in the abstract — by actual human beings. Young men, mostly in their twenties, who spend months at a time in tiny quarters on bulk carriers and tankers, earning $18 a day in Australian waters. Sometimes less. Sometimes nothing at all, because their company simply stops paying them.

My name is Mark Spencer, and for the past twelve months I've been a chaplain to the Mission to Seafarers and Stella Maris here in Newcastle. Before that, I spent 43 years in Catholic education — as a teacher, music specialist, principal, and curriculum developer for the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. I'm a Novocastrian, born and bred. When I tried to retire, it lasted about two weeks before I was pulled back into a school during COVID. Then the bishop asked me to work with the funeral industry for two years. And then he asked me again — would I come and be part of the team at Mission to Seafarers?

So here I am.

A family connection to the sea

The sea runs in my family. My ancestor Sir Richard Spencer was a naval hero in the Napoleonic Wars who later became the first government resident in Albany, Western Australia. He immigrated there with his family and ten children. The National Trust still maintains his house, Strawberry Hills Farm, and when they celebrated 165 years, my family was invited back as Spencers in the house. Spencer Gulf and Port Augusta are named after the family.

Richard's son — my great-great-grandfather — came east with the Gold Rush, eventually landing in Newcastle, drawn by the BHP. And Richard's father before him was a sail maker. So this involvement with naval life and shipping has always been part of who I am.

What we actually do

At our centre on Nel Street in Wickham, myself and Father Gary Dodd lead an ecumenical team of dedicated volunteers. We serve seafarers who spend long stretches in isolation at sea. We connect them with their loved ones via wifi and Skype. We help them exchange currency — all seafarers are paid in American dollars, and we currently offer a rate of 1.25, so a hundred US dollars gets them $125 Australian straight away. We provide care packs, clothing, food, medical assistance, and chaplaincy services.

But the thing I care about most is ship visiting. That's my number one priority — getting on board and meeting them face to face.

To board a ship, I have to wear long sleeves, gloves, goggles, a hard hat, a life vest, and luminous orange material. I climb accommodation ladders that hang off the side of the vessel. When a ship is unladen and riding high, those ladders are steep and the water churns below. I'm a big guy. I try not to look down.

Most bulk carriers are only in port for about 18 hours. So the window is tight.

The difference between transactional and transformational

I dislike ship visiting when it's just handing over a care pack and leaving. Here's your bag, border force is checking passports, we want you out of the way. That's transactional.

But you can tell straight away when a seafarer really needs to talk. When something needs to happen between you and them. And often it starts with the simplest questions. How's your family? Have you been paid this month?

They shake their heads. Or they won't answer directly. It's not that they want to dob someone in. It's that in their talking, you hear that something isn't right. They haven't been paid for months. But they're afraid to say so, because the company might black-ban them.

When that happens, I contact AMSA — the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. They can board the ship and impound it if necessary. If that doesn't work, I bring in the ITF, the International Transport Workers' Federation. Our local representative, Dan Crumlin, is wonderful. He boards the ship and asks the hard questions. The companies deny it, many times over. But we keep records, and we forward information to the next port so justice can follow the ship.

Abandonment

The biggest issue facing seafarers in Australia right now is abandonment. Companies fail to pay wages for two or three months, then simply abandon the crew — put them off the ship and leave them to make their own way home. It leaves them without support, without money, without a way to get back to their families. Papua New Guinea seems to be where a lot of ships are being left at the moment.

Sometimes it's worse than abandonment. Sometimes it's mutiny — the crew rises against the executive staff, and the ship is left in port for us to deal with.

A chief officer with a burst appendix

Late last year, I had a case involving a Chinese chief officer in his fifties. He'd been having abdominal pain at sea. The medical knowledge and equipment on board wasn't great. The ship's master rang a friend — another master in the same shipping line — who diagnosed gallstones over the phone. His advice? Get two of your stronger crew members to pick the man up and jump him up and down to loosen the stones.

They stood him up. He was in agony. It was his appendix, and it had burst.

I travelled by helicopter out to the ship to help bring him in. That was an experience I never expected to have in my late sixties — a helicopter coming down, keeping pace with the sway of the vessel. We got him to the Mater Hospital, where he spent 20 days. The surgery was extensive. I'd never seen anything like it — cut from one end to the other, with open wounds for drainage because of the poisoning from the burst appendix.

The company didn't want anything to do with him. They told me, more or less, that it would have been cheaper if he'd died. It was costing them $2,000 a day for him to stay in our hospital system. A new chief officer was flown out, and the ship sailed without him.

I advocated hard for his repatriation. One of our volunteers — a Chinese woman who does our buying — came with me to the hospital because my Mandarin wasn't up to the task. She and the officer struck up a friendship. Their families came from a similar region in China.

In the end, through the union, we got him flown home business class so he could lie down for the journey. They assured me he'd receive continued hospital care in China. That was his biggest worry — that he'd be black-banned, no more work, with two children to support.

I know it was a success because he's emailed me several times since. Merry Christmas, wishes for my family. That's just one case. There are many.

Who comes through Newcastle

Last year, 3,863 Filipino seafarers came through our port — by far the largest group. Many of them are Roman Catholic, so I make sure there's a priest available to say mass for them once a month. If not, I offer a communion service. We also had 1,167 from China, 776 from India, 87 from Ukraine, 45 from Japan, 33 from Korea, 27 from Greece, 23 from Turkey, and 10 from Romania.

A ship might fly the Greek flag and have Greek officers, but the crew of 22 will be Filipino. There's already a language barrier, though usually one person can bridge it. I carry a language exchange app on my phone — I speak into it in English and it comes back in Mandarin or Filipino. Hand signs go a long way too.

We have a Filipino priest in the diocese, Father Neil, based at Hamilton. He stops into the mission most afternoons, and when he finds a Filipino seafarer, they talk in their own language. They always seem to know someone who knows someone. I'm trying to get the diocese to give him dedicated time with us every Thursday.

The numbers behind the mission

Last year, 6,897 seafarers visited our centre. Our volunteers logged thousands of hours. We transported 6,000 seafarers from their vessels. We distributed 17,900 donated beanies, 7,500 books, 20,500 items of clothing, and 8,500 food donations. And we assembled 1,000 care packs — each one containing things like razors, books, magazines, beanies, and small souvenirs like little koalas to take home.

At Christmas, every seafarer on every vessel that comes in during that fortnight receives their own care pack. I called in favours from my old network of retired principals and teachers. They came in for two days and formed a snake-like procession — everyone adding one item to each bag as it passed down the line.

Stella Maris contributed $5,000, and I went on a spending spree at the $2 shop and Silly Sol's.

What we need

We can't do any of this without volunteers, and our numbers have dropped badly. Before COVID, we had over 60. Now we're down to about 23. The biggest gap is drivers. To drive onto the wharves, you have to be inducted — and not just once. Each company and each section of the port requires its own separate induction. We cover Kooragang berths one through ten, Newcastle Coal, Port Waratah, the eastern and western basins at Carrington, and the channel berth where cruise ships dock.

The best time for seafarers to visit is between four in the afternoon and ten at night, because they have duties during the day. Since I started, there have been times we've had to close our doors because we didn't have a driver. If I drive, there's no one to mind the centre.

Every one of them made in God's image

Newcastle is the only port in Australia where Mission to Seafarers and Stella Maris operate together as one team. That matters to me. The spirit of what we do doesn't depend on what religion a seafarer follows, or what country they come from. It's about fellowship. It's about seeing the person in front of you.

Someone at our breakfast this morning was talking about creation, and it made me think about Imago Dei — that we're made in God's image. That's what I see in every one of those young men, and the occasional young women who are starting to serve as officers on these ships. Every one of them is a person with a family, with worries, with a story.

The Mission to Seafarers was founded in 1856 because a young boy asked his uncle, Reverend John Ashley, a simple question while they walked along the shore near the English Channel: all these ships out here — how do the sailors go to church? It sparked something. How do we bring Christ to these people? It started with bibles taken out to the ships. It grew into a worldwide ministry.

The Flying Angel symbol comes from Revelation 14:6 — "Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth — to every nation and tribe and language and people."

That verse is the guide for everything we do. There are 250 Mission to Seafarers centres worldwide, 40 in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Stella Maris has 300 centres worldwide, 25 in Australia.

The Stella Maris logo tells you what it's about. The anchor symbolises hope — dropped into the sea, it keeps the ship and crew safe, just as we place our hope in God. The life ring symbolises faith — when a seafarer falls into the sea, their salvation depends on it, just as our salvation depends on faith in God. The heart at the centre says that Christ is at the heart of everything we do, with beams of love radiating outward. And the waves underneath remind us of both the environment where seafarers work and the dangers they face.

Faith, hope, and charity. That's what leads them — and us — forward.

An invitation

If you've never been to the Nel Street centre in Wickham, stop in and say hello. We'd love to see you. Have a cup of tea. If there are seafarers around, sit down and have a chat. Hand signs go a long way. They love a game of pool or a round of cards.

You can donate. You can spread the word. You can volunteer — especially if you can drive on weekday afternoons.

But mostly, it's about seeing and hearing their stories firsthand. That's what makes the difference. Not the transaction. The transformation. Every encounter with another person is a moment — a precious moment. A God moment.

These are people who bring us almost everything we have. The least we can do is see them.