The festive season can be lonely for seafarers – and port chaplains make a real difference
Doctors and nurses, delivery drivers, and even supermarket staff have rightly been heralded as heroes throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet one group of key workers have received little recognition: seafarers. And this Christmas it’s estimated that 400,000 of them will be unable to return home to their families. Many of the items we buy in our shops have arrived by ship. And so has much of the PPE, other medical equipment, and medicines the NHS needs in its fight against coronavirus, along with the fuel keeping the ambulances on the road.
Seafarers were the focus of Sea Sunday in Catholic churches this month (on December 20). They are an invisible workforce, part of a hidden world of shipping companies and agents, maritime regulations, flags of convenience, and ports concealed by high security fencing on the edges of towns.
The only time seafarers come to public attention is when something dramatic happens, such as when in October the Special Boat Service stormed an oil tanker off the Isle of Wight, after a group of stowaways from Nigeria had attempted to hijack it.
One Catholic charity has been providing vital help for seafarers during coronavirus: Stella Maris, formerly known as Apostleship of the Sea. It was set up 100 years ago this year in Glasgow by two enterprising Catholic laymen and a Jesuit to support Catholic seafarers, whose spiritual and material needs, they felt, were being neglected.
Today, Stella Maris provides 220 port chaplains and hundreds of volunteer ship visitors in 54 countries. They have been a lifeline for many seafarers during the pandemic, arranging for them to send money home to their families, providing phone cards and mobile routers.
Fr John Lavers, a port chaplain in Southampton and the Stella Maris director of chaplaincy, painted a stark picture of what Christmas will be like for many seafarers. “Imagine being stuck far from home, unable to return to the family you haven’t seen for up to a year. That’s the reality facing around 400,000 seafarers right now. After working extended contracts, they’re stranded thousands of miles from home – desperate to be with family but at the mercy of airline cancellations and national quarantine rules.
“Artur, a Polish captain, missed the birth of his first child while working at sea. He told us, ‘There was nothing anyone could do to make me feel better. I have missed 70% of Christmas celebrations during my 30 years at sea.’ He was so grateful when a Stella Maris port chaplain visited his ship on Christmas Day last year with gifts for the crew. He said, ‘It made a difference knowing someone cared.’”
Since the pandemic began, the charity’s port chaplains have had to operate under tight restrictions, explained Julian Wong (pictured above), whose patch in East Anglia includes Felixstowe, one of the UK’s busiest ports. “Prior to the lockdown I was able to visit seafarers in their mess room, chat with the cook in the galley, or the officers and captain in the office. When lockdown started, I was only able to see to their needs at the bottom of the gangways.
“Seafarers, however, are still either not allowed shore leave or they are too afraid to go ashore. They used to take time off from their vessels to spend time at the seafarers centre or walk into town to do their shopping.” Many of the world’s seafarers are Catholic, often hailing from the Philippines, the Goa and Kerala regions of India, and Eastern Europe. Since the beginning of April, Steve Willows, a port chaplain in Immingham, Lincolnshire, has been conducting evening prayer live on the Stella Maris Facebook page. Each week, he has combined the gospel reading for the day with a reflection and decade of the rosary.
“This evening prayer we have started on Facebook will continue past this pandemic,” he says. When lockdown began, Steve made seafarers rosaries from twine and cord after watching a YouTube video. During Christmas, like other Stella Maris port chaplains, he will be safely delivering shoe boxes filled with items such as toiletries, chocolates, woolly hats, socks, and notepads, to seafarers.
In many cases, they have been put together by local parishes or schools, he explained. “We find that people are so generous in helping. They realise that being able to do something small like filling a box full of items can make a big difference to seafarers.”
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