Book that reveals secrets of shipping

Shipping – the industry that brings us most of our consumer goods – remains somewhat “hidden” and secret, rarely spoken about, still less written about which is what inspired Leeds author and journalist Rose George to write her latest book Deep Sea and Foreign Going.

A fascinating exploration of the world of container shipping, the book seeks to shed light on an industry which George describes as “defiantly opaque”. She investigates some of the industry’s shadier aspects as well as the lives of those who work in it while also exploring its environmental impact – insights gained during a five-week voyage on a Maersk container ship, sailing from Felixstowe to Singapore via the Bay of Biscay, the Suez Canal, through the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden and into the Malacca Straits.

“This was the summer of 2010 when piracy was at its height,” says George. “There were around 500 people being held hostage at that time. I was quite nervous when we had to go on pirate watch.”

George had been to sea before, briefly, on a container ship while writing a travel piece for a newspaper and had enjoyed the experience so much, she wanted to go back. So, after the huge success of her previous book, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, which addressed the issue of sanitation, and feeling she needed “something to keep me occupied and stimulated for the next two to three years” she approached Maersk who eventually gave her permission to sail with them. “That was a big deal because they don’t normally take passengers,” she says. “It was really generous of them to do that.” With such unprecedented access, George was able to see first-hand the workings of a container ship, the Maersk Kendal, and its crew. She acknowledges she was extremely fortunate to have found herself on that particular ship, with the hugely experienced Captain Glenn at the helm. “He had been at sea for 42 years which meant that his career basically paralleled the rise in container shipping,” she says. “And he was a teacher – he actively tried to make me understand how the ship worked. He loved ships and the sea but he was genuinely dismayed at how the job had changed.”

A large part of the book focuses on the merchant navy men and women and the conditions they have to work in. Many seafarers are from the poorer nations – a significant percentage are Filipinos and East Europeans – and are expected to put in long hours for very little pay. In some cases they are being terribly exploited. As George writes at one point “buy your Fairtrade coffee beans by all means, but don’t assume that Fairtrade governs the conditions of the people who bring it to you.” She says that raising public awareness of the plight of some of the world’s seafarers is one of the reasons she wrote the book.

“There is still too much bad practice and exploitation in the industry and a lack of transparency.” She also explores environmental concerns. There is a section in the book devoted to the effect that the huge number of container ships currently travelling the seas has on the whale population – particularly in terms of noise pollution which makes it difficult for them to navigate and results in whales frequently being “run over” by ships.

“There is a really easy way of diminishing whale strikes and that is for the ships to slow down,” says George. “But there is a lot of resistance to that.” By the end of her voyage on the Maersk Kendal, George came to see the ship as home and says she would love to go back to sea again.

“It’s the wildest place on the planet – you could just disappear in a minute. It’s a truthful representation of our place in the world. We are not that important – we are so tiny and that’s quite comforting in a way.”

Writing about the big issues

Rose George was raised in Dewsbury and went to Wakefield Girls High School. She studied French and Italian at Oxford, followed by an MA in International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. Publications she has written for include the Guardian, Independent and New York Times. Her first book was A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World about the harsh realities of life as a refugee and her second The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste examined the world’s most pressing public health crisis.

Deep Sea and Foreign Going, Portobello Books, £14.99.