The UK remains an important maritime nation - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Lester May, Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy – retired, Reachview Close, Camden Town, London.
September 3 was Merchant Navy Day. It is easy to forget about merchant shipping and merchant seafarers but over 90 per cent of our trade, by volume, is by sea – some 75 per cent by value.
There are around 50,000 sea-going ships of all types, of 1,000 tons or more, on the seven seas, with a similar number of smaller ships. Almost two million merchant seafarers, the majority from just five nations – The Philippines, Russian Federation, Indonesia, China and India – keep these ships underway.
Maritime choke-points worldwide are always a concern, as is obvious from the 6,000 seafarers on some 500 vessels still stranded in The Gulf, owing to Iran’s denial of safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
For the UK, there is one port call every five minutes, every day of the year. Our nation relies on these shipping movements for its survival and, indeed, our islands have not been food sufficient since the 1750s. Significant energy is imported by sea – shipping is the lifeblood of our economy.
Internationally, the UK remains an important maritime nation, its shipping industry employing some 98,000 people, and it remains the centre for many of the world’s professional maritime service providers.