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AoS helps seafarers keep in touch with home


While the internet and mobile phones have become basic tools of communication for most people, it's a different story on board ships.

Despite all the modern technology on ships, most don't have access to the internet. Given that some seafarers can be at sea for weeks or months, this means they have no contact with their families back home.

This weekend [July 10] is Sea Sunday when the Church asks us to pray for and support the work of Apostleship of the Sea (AoS), whose chaplains and ship visitors provides pastoral care and spiritual support to seafarers.

The maritime industry is huge. According to the International Maritime Organization, there are almost 1.2 million seafarers working on 55,000 ships sailing the world's oceans.

And it's thanks to seafarers that the shelves in our shops and supermarkets are full. Around 95% of the goods imported to the UK arrive by sea. That's everything from tea and tomatoes to washing machines and furniture.

While ships might have a satellite phone or a satellite-based connection on board, its main purpose is keeping in contact with the shipping company and receiving important updates, e.g. a change in route, a new regulation from the company, or a weather forecast," she explained.

Polina Baum-Talmor, an AoS ship visitor in Cardiff and a PhD student at the Seafarers International Research Centre at Cardiff University, said, "Using the satellite phone on a ship is normally very expensive and requires permission from the captain. Because of this, in many cases seafarers will have to wait until they reach port until they have access to a phone or the internet."

This is why AoS port chaplains and ship visitors carry a supply of Wi-Fi and mobile phone cards with them when they go on board a ship.

At one time, seafarers used to be able to look forward to time ashore after arriving in a port. But the changes in the shipping industry mean that the time they get ashore is now very short. And some ships never actually dock. Oil tankers, for example, may connect to a pipeline somewhere off shore.

Paul Atkinson, AoS port chaplain on the Tyne, detects that
things might be slowly changing. "As we visit ships we are finding more and more ship owners are allowing crew to have a limited internet allowance daily. But it is still a small percentage of all the ships that we visit.

"Ships that don't have internet access on board crew wait for us to visit to take them ashore, supply them internet sim cards, cheap rate mobile phone sim cards, or allow them to use our MiFi device, which we provide free. When I visit a ship, phone and internet access is always the number one request.

Sister Marian Davey, AoS port chaplain in East Anglia, said, "Some seafarers also use Skype so they can see their families at key times, perhaps as the children are coming home from school. I will often hear a seafarer singing a lullaby for his little one going to sleep."

However, to use Skype, seafarers need access to the internet, which can also be expensive, she added. "If they can't afford it, particularly if they haven't yet received their first payment after joining a ship, then I can offer them a limited amount of mobile Wi-Fi due to the generosity of some local parishioners who sponsor a modem for me."

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