Maritime Charity Column: reversing the direction of travel on shore leave, by Katie Higginbottom, head of the ITF Seafarers' Trust

Whilst retired old seadogs reminisce about their adventures in foreign ports, seafaring today is a very different proposition. With luck you earn a good salary and have a career path, but at a cost: long hours, long contracts and barely time to set foot on dry land. The Covid-19 pandemic certainly did not help matters. With this in mind, the ITF Seafarers' Trust launched a seafarer survey to get a sense of the current situation and the attitude of today's seafarers.

With almost six thousand responses it was clear that the subject touched a nerve. The World Maritime University analysed the data, and the findings have been published in the report Shore Leave: Rare, Brief and in Danger of Extinction.

The results are telling:

• one in four seafarers do not get shore leave at all, and a third have only one or two incidents of shore leave during their contract
• 47% said their shore leave was less than 3 hours ashore
• seafarers on tankers and offshore vessels had less shore leave
• officers had less chance to go ashore than ratings and other ranks

The responses also reveal the depth of feeling amongst seafarers. This is not only about access to shore leave but about perceptions of neglect and injustice. For seafarers, the inability to take shore leave indicates a lack of respect for the profession. Reduced time in port, high workloads, increased bureaucracy and security restrictions have combined with multiple other factors to make shore leave a virtual impossibility.

The report concludes that nowadays 'being at sea means staying on ships', as access to shore leave access has been eroded. It asks whether the current situation is leading towards the extinction of shore leave as a viable concept.

The challenge now is to engage all stakeholders – from Flag States to Port States, agents to shipping companies, and seafarers themselves – to reverse the direction of travel.

• Read the full report