Reverend Stephen Miller places phone cards, newspapers, and DVDs into a backpack marked with The Mission to Seafarers’ logo. It is deep-sea blue, an oval-shaped picture of an angel flying over water. Below the picture, the motto reads Caring for Seafarers Around the World.
“These are recordings of recent soccer games”, says Miller, “they’re really popular, but when we visit a Filipino crew, we’ve got to take boxing matches”.
Bag packed, Miller makes his way to the Kowloon Public Pier, a five-minute walk from his office. He jumps aboard the mission boat, off on his first visit of the day. Some twenty minutes later, Stephen scrambles up a rope ladder dangling over the salt-encrusted edge of a 12,000 tonne container ship.
The Spanish owned boat is waiting at anchorage for containers due later that night. On board, 22 seamen from Latvia, Sri Lanka and the Ukraine are hard at work. A gruelling roster of four hours on, eight hours off, cycles continuously. “Ships don’t stop”, says Miller, 50, “you can’t take a day off when you’re out in the ocean, and you can’t take a day off when you’re at port”. They work seven days a week for months on end; rarely setting foot on land.
More than 90 per cent of the world’s goods are transported by ship. The shipping industry is critical, especially in Hong Kong, the world’s third busiest port. It has been estimated by academics from Hong Kong Polytechnic University that it would take 12 days for Hong Kong to become unlivable if arrivals of goods by sea were to stop. Miller is the senior chaplain at the Mission to Seafarers, one of more than 250 missions serving a population of 1.3 million seafarers at ports around the globe.