An oil tanker captain in the Gulf gives the word on his radio, and up in the bow, hundreds of metres away, the first mate lets the anchor go. The plunging chain roars like the iron drums of doom, and a high singing whine rings through the whole ship. The deck vibrates underfoot until 50 tonnes of anchor hits the bottom. The mate calls on the radio: “One shackle up and down.”
This means the chain is now vertical. One shackle is 15 fathoms, fathoms are six feet, so we have about 27 metres of water between us and the mud and shell seabed. The captain now backs the ship as the chain rumbles out twice more. Then the mate locks her off and that’s it: a couple of dozen men and their ship, which is their home, their job, their safety — and, here in the war zone, their mortal danger — are a massive sitting duck for who knows how long.
It is difficult to communicate with them now, and impossible to name them. “Ship owners see no benefit in letting crews speak with the media, but they do see risk,” says Mark Dearn, head of communications for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, one of the more effective union voices in an industry notorious for its routine infringements of workers’ rights and safety, and for blacklisting those who step out of line.