[BITList] British Shipping ??

[michael J Feltham]

LETTER RECEIVED FROM A READER IN THE UK

Newsclippings reader Roy Martin read the article Shipbuilding in Britain: how to reboot it, in edition 316 10.11.2017 with particular interest. Below you will find an article Roy submitted to the UK Transport Select Committee, in January, on a related subject. The UK government election would have meant that the working group was disbanded and this, and other submissions ,would never see the light of day.

The adequacy of the overall plan for the UK maritime sector.

This paper is submitted in response to the UK Transport Select Committee’s open invitation to contribute to the Committee’s Maritime Growth Study.The writer submits this as an individual who is keenly interested in the vital part that our merchant fleet can play in our prosperity following ‘Britexit’ and in aiding the country’s survival in the event of another war.

He is a Master Mariner. After thirteen years at sea he joined the management team of his company, later becoming General Manager. In 1979 the parent company transferred him to Singapore to be Managing Director of their Asian operation. He remained until 1986, returning to the UK at his own request. He built Smit International SEA Ltd into the most successful marine salvor in the region, operating an average of ten ships/salvage units, registered under the British, Singaporean and Bahamas flags. He has written three books on Merchant Service subjects, two more are in preparation.

Executive Summary

• At the outbreak of the Second World War the British Merchant Fleet was the largest in the World. Since the 1960s it has been in serious decline.
• Now even the UK Ship Registeronly ranks nineteenth. While it might provide an income for the Treasury it is no substitute for a British fleet.

• Without an adequate merchant fleet we are unable to feed ourselves, or meet the Prime Minister’s wish for us to become ‘a great global trading nation’ again.
• Most of the fleets which have some of their ships flying the UK flag are private companies; in an emergency they would have no loyalty to Britain.

• TheMerchant Navy enabled us to survive the Second World War. By bringing in at least one third of our food and much of the raw materials; also by supporting evacuations, landings, troop, and materiel movements.
• The decline of the marine insurance, legal, and shipping bankingwill inevitably follow the reduction in our fleet. Already the number of salvage contracts arbitrated in London has declined by about 70% since 1990.

• The shipping industry is in recession, this provides an opportunity to re-equip our fleet. We still have a core of skilled mariners. They are ageing and have good reason to be dispirited; but the writer believes that they would answer a call, as they did in 1939, and we could rebuild the fleet.
1. Fortunately for Britain it entered the Second World War with the largest merchant fleet in the World. After the war the Labour Government of Clement Attlee recognised the importance of regaining the country’s pre-eminent position in shipping. The Conservative administrations that followed continued to encourage re-equipping the fleet; but from the mid-1960s it seemed that successive governments lost interest. The Wilson Government of that time began with the wholesale removal of the incentives that had been put in place to take some of the considerable risk out of ship-owning. Escalating fuel and labour costs coincided with the arrival of accountants on boards and quarterly reporting. Everything combined to convince owners that there was a better return to be made in other industries – though many have found that this was not so. At the same time British owners failed to see the benefits of containerisation. The Thatcher Government completed the hatchet job.

2. The UK Ship Register gives an illusion that we have an adequate merchant fleet. Overseas owners use the Red Ensign as a flag of convenience; as soon as a better (i.e. cheaper) alternative becomes available they move. Almost all of the ships on the register have foreign crews, many from Russia and its former satellites. Some carry two British cadets to meet the flag requirements; these young people probably don’t get suitable training and we should also be concerned for their welfare. Even with this virtual fleet we now only rank nineteenth in the World. All that can be said for this registry is that it provides the Treasury with an income, which goes some way to replace the invisible earnings that the industry hitherto provided.

3. The Prime Minister says that she wants Britain to be ‘a great global trading nation’ following Britexit; to do this we need to rebuild our merchant fleet to carry the exports and to bring in raw materials. We also need to bring in food; for this country has not been able to feed itself since Victorian times.

4. There are a number of container ships that fly the Red Ensign: among them Atlantic Container Lines, the beneficial owners of this company are Grimaldi. Another organisation that has had ships under the British flag is the Mediterranean Shipping Corporation, privately owned by the Aponte family from Naples – it does not publish accounts. One of their UK flag ships, the MSC Napoli, was beached in Lyme Bay in 2007, having suffered structural failure. A recent search of half of their 471 fleet failed to find one British registered ship: though they are in the process of puttingthree former Hanjin Line vesselsunder the Isle of Man flag.A third group that is flying the Red Ensign on one or more of their vesselsare the French CMA-CGM Line, again with foreign crews. It would be folly indeed to expect that entities such as these would have any interest in our prosperity post Britexit, or our survival in a war. It is difficult to get meaningful figures for the number of British owned merchant vessels that are suitable for deep sea voyages and even more difficult to separate out the many specialist oil industry ships. What can be said is that the fleet is a shadow of what it was.

5. During the Second World War Britain lost about four thousand merchant ships. The exact number is not clear as the official total of 4,786 ‘British Merchant Vessels Lost’ includes Allied and Neutral ships. Even in the darkest days of 1941 our merchant fleet delivered at least a third of the food that the country desperately needed. They did so much more. Merchant ships took part in every evacuation; particularly noteworthy, and largely unknown to this day, was the evacuation of 139,000 British and 46,000 Allied troops in the three weeks after Dunkirk. At the same time they carried many thousands of civilians to safety, often in basic tramp ships. Most of the service personnel and civilians who got away from Singapore were saved by merchantmen. They also backed up every landing, culminating in D-Day when half of the Infantry Landing Ships (as opposed to the smaller Landing Craft) were provided by the Merchant Navy, they served both British and American beaches. The first coaster convoy reached Normandy later that day; their larger cousins, in this case twelve British Liberty ships, arrived on schedule on the following morning. Each carried about 350 troops, their vehicles, fuel and stores – plus thousands of tons of war materiel. In all over 850 merchant ships were involved in the operation, crewed by almost 50,000 men and at least one woman. The merchant fleet ferried many hundreds of thousands of troops across the Atlantic and even manned Merchant Aircraft Carriers.The Falklands crisis was their last hurrah. The ships that went ranged from the Queen Elizabeth 2, the Canberra, and the Atlantic Conveyor,to many small cargo ships and tugs. All were British manned. We could no longer send such a fleet.

6. Some draw comfort from the continuing strength of the support services, such as marine insurance, maritime lawyers, and banking firms; but these will wither with time. This is already noticeable in at least one sector: marine salvage work is often carried out under what is known as Lloyds Salvage Form; operations under this form of contract are settled by arbitration. A recent Roose and Partners newsletter shows that an average of forty seven such contracts were carried out in the years 2013/2015; compared to sixty seven in previous three years. Going further back the figures on the Lloyd’s website show an even more pronounced drop. The earliest totals quoted are for 1990; in the three years from then the averagenumber of new contracts were 173. 

7. At the time of writing the international shipping business is in recession. Panamax container vessels as young as ten years old are being sold for demolition, a similar situation exists with bulk carriers.This could present an opportunity to rebuild our national fleet; but, by the time this paper is read, the chance may well have passed. As has been mentioned before the shipping industry is cyclical and one needs to take a long term view.

8. After Britexit Britain will need a national fleet and that fleet should be manned by British officers and ratings. While no one would expect the numbers to equal the 180,000 or so who were at sea during the Second World War; there is surely an opportunity to provide employment for, say, a quarter of that number. In the war, the Merchant Service also provided manpower for the Royal Navy, both those who were temporarily or full-time members of the then Royal Naval Reserve; and many others who kept their civilian status but joined under what was known as the T124 scheme.

9. We do still have a number of British mariners, but their average age is high. Their moral is probably low as they have often been replaced, often without notice, by crew from other countries who are prepared to work for lower wages and tolerate poor conditions. Our merchant seamen are a resilient and stoic group, as was shown whenso many returned in 1939, despite the way they had been treated in the Depression. Given the right encouragement they would again answer the call.

10. The writer was only a humble Apprentice at sea during the early 1950s, so he has no idea of the financial arrangements that were put in place by the governments of the time. They were obviously successful as the fleet was rapidly re-equipped; so similar arrangements should again be arranged. Subsidies should be avoided. There are still a few British companies in shipping; they include Bibby, Clarkson, Denholm, Fisher, Houlder, Mann and Weir. Some of the other families who were involved still have members with current or recent experience. Crews should be given security of employment and know that they are valued. If the government wishes to continue the present UK Ship Register it could be reformed as an International Register, on the same lines as the Norwegian International Register. A new National Register should then be set up for bone fide British ships. As the Red Ensign has lost much of its value now it is flown on foreign ships and every yacht one sees, perhaps we should consider putting a new National Fleet under the Blue Ensign!

Written by : Roy Martin


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