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2 WMU J. Maritime Aff. 1 (2003)

handle is hein.journals/wnujlmti2 and id is 1 raw text is: WMU JOURNAL OF MARITIME AFFAIRS, 2003, VOL. 2, NO.1, 1-3 The Imageof the Shipping Industry Editorial Maritime transport is entirely essential, but mostly invisible and wholly misunder- stood. Despite the fact that almost everyone on earth in some way benefits from its services, the general public in most countries has not the slightest comprehension of what shipping does and why it continues to be important. Depressing polls conducted on behalf of the industry among the public in various countries show the man and woman in the street to be totally ignorant of what it is that merchant ships do. There is no connection made between bananas and banana boats, nor even between the petrol poured into the car in the filling station and the world of the tanker. There is almost no contemporary school syllabus, in either primary or secondary systems, in which marine transport and its significance, features. Despite more than 90% of the world's trade by volume being hauled across the oceans in ships, the inference given to children who don't know any better, by teachers who should,is that most international transport utilises the aeroplane. It may be that the historical im- portance of ships and sea power might be covered somewhere in a history syllabus, or that the polluting qualities of tankers maybe included in citizenship or environmental science. It is a far from satisfactory situation, and one that undoubtedly contributes to the widespread ignorance about the 85,000 ships that ply the world's waters, half of this huge number carrying cargo or passengers. Modern shipping is, to those who know it, technologically fascinating and operating at the cutting edge, but what it does is completely taken for granted, much in the same way that electricity, the provision of clean water or effective sewage systems are taken for granted.We press a switch, or turn a tap and we expect that the service will be provided. Only when there is a power cut, water disconnected, or the sewage system running over do we notice the interruption of our service. The analogy with shipping is an obvious one; only a maritime disaster or a major pollution incident will alert the press and the public to the fact that shipping still exists. There are a number of reasons why modern shipping is afflicted with this depressing invisibility. The first, and most obvious is the depopulation of the industry in modern times, after it had changed within a generation from one that was labour intensive both ashore and afloat, into an extraordinarily productive, highly automated and lean manned operation. Illustrating this, one has only to consider the maritime industryin the port of London which, in the 1950s, directly employed some 150,000 people, in the ships and repair yards, the maritime infrastructure and above all the huge dock system. In that each of these people had a family group to which, because of their direct involvement some knowledge of shipping would have been transferred, probably more than a million