Abdul Nasser Saleh says he rarely got a good night’s sleep during the near-decade he spent working without pay on a cargo ship abandoned by its owner at ports along the Red Sea.
By night, he tossed and turned in his bunk on the aging Al-Maha, he said, thinking of the unpaid wages he feared he’d never get if he left the ship. By day he paced the deck, stuck for the last two years in the seaport of Jeddah, unable to set foot on land because of Saudi Arabia’s strict immigration laws.
Leaving at last felt like returning to his “center of gravity,” he said.
Saleh’s plight is part of a global problem that shows no signs of abating. The United Nations has logged an increasing number of crew members abandoned by shipowners, leaving sailors aboard months and sometimes years without pay. More than 2,000 seafarers on some 150 ships were abandoned last year.
The number of cases is at its highest since the U.N.’s labor and maritime organizations began tracking abandonments 20 years ago, spiking during the global pandemic and continuing to rise as inflation and logistical bottlenecks increased costs for shipowners. Cases have touched all parts of the globe, with workers abandoned on a fish factory ship in Angola, stranded on an icebreaker in the Netherlands and left without food or fuel in Istanbul.
Yet the nations that register these ships and are required by treaty to assist abandoned seafarers sometimes fail to get involved in the cases at all. Tanzania, which registered the ship where Saleh was abandoned, never acted on his case or even responded to emails, said Mohamed Arrachedi, a union organizer who worked on Saleh’s case.
Shipowners often abandon crew members when they are hit by rising fuel costs, debt or unexpected repairs they can’t afford. Some owners vow to pay when their finances turn around. But those promises can mean little to the men on board, who often resort to handouts for food and basic supplies. Many are also supporting families back home and risk losing everything if they step off their ships.
Crew members or the countries where the ships are registered or docked can pursue the shipowners in court. But recovering past wages can be a yearslong battle that often fails.
Returning to Egypt in April was joyous, Saleh, 62, told media, but also brought sad news. His wife and son were badly in need of medical care, he said. They had struggled during his decade without an income.
Saleh, who was originally from Syria, said he had once been proud of his work as an engineer on the Al-Maha, which made its money ferrying livestock for Ramadan festivities between Sudanese and Saudi Arabian ports.
From tip to tail, the Al-Maha spans the length of a football field, covered in dust and dirt and rusted green paint. While stuck in Saudi Arabia, Saleh and a small group of crewmates, also from war-torn Syria, placed a prayer mat in the pilothouse overlooking the port. A stray cat they named Apricot took up residence on the ship and followed Saleh around.
Saleh ran laps along the deck at sunrise and sunset. Every day he clocked 1,500 meters, while around him mammoth container ships arrived and departed from the busy port as his situation stayed the same. His debts accumulated from years of borrowing money to help his family pay rent.
The days blurred into a painful monotony.
“I can’t tell day from night anymore,” he said in a video recording he shared with the news agencies in January while still aboard the ship, filmed as the day’s light faded and a pinkish glow cast over the harbor.
Owners abandon ships and crews for a myriad of reasons.
Cases first jumped in the early days of the pandemic, at a time when canceled shipments, port delays and quarantine restrictions pushed shipping traffic into disarray. At the same time, demand for goods by homebound consumers led to a rush of new orders for ships. But global trade soon shrank, and combined with spikes in fuel and labor costs, many of those new vessels are now at risk of being idled.
The increase in the number of cases logged in recent years is also due to better reporting efforts by the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization — the two U.N. agencies responsible for tracking abandonments. With seafarer advocates, they’ve worked to identify cases and assist abandoned crews.
Cases last year were “alarmingly surpassing the previous year’s record,” the ILO and IMO said in a report this winter.
Many ships that are abandoned are barely seaworthy and servicing less profitable routes unattractive to the world’s major container lines. They represent a fleet of smaller companies sometimes operating on the edge of legality, for which a minor financial hit can lead to a cascade of unforeseen problems.
Owners might decide it’s cheaper to abandon a ship than try to save it.
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