Seapower; 103; "Trade Winds, Trade Wars"

Oh. A once prosperous mill town in America's south where the mills have closed the jobs gone away. Yes it hurts you when you go to see your school the panel just looks like if it was your first what working meals at the pantry are for jobs one day and the number of

jobs for people and too young to make sure it's you damn sure too many are nimble Asia on the other side of the world where economies are booming. Verse 9 Hong Kong international terminals the container ship envoy is ready to sail carrying up to 50 million dollars worth of Asian trade to markets in North America. Captain MARTIN Where is concerned about the worsening weather. If it's monsoon season that does not mean that storms caused cargo loading delay and hour delay may cost thousands of dollars.

Well they say they want one and then a benevolent envoy is waiting for a single box steel. Forty four feet long the last of 12 hundred already aboard. In 30 years containers have revolutionized world trade. Cheap reliable efficient. They've made possible the new economic power of Asia. They've also revolutionized the business of shipping in a world where only the efficient survive. The time factor but what we found out that for every two minute delay at the terminal sailing multiply that by 52 weeks did all translate to somewhere in the region of $750000 that we would have wasted today want to meet here to talk about two major issue that faces us today.

These men run one of the biggest container lines in the world. Oh CEL. The Orient overseas container line based in Hong Kong. Owners of envoy and 32 ships like her CEO fights for market share in one of the most cutthroat business is on Earth. More than 100 major freight lines once fine for the world for a few remain. With shipping charges often no higher than 40 years ago. Competition is fierce. Rate wars. Savage right. Yeah are you going to stand by on board a lot of hard stuff that you'll stay and talk to you. Yeah it's I mean you have begun to build what I know about. We are talking the stuff by also. Yeah OK. Oh one out of every one hour. Yeah OK. Well it's the company's The best day for Dell so they've asked that we do it so

they will have it. It's all good freight. You know we have to face my latest. Oh yeah we'll do it. It's an hour delay so that means you'll get to go shopping about 6:30 in the morning which I think is good because it probably means we won't have to I can be direct but I think tomorrow morning the Hong Kong container ports handle 8 million containers every year. One hundred twenty six million dollars worth of freight. Much of it heading for America. FAA Oh shorts in New York one of the world's most prestigious toy stores. End of the line for container loads of toys that began their journey in Hong Kong and other Asian ports. It's 30 years ago. Toys cheap plastic and made in Hong Kong

were first signs of a coming dominance of the Pacific Rim Asian economies. The Asian toys still dominate the U.S. market but like yeah we're going for a lot of it. Every time I walk through a toy shop I'm thinking of a new way to create a larger display area or find a new niche or a new market. We will go anywhere we can to make a profit. Twenty seven year old David Chan is a new breed of Asian entrepreneur young and ambitious eager to profit from the growing global economy. He's senior executive from blue box toys in Hong Kong. With only 40 percent of current sales in the U.S. It's a market he's anxious to conquer. You knew you had time I thought this is on the loose I wonder whether or not a guy like what.

You got it right. I mean this is really I think you're on the worse it will be boy that will ever be China. Let me tell you what I would like to know. I work on the packaging line. I started working seven years ago when I was nine years old. Yeah A.J. makes toys at blue box in Hong Kong. She and millions like her in countries throughout the region. But the other reason for Asian economic success they make the consumer goods that flow along east west trade routes to every country on earth even in booming Hong Kong Liang and her fellow workers are cheap labor. But as the economy grows so do their expectations. Gosh. While he was up there in the beginning I was happy. But I'm not so happy now.

I'm thinking of changing jobs. I like to make 6000 Hong Kong dollars a year. Well I'm the lucky one. Liang makes toys with plastics from Korea chemicals from America and paper from Japan. Components shipped anywhere in the world assembled and then shipped out again. She when Liang and her fellow workers get too expensive. This factory will move the cheap container freight and cheap labor. The foundations on which ages economic power is built factories don't need to stay home anymore anywhere containers can reach assembly lines going down these boxes have changed the face of the world may have accelerated economic decline in the older industrial powers of the West. Birth nine the Hong Kong International Terminal C O C L

envoy ready to say like a whole I thank you. They claim that you know that I would call it like everything. It's day one on a 12 and a half thousand mile journey along the east west trade routes. It takes envoy to Taiwan Japan the US and Canada. Loading and unloading in major ports before returning again to Hong Kong. Exactly 35 days from now carrying up to 50 million dollars worth of trade envoy makes a sizable contribution to the growing trade deficit between Asia and America. Twelve hundred such ships now travel the world's sea lanes on

average 35 leave Hong Kong every day 365 days a year. The rain has eased but in the crowded waters of Hong Kong harbor departure provides unexpected hazard. It's a very busy around here it's the sort of place where you get a lot of the things that you get a fishing boat sometimes. Gets a bit if they are. The big. Winners. Everything I hope will be found by that oh ok. This is the only. Adding to Captain Where's problems. Containers stacked nine high in front of the bridge effectively blocking his view forward. In 1992 there were more than 200 collisions in Hong Kong harbor. There is that they think they forgot to take it easy.

They get to. Make a few fishing boats are out of there now today. On. Voting board and meeting voters just like the next guy taking up. Running. He did that the play by ear. Thank you very much for. Trade. The riches of the East. Moving by sea from Asia to the nations of the West as it has for thousands of years. Off the east coast of Africa are living reminders of when the east west trade

began. Captain Mohammad and his four man crew are en route in their Tao cycle. To the ancient trading port of Mombasa. They are Swahili a mixture of African and Arab blood and cultures from the eighth to the 15th century as Swahili traders linked to the gold and ivory producers of East Africa with the merchants of the Asia trade. They traveled far to the east into the Indian Ocean where east west trade has met and mingled for millennia. The island city of Mombasa Kenya. Once a center of Swahili trade and civilization. Now a modern container port. Containerization has brought uniformity to world trade. Identical steel boxes handled by identical machines wherever they may be.

But in the shadow of the giant cranes the Old Harbor isn't much changed from Swahili times. No no no you got on there would come but I don't want to come down on you. And the network NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. Captain Mohammad and his crew hurried to get their dollars loaded. In the old way. Before machines and containers made freight handling. Just another business. Such Ogier is on her way home catching the last breath of the NE monsoons before the rainy season sets. The trade winds that fill her sail made possible the Asia trade. Northeast in winter across the Indian Ocean on journeys that took weeks often months

began home in spring and summer following the southwest monsoon. Right. To. The right. The Dow came here long before we were born during the time of the messenger the prophet of the dollar was here. You know a place that. Only a dollar is business. Big business. And it's the work we have always done. For money for trade. Is the most important thing. To us. Early in the 16th century Arab in Swahili dominance of the east west trade routes came to an abrupt end. Driven out by the European competitors who were ruthless. Armed with new technology much more powerful

ships. A line of businesses a very competitive business. We have been constantly upgrading our service at the moment the margin ever that was set for arrival times at a port is within six hours. This is. Really your thanks. So you could put a 9 volt schedule integrity as shippers call it must be rigidly maintained on boys day to day schedule is planned 12 months ahead. Okay thank you. One day out of Hong Kong and envoys settling into a shipboard routine. Captain Martin where's been sailing the oceans of the world for 30 years. A

Scotsman. He's the only Westerner aboard his crew a Filipino. His officers Chinese. Rayman Wang is on boys chief officer. He stands a four to eight bridge watch twice a day. By your mother at least you know you've got to I mean he is responsible for cargo and just about everything else. It's the toughest job on board. Sleep is in short supply. All right. Economy rules everywhere even down to the cost of food. Ship's cook long car has less than $5 a head to feed three hot meals a day to every member of the crew. A few years ago catering on a ship like envoy would include two cooks a purser

even a couple of stewards today. Wong does it alone. Envoy has a crew of 18 some container ships as few as 12. A few years ago a big cargo ship would have more than 40 men aboard. The Filipino crew are cheap and work regular hours a day five overtime is costly so not encouraged. Except when they import. Then there is no alternative. Envoys eight hundred fifty feet long the length of three football fields. With so few people on board the great ship seems almost deserted a ghost ship. On a ship is not going to cost us too many jobs to fill. That's the way. They want to eat. I eat meat but if I.

Sell it. No time for you to feel lonely. Envoy approaches the coast of Taiwan slowing down to pick up the local pilot in just two hours she'll ever cow some harbor. One of 25 huge container ships to dock here today. No matter what type of ship they're on no matter what speak it doing it change the light. It seemed so natural passing beneath the waves as changes in the title of the site is one speak up we used the book to put Swetnam for five days. Singapore 568 was Bangkok three weeks minimum three weeks I've been to Bangkok 6 7 5 in the shortest time I ever stayed in Bangkok the CTD then go down to Indonesia. But maybe not the rest of the break shake it off to

Bangkok you. Encounter envoy will have less than eight hours in porch. No time for surely for any other kind of relaxation. I think of all the visits to the local churches and the fight of faith here. He used to have these organized too is in the old days you know that bin Laden had a recruiting fillies to show it in the colleges not to go to college and that should the cadets to be escorted ashore to go to the local church and it was a pineapple pending factory in Philippi who put up a load of horseshit that they were up a local problem as fast as their little legs could take it with. Taiwanese port officials are first aboard. By the time he's finished with paperwork Martin Ware will be lucky to even set foot on dry land before envoys sails again.

Fully normal people say what they want to enjoy their life or so they want to go shopping going to get something. Blocking one entry. But for this type of shit you get excellent the no times. You Knowshon trade victory once went to nations with the best ships the most skilful sailors. No more. Containers leveled the playing field of cargo handling so mechanical that ships and shippers are just extensions of a factories assembly line. As impersonal as the machines they employ. Captain Mohammad is a reminder of a more human time an East-West trade. He has brought such a good mood now a quiet backwater but once a May just why he trading center with Asia. In the 15th century huge Chinese fleets filled this harbor.

Giraffe from close by will once even send as gifts back to the Emperor of China himself. Captain Mohammed's cargo today is more modest mangrove poles for the local building industry. No machinery here. Trucks and cars are prohibited on the island. Donkeys still provide the main transportation just as they did when the spice trade was at its height. Like most Swahili captain Mohammad and his crew are devout Muslims their religion first brought by Arab traders spread on the monsoon Windsor India Indonesia even China itself. A faith carried as often by trade. As by the sword. Of almost a billion Muslims worldwide. A large percentage of their faith to the training Tao's that sail east between the ninth and the 15 centuries.

In the US. This is the Asia trade's greatest legacy. The cargoes they brought back poured into the markets of the Middle East silks and sandal wood. Porcelain. And the most valuable of all spices the rarest worth their weight in gold in cafes and coffee houses sailor's tales of exotic lands to the east were told and retold. Of Sinbad the Sailor and seven headed serpents of strange enchantments and untold treasures. These stories spread north to Europe. A continent just beginning its outward

expansion imposing its will on the rest of the world. Portugal Spain England Holland. Seafaring nations anxious to grab their share of the rich sea trade with Asia. Trade previously conducted in peace would now be defined by war. A Dutch official wrote home we cannot carry out a trade without war nor war without trade. Five sixteen twenty eight all in control the agent trade out fighting all competitors and. It forced out the Portuguese. It beat back being English. For 100 years. Finally Holland was the strongest trading power in the world. Amsterdam once the richest city on earth. Its Asia trade the

monopoly of a massive multinational trading group. Of EOC the Dutch East India Company. More powerful than many countries it held much of Asia in its grip. Planting colonies that attracted more than a million Dutch to Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. See. The old Mr Who are you. If you look closely you can see a man waving as having farewell. And even a man raising his glass. They are leaving. For me. Yes. Shell said. They will spend nine months on the sea its stay between 5 and 10 years in Asia. And then spend another nine months coming home. And before before will be a couple storms out.

Of motivic Wagner is a historian with a passion for the VO era. Every summer he takes his family sailing from the same harbor the giant East India men ships left hundreds of years before at the start of a long journey to Asia. One more doable. Imagine this world of stealing fighting climbing the masts falling overboard in a storm. There were women too but they were tucked away below decks and it was a man's world on board ship. In the 17th and 18th century. The Dutch had the best ships in the world. Powerful enough to out sail and I would fight any rival. They hate. I see these ships as the space ships of the 17th century. They discovered the new parts of the world. They saw the new animals new people new countries.

Will involve a man with a dream to bring the Hollands triumphant pastoral back to life. Ranked by plank spar by spar he has recreated the greatest East India man of them all. But Savio named for Holland's Asian capital now called Jakarta in Indonesia. 65 times smaller than on boy ships like but Zawia with the technological marvels of their age. Queens of the Asia trade. In seven months they would build such a ship. Many people who worked on these books for the most part could not read or write. They did not make diagrams. They made them. Completely. From memory. It is now we find the craft again. We dug it up.

Now we can see again how beautiful the bus boy if I'm back before I feel I'm there. I've turned back the hands of time. These were the container ships of their time strong deficient bringing home a trade on which Holland depended. Stateful pulled out of the chill but obvious sales lot of it Wagner can only bring the VO C era to life for his students through paintings in the Amsterdam museum and his own unique storytelling gifts light up and false. Do you feel the need to imagine nine months on the ocean food to finished a beer on drink a bill the clenched to avoid the maggots and all the revolting things floating in the liquid it will end up in that meat and vegetables were pickled. So salty so much thirst. Water was called in the sail to drink.

But they returned with riches like pepper. That's what it was all about. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the spice trade was worth 2.5 billion guilders to the Dutch economy more than eighteen trillion dollars at today's value. The treasures of the east own been exploited by the nations of the West. A trade worth fighting to protect. Europe and America control the east west trade for the second half of the 20th century. Until Asia began to take control of its own economic destiny producing faster cheaper. And smarter. Regimes a trade war in this country. We were with the fall of the wall and on the economic front line. And this manufacturing industries are yours and mine next to the steel it's the second most important national security.

In 1990 3000 American textile workers marched on Washington to protest job losses caused by cheap Asian imports. In the past 12 years more than a fifth of America's 2.3 million textile workers have lost their jobs. Containerization and cheap labor are the cause. Far across the Pacific. Envoys approaching Yokohama in Japan. This is her last call before the long Pacific crossing to North America. What. About. The long. Haul. She Vavasour Raymond Wang has already served forty eight bridge watches and he still has a long night's work ahead supervising the loading of envoy's cargo.

It's a critical task. If containers aren't exactly balanced on void could become unstable at sea. OK. Come to bring aboard it. When I joined this company. I already know what it is because. I can I said it's OK for me. But for most of the people. They cannot stand for that type of life. It's broken all the time. Not enough west.

Call me up. If I can stay here for six months. I must think of us. I think if. It's a grueling schedule with no margin for error. Every container must be last securely to Woods fan the Pacific oceans where storms. This too is Raymond's responsibility. A responsibility that won't end until his six month tour of duty is completed four months from now. 7:30 a.m. envoy will not side land again until Seattle eight days from now. The riches of Asia are all loaded aboard. But sealed inside twelve hundred steel boxes. Their contents anonymous mysterious. I know.

A single container can hold 16000 pairs of jeans. It's worth more than a million dollars or newsprint worth less than a thousand. Electronic computers toys or cigarettes. Once sealed inside a container there's no way to tell. And I hear containers is it. Security is one of the. Bring it back to. Kabul is more safe in the old days it was all open store a lot of things like whiskey and spirits of any kind especially just before Christmas we had loads of thousands of cases of whiskey in anything that maybe had it it was we were one loading liquor store you know that was one great guy. I was making my question to make the second make myself walking along with that look at that was down there and he had found one piece of skull. This is the first that he was very keen you want to do everything. And he'd taken his folks to the site and he was sitting on it. But those two stevedores lying behind him and they had removed the

side of the car and they were moving the ball out of the car from underneath this guy's bottom. People you know and he didn't know he didn't feel it you know I think the second mate and I were just not in that lot because there's no way we were going to take this bottle away from this guy. They owned up. Before cargo went into containers it was a PITA pilferage that was the main crime in other words lots of people would take lots of little bits. Then suddenly that is how they put it work in these big steel books isn't the criminal's face for the challenge and takes a good look. And then he responds to the challenge because he's in it for big money. Can Locke was a senior British policeman. Now he works for the International Maritime Bureau a London based organization set up to investigate maritime crime across the oceans of the world. It's headed by another ex policeman Eric Allen. The less a failure of the shipping industry means to say the extremely easy

to commit for want to sell people not just to target those to falsify documents of title like the bills of lading crime in the high seas amounts to 13 billion dollars every year and that's a huge amount of money. Like Interpol the bureau is land based equivalent. Most investigations are by fax and computer. Cargo crime is largely white collar detection. A matter of painstaking routine sifting information looking for a single clue that may crack the case. Everything. You know that I. Want to. The board of directors. Channel the Jordanian ship of colas as I see is regular French I. Don't know. So. That when the channel is off the. Show because it doesn't say it doesn't know and. It's going to make some inquiries to. Look it up for us. It just sounds all this suspicious.

The Bureau must keep track of all the latest developments in computer crime. Seals are broken and the contents stolen. Gold containers can disappear from 40 area. Containers hide all sorts of smuggled cargo drugs even illegal immigrants. But the worst losses come from fraud. A forger a man a fast a good customer and a container arriving empty but with the wrong cargo at his destination. With just a little forwards in the nation from the ship. Either they're the victims or the perpetrators organize gangs of overseas Chinese very highly organized underground banking system very destructible suspected to drugs as well. Drugs have always been part of the Asia trade. Opium is its most shameful chapter. Opium smuggled into China by European and American merchants as they took even

greater profits from the Asia trade. It began with T China t first carried West by the Dutch East India men in the 17th century. Initially a luxury then a national obsession throughout northern Europe especially England. She was traded for silver bullion. The Chinese wouldn't take anything else. For. It. But if I. Had six 88 89 90 91 I stick freight like the three of them like I got about 1 4 5 6 8 here in London three million dollars whether she will be auctioned in the next hour. Such auctions have occurred for centuries so 150 years ago the team merchants were princes of the east west trade. Powerful enough to make

governments do their bidding. I've only got to moan out about 1:40 But if I'm the British Treasury was drained as silver bullion poured out to pay for China cheat on 50 50 that you are the economic superpower of the age had a massive trading deficit with Asia tonight. 6. The product was needed and the Chinese merchants would accept instead of silver. What's the result. They found it in opium grown in British India shipped to China in exchange for Jean. By 1836. Opium was the single most important trade item anywhere in the world. And opium would join the devil's embrace. Trading one could not exist

without the other. The more Chinese became addicts the more money made by the Western powers 12 million addicts by 1836. Britain now ran a trading surplus with China and when China tried to stamp out this illegal traffic Britain retaliated the trade war became a shooting war. On November 30 239 just two modern British warships wiped out an entire Chinese fleet the first battles of the Opium Wars. Western technology had triumphed. China conceded the island of Hong Kong to Britain and the Western powers had what they had always wanted. A permanent foothold in China.

It was a colony brought into existence by a trade in narcotics and the seven. And forty one. Only one body by the mid 1840s tea was being grown outside China as well and the east west traders were in a race for markets 51. It was one of Britain's oldest brokerage houses headed by Michael Weinstein. Well the basic thing was to build the fastest ship and get them with a very valuable cargo. The new season's TVs from from the Orient to London as quickly as possible because such epic of produce is too fast you got the best prize. New technology would again decide the winners in this new east west trade race. The Clippers the fastest ships afloat able to carry tea opium and other high priced cargoes to market three times faster than all competitors. The Golden Age of Clippers would last less than 25

years by 1880 steamships had taken their place but nothing since has so powerfully evoked the romance of the sailing era. Off the port of Galveston in Texas the sails of a 100 year old American ship still feel with the trade with. The bark Alysa has been carefully restored to her original condition. Although built after the Golden Age of clippers are all volunteer crew get a flavor of how it was to ride the trade winds across the seven seas. OH LOOK A. Bit. Of romanticism. The way I look. But. By the people on your. Friend. Nothing far away. The work is not romantic.

OK. Mark Boal. Don't fit into right. That ever get on the way back. Get out and get out of the way that it was a. Little. Bit. Oh. OK. Oh. Right. Right. Oh you never understand the sea until you tried to say. Is it one of our mates but it's sort of like a goodbye a lamp you can look at it but until you've heard it played you haven't really seen or heard of violence. So we take the approach that the good. Ship. Restored just to stay alive. We keep sailing. That's. Just the most wonderful thing about it is that. Still. Every difficult step. On. The.

Right. For the volunteers it's a wonderful afternoon out. But they're on a calm sea and they'll be safe back in port before dark. For the real sailors who sailed the real clipper ships through every season and ocean on earth. Life wasn't so easy. The sea knows if you're afraid of or a sailor rode home to his son after rounding Cape Horn in the 1880s if you letter she'll kill you faster than you can say your prayers. Fear Her. If you have any sense of lookers straight me-I and respect

her for her power. That way. You may come save her. But for great container ships like envoy even the mighty force of the ocean has been tamed. The ocean routes are like freeways fast and safe with danger kept at arm's length by computers and satellite technology. Oh yeah. Living. Together. With men and machines pushed to the limit in the drive for greater efficiency and greater economy. Everything is not always smooth sailing. I.e. the money already coming up.

Don't we all thinking that it might be Yesterday we had to inspect the ship's engines. It takes a long time and creates a lot of dust. We don't know yet my what the ship is quite old. The schedule is so tight we have a hard time in the engines proper the things that you know that there's been a lot of changes in the shipping industry especially in engineering. We have fewer and fewer people you know in the last few years. Some of the most serious accidents and C have been caused by exhaustion as few a man must take on greater responsibility. The drive for greater economy continues as some shipping lines are computerizing their engine rooms altogether to cut down on engineers.

She favors a Raymond Wang briefly off duty and too tired even Joe returned to his cabin. Technology is everywhere on boy uses an experimental new on board guidance system called Ocean routes a network of communications satellites linked to computers that can calculate the most fuel and time efficient course to bring envoy into port exactly on schedule. Their own service from Hong Kong to Hong Kong. It's 35 days. Each leg of the journey is carefully calculated with contingency put in for bad weather. Around the same circumstances. We leave Hong Kong to coach some coaching to Nagoya Nagoya to Yokohama Yokohama to Seattle Seattle Vancouver. Toby Toby Young

from Hong Kong. 1 round 35 days let me start all over again. From going like. This like a regular bus service. That's what we did. Envoy has crossed the Pacific. Reaching Seattle its first North American port. 15 container ships will reach America's western seaboard today. Carrying up to a billion dollars worth of imports from Asia. Not for mine. World number nine is a good day. Bruce Clark is a truck driver in Seattle container port. His job today helping unload on boy's cargo. He's a vital but often unnoticed cog in the east west trade machine. Trailer. Where the rats. Are. No. Winners. Here. Here are some of. The really high. Fives rushing. Toward.

The back door have a story. Currently. There are five. Right. Now because the check in or the guards to get us up. To date. Every terrorist Guard unit out. There are heavily guarded. And Seattle's container port envoys unloading and reloading continues. Containers full of imports textiles furniture electronics all the consumer goods without which today's high tech world would grind quickly to all. Looking for for. A little sip. Better still. 1 8 0 6 that's a 40 footer. They are. Very. Good. A good percentage of everything used by Americans on a daily basis whether at work

or in the home has been imported from overseas in containers just like this. It's a little bit slow. To get on. Without low cost efficient container freight. No amount of cheap foreign labor could have such a devastating effect on the older industrial economies of the West. New technology forcing a major change in the Windsor trade. As I have so many times before. Textile mills that once offered good jobs are gone. For the losers in this new trade war. Becoming a part of history is no comfort. Machines on which economies depended now lie abandoned in a field.

Rusting. Forgotten. I really hate. The. Mayo Clinic. They've no other place about how to do work. How you pace get it you know they can no money just on unemployment pay and it really hurts the whole family. You can't have the things that you had when you had a bad situation. For now thousands of factories and mills across America fall silent. They're victims of a global economy. Victims of offshore labor. Victims of cheap container freight. These are casualties in a trade war that for now is being won by new Asian economies far away on the Pacific Rim. It's opened up a.

Lot of tension for trucker Bruce Clark his working shift finished for the day. The irony of his job doesn't escaping. With a little thanks. Yes it was one of three things. Say. They Taiwan. And Japan. There's two sides of the trade. There's always going to be a trade trade where I got wind back up to the station for jobs to build on. For now convoys Asian imports have been unloaded and it's time to start back home carrying America's exports to Asia. Envoys condo will be worth less than a quarter of what it was on the way over. As long as ocean trade continues ships like envoy will carry it to the most profitable markets. While technology looks for faster cheaper ways to

move the world's freight from nation to nation. And the sailors who from time immemorial have gone down to the sea in ships go where their total. For sea is still in their blood. But much of the romance is gone. Why don't you. Just do it to go back to life. Just pick. This one. Right this minute. Ships will always need sailors. Our oceans are greater than all the machines of men something sailors have understood since they first sailed out to sea following the trade when so many thousand years ago.