9 Out of 10 Ships are some kind of FOC. My statistics come from a Cat Food commercial and personal observation of the ports I frequent.
Ship Owners and Charterers are often multinational corporations. Some of the big players in many types of trade are still old well European known names. Some are Newer well known Asian names. Some are American.
Several decades since I worked deep sea. It was a time of great change. Ships I worked on sold off crews layed off in a few short years. Many of the ships were bought cheep by FOC company and often chartered back. To run with much lower cost crews.
I had worked for a major oil company. A few short years went from being one of the largest shipping companies in the world to quite small. Not just hundreds laid of thousands. Most people my age left the industry completely.
I struggled with life ashore and got lucky and found work at sea as a 3rd mate.
A year or so later.
The company announced they were shutting down. All the ships were changing ownership and flag and all of us laid off. With a job offer Sailing the same ship on a Hong Kong Flag. 3rd world crew.
Office was a file cabinet in Hong Kong. theoretically we worked for a Hong Kong company.
Reality we were working for the same company, the same owner, chartered by the same Very Well known big name in Shipping (not Mearsk)
Sometimes Probabaly Chartered out to Mearsk.
FOC, No Union, No Rights, No Protection, No Job Security at time when jobs were really hard to find.
I took the job. I thought I was lucky o have work.
Traditional company, I was often the Old Mans go for. Which gave me the opportunity to learn a lot.
Along with ensuring shit doesn’t happen. The Capt.'s job is managing the business of the ship. The Main part of his job. Making sure the ship was never exposed to liability. He would carefully read charters. And Explained most are just what we would call standard cut and paste.
The same words and clause used for in some cases centuries.
Our company did not own the ships. We managed ships owned by other company.
We stayed in business not because we did not follow regulations.
We stayed in business as an FOC operator because we did follow the regulations and by doing so kept the company safe from liability.
I was party to a few interesting conversations over the time i worked there about what we would or wouldn’t do. Simply explaining why and what the law was along with the exposure the Capt. and Chief were listened to and valued not fired.
We stayed in business at much higher pay rate than some other nationalities. because we did not cost the company money by being off hire.
The Engineers really kept us in business, Shit didn’t happen. Shit got fixed.
Shit happened occasionally,
Eventually I quit and came inshore.
My Experience was a very long time ago. It included working for big multi national companies who still exist as big players in international shipping.
Yes they sure as hell were cheep and wanted to be kept up to date on stuff.
They made it real clear money was an object.
They wanted us to follow the law.
A Capt. I recall getting demoted. Got demoted because the company found out he did not follow the law. He got demoted because he exposed the company to huge liability. He didn’t even get caught it didn’t happen the company was worried about what might have happened.
I do recall a very stressful time for a Chief after a significant ER problem. The pressure to get if fixed and have the ship up and running intense.
Things have changed, Amoco, P&O, Exon, BP ect have all learned the hard way. Accidents are really bad for business.
The ISM exist now. It didn’t back in the day.
Back then charterers didn’t audit.
They do now.
I don’t know Maersk. Or the company running this ship. Or the crew. Yea they are probably worried the liability and possibly about their jobs. Maybe even their freedom.
Maersk will probably have done or had somebody do a pre charter audit of the ship and periodic audits. Maersk will have it clearly written they are required to be informed of any problems.
Who pays for a delay is a big deal. It always has been.
Did they do everything they were supposed to? Maybe, Maybe not. No evidence yet anyone did anything wrong.
The NTSB will look at all this.
Its a big event the FBI ect. nothing unusual.
In todays world there is an international shortage of seafarers. Surly there is less fear of being fired than there was back then. Different people react different.
