Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

 

Not long before I started this blog, I read The Big Necessity by Rose George, and it very much changed my perspective on what is arguably the greatest development in modern civilization - sanitation. As George pointed out, the “clean water” problem isn’t really a water problem - it’s a shit problem. As in, how do we keep the shit out of the drinking water. I highly recommend that book, along with The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, which is about cholera and how a contaminated well caused dozens of deaths - and eventually led to the great project of the sewers of London. 

 

It turns out that Rose George later wrote a book on container ships, which, as the title suggests, move about ninety percent of everything around the globe. As with the prior book, she doesn’t just research, she lives her topic. 

 

In Ninety Percent of Everything, George travels as a “supernumerary” (aka, a passenger) on a Maersk container ship, the Kendal, from Britain to Singapore. She also spends some time on a few other craft - a French anti-piracy ship, a whale research ship - and ashore. But the bulk of the book is about her voyage and the topics connected with that. 

 

She reveals plenty of human details - the isolation and loneliness of crews who rarely are on land for more than a day at a time, the terrible pay and conditions, the use of flags of convenience to skirt labor laws, the fate of hostages taken by pirates, the work of chaplains and others who minister to crews, the shockingly high risk of death and injury in the profession, the international nature of the work. It is a good balance of factual information and the human face. 

 

Like so many of the workers who form the backbone of our entire society and economy, sailors remain largely invisible and outside the public consciousness. (Think as well about farm workers and others in our food chain, factory and sweatshop workers in the third world, to name two others.) 

 

Currently, Filipinos form the core of most crews, although sailors as they always have, come from all over the world. Since my dad grew up in the Philippines, and I was part of a Filipino-American church in my teens, I am fascinated by that country and its culture. (Also, there are a lot of Filipinos in California, particularly in healthcare where my wife works. Our town got a Jollibee a few years ago, and if you know you know…) 

 

There is a particularly great line regarding the country’s colonial experience that George heard from the crew of the Kendal. 

 

Still, the crew is as friendly as dinner last night was frosty. They have a ready humor that you’d expect from nationals of the Philippines, where the country’s two long occupations by Spain and the United States are often described as “four years in the convent and fifty in Hollywood.” 

 

Later, she describes hearing the singing of a Journey song in a Tagalog accent. As fans of the band will know, the frontman since 2007 has been Filipino Arnel Pineda - and yes, my experience has been that Journey is always one of the most popular karaoke selections at any Filipino gathering. (Related: there are some worship songs that I will always and forever hear in a Tagalog accent in my head. Good times.) 

 

There is another amusing anecdote about a cruise ship that was sinking, and the captain pretty much bailed. (Captains like that get a bad reputation.) The mayday call was actually made by an entertainer, not crew. 

 

When Moss Hills, having managed to call the coast guard from the bridge, was asked to identify his position, he replied, “I’m not a rank. I’m a guitarist.” 

 

Win one for the musicians. 

 

I also found the history of flags of convenience to be fascinating. For those who are not familiar with the term, a ship is considered to be essentially a floating piece of its homeland - the laws of that country apply when in the open ocean. Very few ships these days are actually registered in the country in which the owners live and work, or the country who built the ship, or any of its destination. Rather, the ship is registered wherever the owners feel will bring the most favorable laws - usually a lack of taxes, minimum wages, and unionization. (Yeah, yuck.) 

 

But the history is interesting too - most American-owned ships were registered in the US until a certain law was enacted: Prohibition. In order to get around those rules - and perhaps serve a little wine to passengers traveling to and from Europe - liners were re-registered in Panama, which had no such laws forbidding alcohol. 

 

After World War Two, the surplus ships from the war were largely bought up by Greek and Italian firms, who made the switch to flags of convenience the new way of doing business. 

 

As a cat lover, I appreciated the idea that cats have often been part of the crew. But also, the way that a certain Suez pilot was described as a “uniformed bridge cat, moving around in search of sun.” 

 

As a final bit, I want to mention that the merchant navy has never gotten the respect it deserves. The Battle of Britain was won, not primarily by the military, but by the supply chain. I’ll let George take it from there.

 

The Titanic attracts an audience for its combination of glamour and tragedy. But so should the stories of the merchant seamen who fought in World War II, although they were classed neither as veterans nor fighters, despite losing more men, proportionally, than any branch of the armed services, and despite enduring extreme danger and the constant chance of being torpedoed, of facing a death from drowning or burning by flaming oil, or countless days in an open lifeboat. 

This is a fascinating book, and George’s writing is engaging. Definitely read The Big Necessity while you are at it.