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CounterPunch Exclusives

Water, Water Everywhere Should Make Consumers Think—About 11,000 Stranded Sailors at Hormuz

When the Amazon driver leaves an order at the doorstep, many may not be at home to give a quick, appreciative thank-you as the carrier races off to the next stop. Probably no thought was given to the ships and sailors who shipped goods to Amazon and America’s big-box stores in the first place. But gas station visits today have probably made customers grateful and well aware that an oil tanker and its crew may have been stranded in the Persian Gulf off the Strait of Hormuz and yet found ways to elude Iran’s shore batteries and mines to reach refineries and local stations.

A shout-out to mariners who’ve transported the world’s goods and services is long, long overdue. For centuries, in fact.

To particularize the current situation at Hormuz, some 2,000 ships and 20,000 sailors aboard tankers and cargo vessels were initially stranded in the Persian Gulf by April 21, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Contrary to laymen’s beliefs that each ship is crewed by hundreds to carry out dozens of essential responsibilities, the complement generally involves only 25-30 sailors, including the captain.

By early July, most captains of the 500-600 remaining ships and their 11,000 sailors refused the tempting and high-risk alternative route past the United Arab Emirates and Oman, recommended by the United Nations and the U.S. It was not only tripping freshly laid mines, but Iran’s “forceful response” to any ship’s failure to use its “Route of Authority ” out of Hormuz. Aside from an Iranian vessel running aground off Oman on July 1, three tankers were attacked two days later by “projectiles” and an Iranian drone. Up until then, 258 ships in the previous week eluded that “response”, but the event immediately stopped traffic.

That probably never would have happened in the first days of shipping in ancient times when merchants kept captains on a short leash no matter the dangers of the sea. Shipping started when Phoenicians (today’s Lebanese) in 1500 BC loaded up Mideast goods —cedar and metalwork, glass, incense, papyrus, textiles, purple dye, and a 22-character alphabet—for months of trading up and down the Mediterranean and East-Africa.

Add China in1405 AD with its vast “treasure fleets ” selling silks, porcelain, and lacquerware to Taiwan to customers up to the Persian Gulf in exchange for spices, ivory, medicines, and pearls. Some fleets were nine-mast junks (one mast was 400 x150 feet), interestingly manned by 27,000 sailors and soldiers, and accompanied by supply ships, patrol boats, and transport craft for cavalry horses.

Now, the 1,638 nautical miles between Beirut and Barcelona might take 25 to 50 galley rowers two to three months’ time to reach their destinations. Yankee whalers serving on small schooners in the 1800s might be gone for at least six months. Or three to four years if on a 325-ton, three-mast whaling bark like Herman Melville’s Pequod in........

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