Oceans apart: remembering loved ones by the sea divided

Like Christmas, Easter and birthdays, St Valentine’s Day is a traditional time for sharing the joy of togetherness and showing our loved ones how much we care for them. But for seafarers thousands of miles from home, it is too often an occasion of deep melancholy and yearning when they feel the distance, and are unable to send or receive a card, or a phone call, or to see a romantic sunset or starlit night and feel at one with the person they most love.

Isolation is one of the hardest aspects of ocean life, with seagoing men and women sometimes not only being unable to return home for eight months, or even a year, but also having limited or no access to phone or email while at sea. While a certain level of loneliness and homesickness ‘comes with the job’, the Mission works hard to reduce the desolation and distress seafarers too often experience as a result of being out of touch and cut off.

When seafarers arrive in port, it is scarcely surprising that so many are thankful for the Mission’s Flying Angel Club where they can get phonecards and use the MtS computers to catch up with their loved ones through email, Skype, and social networking sites like Facebook.

And for those who cannot get shore leave on St Valentine's Day, the Flying Angel plays Cupid! In farflung parts of the world, the MtS chaplains and ship visitors  take phone cards and internet-linked laptops aboard to help crewmembers stuck on their vessels to touch base with their 'nearest' and dearest so very far away.