Peter’s October 2026 Blog

My blog often reflects with you on some quite recent experience, and I try to keep it fairly short. This month, I have been in Australia responding to an invitation to give the only keynote address to the global Port Authorities Roundtable, drawing senior executives of some of the world’s largest ports. This is a platform we have not had before. Indeed, it is so unique that I thought that it might be helpful simply to share with you what I said on behalf of The Mission to Seafarers, given the opportunity. The speech is reproduced in full, making this a little longer than usual. Hopefully you can bear with that.

Although I usually write for you in a straightforward way, and what I say is pretty much just how I see things, as you read this it might be good to bear in mind that this is a speech for a very different context. It has very particular aims, and is delivered in a wildly multi-cultural context, to participants with strong political agendas. Whilst nothing said is untrue, words are chosen carefully and there is both overstatement and understatement.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SHIPS STOP STOPPING?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you.

Of the hundreds of conversations I have across our industry each year, what I say in the next few minutes may be among the most important. Because I increasingly believe that some of the most significant decisions shaping the future of shipping are no longer being made at sea, or in treaty negotiations, but in ports. And very often they are being made by people sitting in rooms rather like this one.

When I look at the great challenges facing maritime, I find myself drawn repeatedly to the importance of ports.

Take decarbonisation. Ships can’t create hydrogen networks or ammonia bunkering infrastructure. They can’t transform regional energy ecosystems. But ports sit at the heart of a nexus of interests that will make net-zero possible. The future of net-zero shipping will be shaped as much by what happens on your quaysides as by what happens onboard vessels.

And in an increasingly fragmented world, ports are becoming more important in other ways too. They are no longer simply stops on a global network. They are gateways, convenors, centres around which global trade and maritime cooperation increasingly organise themselves. Ports have become strategic locations of considerable geopolitical significance.

But fascinating as those challenges are, they are not the reason I came here today.

I came to talk about people. Our industry faces a growing crewing crisis. The BIMCO/ICS Seafarer Workforce Report 2026 estimates a current shortage of more than 39,000 certified officers, rising to well over 100,000 by 2030. A recent World Maritime University study of more than 4,000 seafarers from 99 nationalities found that nearly half were seeking to leave seafaring within five years. Think about that for a moment. An impending shortfall reaching 100,000 and half of what we’ve got planning to leave.

I can think of very few industries where half the workforce just wants to get out!

Among the factors most closely linked with that intention were long working hours, fatigue and the lack of opportunities to go ashore. And whilst the first two of those are arguably about vessel crewing policies, that last issue cannot be solved by shipping companies alone.

The issue of the vanishing opportunities for brief periods of decompression away from the vessel, has been stubbornly resistant to every treaty change. It has heard every speech affirming the importance of seafarers, every report raising concerns about seafarer supply, every psychological study and every statistic revealing the prevalence of suicide and hearing these things it has barely paused for breath.

For 170 years, The Mission to Seafarers has served those who work at sea. It has done so unconditionally, without concern for who a seafarer is, where they come from, who they sail with, what they believe or don’t believe, and whatever the geopolitical debates raging.

Throughout most of that time, one assumption remained remarkably constant: Ships came into port – people went ashore.

Now admittedly, some immediately went in search of beer and shopping – human beings are wonderfully predictable, aren’t they?!

But something more important was happening. For a few hours, seafarers stopped being workers and remembered they were human beings.

They could Breathe – Recover – Reconnect.

They could remember there was a world that didn’t constantly vibrate beneath their feet, a world beyond steel bulkheads, engine rooms and watch schedules. And in many places around the world this decompression has happened in company with The Mission to Seafarers, which is perhaps why in our survey work last year our name and brand had something like 70% recognition amongst seafarers.

For generations, that opportunity of tasting the world was also one of the greatest attractions of life at sea.

One of the difficulties today, but an important one, is that many of your ports have become extraordinarily good at what you do. Turnaround times that would have seemed impossible a generation ago are now routine. What once took days takes hours. And as ships spend less time in port, one of the great motivators and pressure-release valves of life at sea is quietly disappearing.

Now, you might be expecting me to say that the answer is to slow everything down again, reinstate the old way … and I’m not going to say that. Your ports operate in highly competitive environments. Efficiency matters. Trade depends upon it. And nostalgia has never solved a single problem.

But if efficiency continues to increase, then we need to become equally creative about the human consequences. And that is actually where I become quite optimistic.

Because when I visit the world’s leading ports, I see extraordinary innovation; creativity that can equally be applied to this human question I am raising. I see some ports beginning to ask seriously not only: “How quickly can we move cargo?”, but also: “How well can we support the people who move that cargo?”

How do we create a seafarer “experience” in our port that allows crews to connect with our communities, our services, with our culture? How do we ensure that arrival in our port is something crews look forward to?

In some places around the world, I see ports working on this alongside welfare organisations like mine, with shipping companies and governments. Not because regulation compels them. But because they recognise a simple truth. The future of shipping depends upon people choosing to remain in shipping.

And that brings me to my final thought. One of the things I love most about ports is that they are fundamentally optimistic places. Ships arrive – Ships depart – Trade flows. The world debates. The world argues. Sometimes the world fights. Yet in ports people from every culture on earth quietly cooperate together in something quite extraordinary. Just look around this room today. Represented here are ports from across Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America and Australia. Different languages – Different histories – Different political systems.

And yet every day in your ports people participate in a shared endeavour that improves billions of lives. That is one of humanity’s great achievements. And I believe ports will play an even larger role in the future than they have in the past. Not only as centres of trade. Not only as centres of innovation. But as centres of leadership.

The ports that shape the next 20 years will not simply be the most efficient ones. They will be the ports that help make shipping more sustainable for the people who serve it, and display a maritime culture, a maritime civilization perhaps, that represents hope in a sometimes dark and dangerous world.

At The Mission to Seafarers, serving already in well over 200 ports across more than 50 countries, we would love to continue to be your partners in that journey.

Thank you.