ABSTRACT
‘Never before have so few done so much for so many’. When opening the Year of the Seafarer in 2010, these words, a quotation paraphrased from one of Winston Churchill’s most famous speeches, were strikingly declared by Efthimios E. Mitropoulos, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) (Oltedal, 2011). The profession of seafaring and shipping is crucial in our society. The worldwide population of seafarers serving in international trade is estimated to be approximately 1,545,000 people, representing virtually every nationality. Worldwide, there are about 90,917 vessels, registered in over 150 nations, which carry about 90 per cent of the world’s trade; thus, these more than one and a half million seafarers are transporting goods for the benefit of the world’s 7.49 billion people (United Nations, 2016). The seafarers’ and shipping industry’s global importance is commonly highlighted by the phrase ‘without shipping, half the world would starve and the other half would freeze’.
