Seafaring work patterns involve periods of leave and seatime and the associated transition
periods as the seafarer moves from one situation to the other. This post explores
seafarers’ and their partner’s experiences of the different aspects of the work cycle. It
begins by exploring the separation between shipboard and home life and moves on to
consider specific periods within the work cycle, highlighting issues and problems identified
by the seafaring couples.

Two worlds, two lives?

Shipboard and home lives offer distinct contrasts. Not only are the very conditions of
existence considerably dissimilar but also there are few opportunities for these two domains
to meet and overlap. Seafarers’ families often have little opportunity to visit the workplace
and be involved in workplace social events as might be more commonplace in shore-based
occupations. If relationships are established with colleagues, such shipboard relationships
rarely extend into leave time due to geographical separations and conflicting leave periods.
Thus it is not unusual for seafarers’ partners and their shipboard colleagues to never meet.
For seafarers on long deep-sea voyages, (and without access to email), contact with home
may be extremely limited for considerable periods. These factors all contribute to a
separation of the domains of work and home. For the seafarers in this study, this separation
was sufficient for seafarers to refer to having ‘two lives’, or ‘two selves’ or existing in ‘two
worlds’, as the following quotes illustrate:

You know it is, you Sort of split your life in two. (laughs) Well perhaps I phrased that
badly (laughs), yeah, there were two sides to your life really. (Senior Officer)

I always found it was very much a two life existence, wouldn’t go so far as saying it
was Dr. Jeckyll, Mr.Hyde exactly, but it’s very different. And I always found in recent
years that once you were back at home, you felt that you were always at home, and as
soon as you got to the ship it’s like you were always on the ship. There’s no
comparison between the two. (Senior Officer)

I’ve always said to [my wife] for me to survive in my industry I have to be two people.
This is the good guy, that’s the bad guy right. And then when I go away I sort of...how
can you say...I’m back in work mode right. [Ö]. And this other guy he’s less tolerant of
people than what he is with his own family. Then in the reverse sector when I come
back I try to forget this guy and bring the other guy back up. So basically I think I am
two people. (Senior Officer)

Yes I think for me patterns of behaviour were place associated. So being at home had
its pattern of behaviour and in completely different surroundings being at sea had its
pattern of behaviour. I suspect it was more different for [my wife] because she was in
the same surroundings with different patterns of behaviour. (Senior Officer)

Whilst physically located in the same place, without the obvious contrast of ship and shore,
women also experienced considerable contrasts in their lives dependent on the point in their
partner’s work cycle. Accommodating a partner in day-to-day existence often necessitated
significant adjustments, experienced in changes in freedoms and responsibility and the
transition from being ‘temporarily single’ (and possibly acting as a ‘single parent’) to being
part of a couple again. As two wives explained:

It’s like living two lives. One life obviously with him away and one with him at home.
(Wife of Senior Officer)

Sometimes I like him to be away because I think I’ve got used to being on my own and
my husband is not around and I’ve got used to it. When he comes home I feel that we
have to adjust to one another and adjust to being together again. Because sometimes if
you have got used to being without your husband being around by the time he comes
home I have to adjust to his presence again. It’s difficult, you have to make adjustments
all the time. (Wife of Senior Officer)

Transitions

It might be reasonable to assume that the period of separation was difficult for couples and
that homecomings are indeed joyous and happy events. However reflecting the findings of
earlier studies, the data from this research suggest that it is the periods of transition between
these two existences, whether from the ship to the home or from home to ship that were
experienced as difficult by the couples. Such transition periods were characterised by bothseafarers and their partners as tension laden. This is not to say that both parties did not
eagerly anticipate the seafarer’s return. Indeed some described the pleasure associated with
the reunions as one of the positive aspects of the job. As seafarers and partners commented:
Coming home to me, it’s, it’s just like Christmas. (Senior Officer)

Like as if you’re on your first date again and you’ve got to meet someone all over
again, you know sort of butterflies in the stomach and can’t wait to sort of see each
other or again it’s that sort of, that’s the nicest part I think is going to meet him at the
airport or pick him up from somewhere. (Wife of Senior Officer)

Oh I get all excited like an idiot. I do I get all excited I do I think ‘oh I’m gonna clean
the house right through and then I won’t have to do anything for a good couple of
weeks, you know, ‘we can kind of enjoy ourselves together’ you know. So it’s silly
really after all those, it’s not silly I think it’s nice in some ways isn’t it yeah. (Wife of
Senior Officer)
However, whilst return home was much anticipated by both partners it was equally a time
which could be fraught with tensions each person adjusted to the new situation.

Stress and unwinding

Problems in the transition period between ship and shore were attributed to a number of
different factors. Increased workloads have been identified as a cause of stress within the
industry (Parker et al., 1997). Changes in the industry such as increased automation,
decreased crewing levels, increased work load and decreased job security have put pressure
on seafarers to put in extra hours to keep their jobs (Collins, et al., 2000). Such pressures
have resulted in increased levels of stress and fatigue (NUMAST, 1995). These increased
hours of work and occupational pressures appeared to expand beyond the confines of the
ship to impact on home life. One of the most common problems during this transition
period identified by seafarers related to the stress associated with their job and the problems
they had ‘switching off’ when they returned home from a tour of duty. Officers in this
study attributed increased work-related stress to reduced crewing levels and new regulatory
systems which involved considerable amounts of paperwork, both of which led to longer
working hours and more pressure whilst in the work environment. These problems were
also recognised by seafarers’ wives who found that it took their partners some time to

unwind after the trip and that they were often physically exhausted. As two wives
explained:

Yeah it normally takes about a week cos he’s normally really het up about being at
work, and he’s just starting to come down after that. […] It’s usually a week of up and
downs, you know, and then its okay. (Wife of Junior Officer)

You know if he’s happy I’m happy too, sometimes he’s been home and perhaps there’s
a lot going on and he’s going back to a certain situation he hasn’t been himself all the
way through his leave and I know because it’s this job is on his mind or he’s got to go
back to sort out this and sort out that. (Wife of Senior Officer)

Adjusting sleeping patterns

Shipboard temporal schedules and routines often differ dramatically to those followed at
home. Seafarers’ working hours are often organised by shiftwork which can cause
problems with sleep patterns and indeed the problem of fatigue on board is currently the
subject of a large research investigation (Collins. et al., 2000) and has been linked to high
rates of seafarer suicide (Telegraph, 1999). Shiftwork, sleep loss and disruption can lead to
a build up of fatigue (Finkelman, 1994). Such working conditions aboard ship could
manifest themselves as excessive tiredness upon the seafarer’s return home. As one seafarer
noted:

Yeah, no, it’s not good, I don’t think, so you don’t really notice it until you come home
and then your sort of, the first thing you notice is, not bad headaches, but you know
just strain cos you’re so tired -so it does a week or two - I get a bit stressed -, to calm
down. (Junior Officer)

Interestingly, despite the fatigue experienced by seafarers, sleeping problems were also
frequently mentioned as an issue when the seafarer returned home from a tour of duty.
These problems were attributed to shipboard routines such as irregular watch keeping hours
or the need to sleep lightly to listen for alarms. The effects of these work conditions could
be compounded by the presence of jet-lag and the simple factor of the unfamiliar presence
of another person in bed. The following quotes illustrate the difficulties seafarers faced in
readjusting their sleep patterns during their leave periods:

Yeah, I can never have a full night sleep, I never have a full night sleep, on and off
continuously. When you’re used to work, living on, see the type of ships I’m on are
small anyway yeah. So you hear every noises slight engine change noise anything like
that you hear it. And the slightest noise wakes me up, I hear the baby wake up long
before [my wife] ever does. It’s just you get tuned in subconsciously to these sort of
things and I never have a full night. (Senior Officer)

Yes, physically you know, getting into sleeping patterns again, that’s the awkward
thing, you’re used to being up all hours and so you kind of have to readapt to a full
night’s sleep every night. (Senior Officer)

The worst thing is jet lag to be honest with you, especially since I’m working mainly in
the far east, it’s an 8 hour difference and I come over and, now it’s 8 hours on it would
be say 12 o’clock here I’ll be knocking off I’ll be waking up at 2 in the morning
because you know it’s my waking up time. And that takes about 3 or 4 days at least.
(Senior Officer)

These sleeping problems also effected women in the study and a number commented on
their husband’s difficulties adjusting temporally and the problems they experienced in
marrying their own, and their partner’s temporal habits and routines.

Everything ‘ ship-shape’ ?

Other problems associated with the seafarers’ return related to the contrast between ship
and home life. Several women described their anxieties as they prepared for their
husband’s return. Concerns related to their perceptions of their husband’s desire to return
home to a tidy house which mirrored the high standards of tidiness and order they had
become accustomed to whilst aboard ship. This issue could be particularly acute for the
households with children: both seafarers and their partners talked about the seafarer’s
difficulties accepting the disorder created by children:

I get more regimented than anything. I get into a ship routine and then I come and I’ve
got to get out of it then.
What kind of things do you feel regimented about?
I tidy everything up. [My wife’s] not as tidy as me, I enjoy doing that and it drives me
mad when she doesn’t leave it tidy. (Senior Officer).

My wife is ‘[he’s] coming home’, scrubbing everything and I’ll be through cupboards
and I’ll have pans out and I’ll say ‘Right I want that that way’ you know and ‘I want
that cleaned that way’. Quite a nutter really. (Junior Officer)

Indeed this could be such an issue that it caused rows and conflict between couples. As one
seafarer explained:

[We row about] Kids not clearing away their shoes, you know, mostly being fussy I
suppose, I’m a bit … I suppose being at sea in that sense you get to value physically
space and things, I can’t stand clutter and I’m always …. my wife’s more of a hoarder,
and I think ‘Christ we can chuck that, and that’s untidy!’ …. (Senior Officer)

Problems could increase as seafarers rose in rank and reached the status of Chief Engineer
or Captain. Women talked about husband’s bringing their ship-board status into the home,
making them feel like ‘junior officers’. Women who had successfully been managing the
household, (from paying bills, to chauffeuring children and managing DIY), reported
experiencing a tension between their husband’s need for them to be independent and
capable in their absence and then become dependent and defer responsibility to them upon
their return home (see also section on Role Displacement). As wives explained:

[He’s] used to running the ship and his crew, now we’re at home ‘yes sir’ ‘yes sir’. But
it doesn’t work like that, that can cause problems. So it caused a few rows that did.
Um, and I’m sure that must happened in lots of households. […] Here am I running
everything and all of a sudden I’m like junior officer you see. (Wife of Senior Officer)

when I’m on my own I’m the boss and when [my husband] comes home being a ship’s
master he’s used to being the boss I take second place. (Wife of Senior Officer)

It’s just like he doesn’t have to do it while he’s away but you’re not good enough when
they’re home then you know and they sort of take the responsibility away from you so.
So yeah it is a big difference, I suppose you have to change personality as well you
know from when they’re away to when they’re home. (Wife of Senior Officer)

These periods of adjustment were perhaps particularly significant for those seafarers who
worked on relatively short rotas. Conflicts associated with the transition could absorb a
significant proportion of the beginning of the leave and were often combined with a similar periods towards the end of the leave when both parties began to adjust to the realities of the
seafarer leaving home again. As two wives explained:

After 2 weeks you’re thinking ‘oh I’ve only got 2 weeks to go and he’s going back
again’, so you don’t have that relaxation period in between where you sort of sit back
and think, ‘yeah well you got another couple of weeks’ and it’s like the clock. And then
you get edgy with each other then, you start getting ratty you know, little arguments
will start cause we’re both on edge, thinking ‘oh only a couple of weeks and then he’s
going back again you know’. And it spoils the leave then because no sooner you sort
of keep winding down and relaxing then he’s thinking about going back again then so
it goes from one extreme back to the other, so your constantly sort of thinking about
him going off again and go back away. (Wife of Senior Officer)

I found it horrendous, he would come home so tired absolutely zonked out cause he
was still a second mate and he’d come home absolutely shattered took him days and
days to get over it and then half way through he would come alive and then be worried
about going back to work the fourth week. So you’d have always 2 out of the 4 weeks
that were useless. (Wife of Senior Officer)

Going back to sea

As the return home was problematic so too was the return to work also characterised by
stress and unease. The period directly prior to departure could result in seafarers becoming
emotionally withdrawn or anxious about completing practical tasks before their return to
the ship. Immediate partings could be highly emotionally charged and several couples
reported opting for partings at home rather than at the airport or railway station in order to
minimise the emotional trauma for themselves and their children. Two women explained
how they attempted to minimise the distress associated with their husbands’ departures:

If he goes away and he’s got to go by plane we never go to say ‘bye’ he always goes in
a taxi because they[the children] just get too distressed, they just cry and it’s not fair
on them to get them so upset and then he gets upset. So we don’t do things like that he
just goes in a taxi and it’s easier then. (Wife of Senior Officer)

I think the best way we’ve found, especially when the children were younger was if he
hired a car and drove to the airport because if I drive him to the airport and that was -

oh very traumatic. And then it was putting him on the train but that was bad enough, I
don’t know trains are awful sad when you’re waving goodbye to people. But I found
then when he hired the car and drove himself to the airport we’d just say ‘cheerio’ just
going down the car on a road like if he was just going to the shop or going somewhere,
it wasn’t so traumatic. (Wife of Senior Officer)

Women talked about the problems adjusting to an empty and quiet house after their
partner’s departure. Strategies to cope with this included staying with extended family
members, and use of the television or radio as a means of ‘company’. In this aspect,
women with children appeared to fare better than their childless contemporaries as they
continued to have company within the home and not the dramatic contrast of an empty
house (see section on Children). One recently married women talked about her feelings
after her husband had first returned back to sea:

It probably doesn’t really hit you […] until you come back in the evening, when you’ve
come home for the last 3 months, the lights have been on there’s been a TV on, the
kettle’s been on you know there’s hustle and bustle. And I always know that whenever
I come back into the house the first thing I do is put on the TV for background noise
just to have something there. And I’ve got, especially in the winter, just timers on so it
looks a bit homely when you come in, instead of just complete darkness. (Wife of
Junior Officer)

Additional stressors

Problems could be amplified where there was a degree of uncertainty as to the exact date of
departure and indeed arrival home. Dates could be so unreliable that one seafarer and his
wife adopted the strategy of him informing her of his return date only when he had left the
ship and was safely on dry land. Some women avoided the unnecessary distress delayed
arrivals caused to their children by not informing them of their father’s imminent arrival and
thus minimising the risk of disappointment. For partners and families, and indeed seafarers,
who were awaiting the end of their trip with some anticipation and longing, such
postponements could have significant emotional consequences. One woman recalled her
experience of waiting for her husband to return home:

Towards the end of the trip, now this time you know they wouldn’t let him off the ship,
you know it was - it kept on being ‘next week’, ‘next week’. I said ‘if you’re not home
by Friday I’m going to the doctors and I’m going to scream and scream and scream
and cry and cry and cry, I can cope until Friday, but another day - I can’t cope another
day with it all’ (Wife of Junior Officer)

‘Never-ending’ voyages

Transition periods were uniformly mentioned as the most difficult period. However some
women also reported the middle period of the tour of duty to be a difficult time where they
felt overwhelmed by the duration of their partner’s absence. These women all had in
common the fact that their partners did longer tours of duty (3 months or more). As one
wife explained how the time she found most difficult was:

About in the middle of the trip, and yet I think you just think it’s been such a long slog
to the middle and then you think ‘oh I’ve got all that time to do again’, you know it just
seems never ending. So that, I’d say that was the worse part, apart from the first
couple of weeks and then the second, the last 2 months of a 4 month trip they don’t,
none of it flies really, I couldn’t say that flies or that drags, it all drags. Um but you’re
on countdown, crossing the days off the calendar. (Wife of Junior Officer)

Nandkishore Gitte

source: Lost at Sea and Lost at Home: the Predicament of Seafaring Families by Michelle Thomas