“A sailor’s still a sailor”

[ABOVE: Radar scope in a combat information center aboard a ship; Released to Public 1994; Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center / Wikimedia]

They gave us an engine that first went up and down

With some new technology the engine went around

We’re good with steam and diesel, but what’s a mainyard for?

A stoker ain’t a stoker with a shovel anymore

Don’t haul on the ropes, don’t climb up the mast

If you see a sailing ship it might be your last

Get your civvies ready for another round ashore

A sailor ain’t a sailor, ain’t a sailor anymore

IN 1987 British singer and songwriter Tom Lewis wrote these lyrics to “The Last Shanty”—a folk sea shanty that has enjoyed a popular revival since Nathan Evan’s 2022 cover. Lewis details the rapid progression of maritime technology from even just a generation before—from sail to steam-powered ships to diesel and to the other heavy-fuel powered ships of today.

Technological changes in communication and navigation, from semaphore (a visual signaling language often performed with flags) to the Aldis lamp (a lamp used for flashing signs in Morse code) to radio, receive a shoutout in the song; one verse ends with “a bunting-tosser doesn’t toss the bunting anymore.” That is, the role of hoisting signaling flags had become obsolete.

SEAFARING AND MINISTRY IN THE TECH AGE

Many other duties once necessary for circumnavigation on the seas have also evolved or disappeared. Radar technology and the even more incredible developments of the twenty-first century, including advanced digitization that has even created the ability for ships to self-navigate, have revolutionized seafaring.

With this modern technology comes modern challenges. As William R. Douglas, director of the Center for Maritime Education at the Seamen’s Church Institute writes in his essay “A Mariner’s Voice,” those challenges include larger ships with smaller crews, increases in individual workloads with longer hours, tighter schedules, and more dangerous cargo, just to name a few.

Yet many aspects of life at sea haven’t changed. Even with the improvements to navigation and marine safety that technology affords, seafaring remains among the most dangerous vocations in the world. Sailors also continue to face the same spiritual challenges of the trade that afflicted their predecessors—social isolation and the disruption to normal social mores, physically and mentally challenging working conditions, deprivation of normal comforts, and the continuing stigma attached to sailors’ moral characters.

Ministers to seafarers, such as Roald Kverndal, former seafarers’ chaplain and cofounder of the International Association for the Study of Maritime Mission, recognize this unique spiritual vulnerability, as well as the challenges and blessings of modern technology; therefore, Kverndal believes, ministry to the modern sailor will also be unique. As he writes in The Way of the Sea:

Like mariners themselves, maritime mission has its own unique identity. . . . in order to gain respect and acceptance in its own right, maritime mission needs to find expression in a dedicated discipline of “maritime missiology.”

SAME SEA, SAME GOSPEL

How is this maritime missiology expressed? One way is recognizing that despite the rapid progression of maritime technology, sailing culture—and by extension the spiritual needs of sailors—remains largely the same. Perhaps that’s why, as Lewis details these changes throughout “The Last Shanty,” he ends with this tongue-in-cheek declaration: “A sailor’s still a sailor just like he was before.”