Ninety Percent of Everything
Rose George’s latest book takes its title from the fact that 90% of ALL goods are transported by sea. In Ninety Percent of Everything, Ms George took as her task to illuminate this nearly invisible industry that we all depend on. In this engrossing book we get a glimpse of life aboard the Maersk Kendal out of the English port of Felixstowe bound for Singapore. I say glimpse because we really don’t get to know much of the crew but such is the nature of the transient merchant crew; where five nationalities of twenty men and one women (cook) comprise the current compliment.
The Kendal is a Korean-built container ship with 6,188 containers (“boxes” to the crew) on board. The Kendal is only about 5 years old.
Ms George describes the spartan life and facilities on the Kendal from the perspective of her status as a supernumerary.
However, Ninety Percent of Everything is no boring travelogue. Ms George does an excellent job of weaving in stories and background of other ships and episodes to illuminate a topic. For example, as the Kendal nears the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) and the threat from Somali-based pirates, She digresses into the topic of piracy at some length. She meets with EU-NAVFOR personnel, visits the warship, Vasco de Gama, and describes the harrowing ransoming of the Marida Marguerite.
In other chapters, Ms George describes the efforts of the charitable seamen benevolent organizations to offer aid and comfort to seamen regardless of nationality. In another chapter Ms George describes the terrifying prospect of the ship sinking and being a drift in a lifeboat.
A theme that resonates through the book is the wretched conditions that any able seamen (AB) must endure. It seems the international waters is awash in unscrupulous ship owners, seamen agents, captains etc with the average seamen at the bottom and subject to every form of exploitation. Samuel Johnson summed up the life of an AB when he said “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”
In summary, though non-fiction, Ninety Percent of Everything is quite the page-turner and an excellent read.
Posted: June 14th, 2013 under Books.