Travel the world as a freighter ship passenger

John Gomez
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Years ago my Mom received regular advertisements from a company called TravLTips that advertised freighter trips for those seeking something a bit different than Royal Caribbean and skeet shooting off the fantail. I was intrigued but never had the opportunity to consider this option. I had already been on two conventional cruises, one a tour of the Mexican Riviera and the other a nerve-wracking trip around the Caribbean just after the Challenger blew up in 1986.

These trips were fun and well structured — hard to really call them adventures. They featured the signature midnight buffets and ice sculptures, plenty of towels everywhere and fawning crews. Meals were always well done and the table company agreeable. If you are considering a conventional cruise treat yourself to David Foster Wallace’s hilarious A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again for some extra-brochure perspective.

Typical container ship carrying thousands of shipping containers and very likely a few passengers.

When a major bank closed its maverick loan division in the fall of 2000 and took my IT job with it, I decided the time had come to take a freighter trip. The presidential election was looming ominously and it seemed like a fine idea to watch the whole circus from overseas. I booked a 28 day trip on the Grimaldi line leaving from Southampton in late October. To make the trip more complete I left a week early to tour the UK and get used to the time change.

The Grimaldi company operates huge car-carriers that visit many ports in the Med, and northern Europe. The crew is Italian and the language on board is mostly Italian as well, especially at dinner. On a freighter with a limited number of passengers you normally dine at the Captain’s table. Nobody is allowed to sit until the Captain arrives which can sometimes involve a delay if urgent ship’s business intervenes. The Captain also samples the meal offered and occasionally sends it back to the galley. Once, the Captain sampled a steak and loudly announced “Shoe Leather!” producing a flurry of activity from the waitstaff and a frantic change in menu as the offending meals were whisked away.

One thing that conventional cruise passengers soon learn is that the passenger is the center of all attention and the crew exists to satisfy every whim. On a freighter the cargo is king. Passengers are a kind of tolerated nuisance who must learn to blend into the scenery and keep requests to a minimum. The chain of command is important and you never ask an officer for something a steward can take care of. On my trips I always had free run of the ship including the bridge and spent many hours there watching the operations — especially in the Panama Canal transits.

My second freighter voyage was soon after the 9/11 attack which I witnessed in person in New York. This was a long voyage from Staten Island all the way down the west coast of South America and back. There was a great deal of security anxiety then, especially in the Panama Canal zone. This vessel was a container ship called the Atlanta belonging to the Rickmers group. The officers were German and the crew Burmese. This ship was much less formal than the Grimaldi vessel. The captain was agreeable and good-natured and only English was spoken at the table. Conversations were animated and covered all subjects. We asked the captain when the ice sculptures would happen and where was the dancing captain? Cruise ships always have two captains — one, an impossibly striking looking fellow who makes the rounds with the passengers and dances a lot and the other who actually operates the ship.

Container ships usually have far less freeboard, or the height of hull to the waterline than the larger car-carriers. This can be inviting to pirates in situations where the ship must move slowly. On a moonlit night in Ecuador I was on deck late at night when I looked back toward the stern and noticed a few small boats following closely. Ropes were tossed around the railings and it was obvious that we were being boarded. I raced into the bridge and alerted the captain and the entire ship sprang to life with alarms, floodlights and crew expelling the boarders. These pirates were just poor locals, not the organized and heavily armed criminals found in areas where freighters frequent in Africa or Asia. Only one container full of batteries was breached.

A few days later in Colombia the crew was surprised to find out that one of the containers loaded there was full of refugees fleeing the civil war raging at that time. This resulted in a half-day delay, something that is very expensive to these lines. The captain told us that a good supply of liquor was always kept on board in case government officials need to be payed off so this helped move things along.

On a freighter you have an opportunity to find out about how the cargo that is responsible for globalization gets around. The captain of the Atlanta was embarrassed to admit that the ship burned 57 tons of ‘bunker’ fuel a day underway. Most of the crew love to talk about what they do, however they are very busy — these ships carry a small complement and they do not have a lot of free time. Some never go ashore and instead save every dime they earn.

My final freighter adventure was in the summer of 2004 as I awaited a real-estate closing. This was a container ship sailing from Vancouver, B. C. over to ports in Asia and back across the Pacific. This vessel, aptly named the Tabasco, featured an all-Indian crew. Since Indian is my favorite cuisine I was in heaven. The cook kept wondering when I would order the typical junk food Americans like and I told him I wanted the real thing that the crew was having — he was delighted. On this trip I offered to rebuild some of the ship’s computers that had fallen into disrepair. It is relatively rare that passengers do any work on these ships due to insurance regulations, etc. — my efforts were strictly voluntary. The highlight of this trip was the passage across the Pacific. It is hard to describe the night sky in the middle of the ocean — dense stars all the way to the horizon with no ambient light to interfere. Magical.

For the traveler eager for a different experience and those who can handle a lot of unstructured time on their hands, freighter travel is a great way to go. The actress Claudette Colbert loved to travel this way and Alex Haley famously wrote Roots while traveling as a passenger on a freighter. You will not be pampered and catered to, but the opportunity to learn a great deal about the maritime world largely invisible is worth the effort.

Written by

Dilettante, trivia black-belt, professional gargler, recent tolerator of cats, etc.. Roaming the world by freighter for no good reason.

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