I was on an abandoned ship last week, a Turkish rust bucket berthed in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave tucked into a tiny corner of Morocco's Mediterranean coastline. I first wrote about the crew on this ship three months ago. Ditched by their employer, they were living off charity and struggling to find a way home. Well, no surprises here: they're still there. They are among hudreds of seaferers stuck in similar situations in ports around the world.
But for this crew things could be about to change. After months in a penniless limbo, there is a glimmer of hope.
Last week I accompanied Jose Manuel Ortega, national coordinator in Spain for the International Transport Workers' Federation [ITF], when he visited the ship to talk to the crew. We took a ferry together from Algeciras across the Strait of Gibraltar to Ceuta and spent the day on the ship.
Ortega had some promising news. The ITF had agreed to arrest the vessel and put in a claim for the crew's wages. It will take months before they see any money, but in the short term it should mean a ticket home.
The men on the chemical tanker Rhone are owed around $230,000 in unpaid salaries and have no money to get back to their families. The sense of frustration on board the ship was palpable.
Ortega and the crew met in the smoke room deep inside the Rhone. A sign in Turkish hung overhead: ‘Panik Yapma' - Don't Panic. It seemed a fitting message given the circumstances.
The ITF inspector played the role of chameleon. He was at times a counsellor, a fixer, a translator of legal jargon and advisor on matters both serious and mundane. Perhaps just as importantly, he offered the crew warmth and an attentive ear, asking about food and water and their welfare in general. He wanted to know how they were coping, to show them someone cared.
Despite their situation, the men were in relatively good spirits. "What else can we do?" said chief officer Huseyin Arslan. "For the moment we are OK here."
"The problem is on the other side, our families."
Back home in Turkey, ten families are surviving on credit, running up debts at a time when debts are the last thing they need.
There is hope that the plight of the Rhone crew will take a turn for the better this week. With the ship arrested, some of the crew - Arslan included - have found the means to head home. The ITF is trying to rustle up cash to pay for the other fares.
Beyond that, it will take months of legal wrangling to try and recoup the owed salaries.
Another case in Panama illustrates just how long it can take. This month, a Panamanian court ruled that 17 Turkish seafarers be paid their owed salaries from the sale of their Panamanian-flag vessel, the Mevlut Dov, over a year after they were first abandoned. It took the ITF's intervention to secure the ruling from the court.
Back in Ceuta, until the matter is resolved the seafarers on the Rhone will have to get on with their lives, find work.
Incredibly, most of the men insisted they would return to sea once this was over. But they were wary and said that the maritime world had changed, for the worse.
"I love my job," Arslan told me. "But everything is different now."
"There are many ships in this situation."
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