A short time ago, I read Virginia Hoel’s monograph, Faith, Fatherland and the Norwegian Seaman. The work of the Norwegian Seamen’s Mission in Antwerp and the Dutch Ports 1864-1920 (Verloren, 2016). This study provides us with a beautiful insight into the workings of maritime ministry in some western European ports in the nineteenth and early twentieth […]
A new podcast teaches consumers a lesson in globalization, its promise, and its potential liabilities. Originally published in US Catholic. Most of us devote little thought to ocean-borne shipping. Yet it plays an enormous role in our lives, as around 90 percent of everything that needs to go from point A to point B does so on […]
Richard L. Byrnes, Christ with a Priest’s Face: Spirituality in Action: The Remarkable Life of Father Charles Hubert McTague. 2002. 139pp. As the continuous stream of container trucks rumble past, the Stella Maris Chapel on Corbin St. in Port Newark, NJ sits as a quiet oasis. The present building has been there for about […]
Roald Evensen, Terje J. Eriksen and Bjørn Lødøen, Velferden – Historien om States Velferdskontor for Handelsflåten. Sofiemyr: Bjørgu Forlag AS, 2017. 194pp. This is a beautiful pictorial history of the work of the Norwegian Seamen’s Service over the past 70 years. Assembled by three very capable editors – Roald Evensen, Terje J. Eriksen and Bjørn […]
Social life on a ship is not what it used to be. A complaint that is often heard from crew: “Everyone disappears to his cabin after the watch.” Does the Internet separate people from each other on a vessel? Has social isolation hit the fleet? These questions were explored at the annual conference of Dutch […]
Representatives of the Port and supporting communities gathered on November 23 for a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially re-open Mariners’ House, the seafarers centre in the Port of Montreal. Robert Zeagman, President of Seagulf Marine Industries and the Mariners’ House board, welcomed all gathered and expressed how happy he was to see such a warm […]
By Michael Skaggs. With generous renewed funding from the ITF Seafarers’ Trust, the North American Maritime Ministry Association facilitated bursaries for ten of its port-based seafarers’ welfare center agency affiliates and its central office to employ seafarers’ welfare interns in the summer of 2017. Support included an amount for interns’ salaries over 3 months in […]
by Wendy Cadge, Brandeis University. From The Conversation, January 3, 2018. Traveling in the new year? It is very likely there is a chapel or meditation room tucked away somewhere in one of the airports you’ll pass through. Sixteen of the country’s 20 largest airports have chapels, as do many more around the world. I am a sociologist of […]
Stephen Davies. Strong to Save: Maritime Mission in Hong Kong, from Whampoa Reach to the Mariners’ Club. Hong Kong: CityU HK Press, 2017. Xxxii + 605 pp. This new book by Stephen Davis, former director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum and honorary professor at The University of Hong Kong, traces the history of the […]
Wendy Knickerbocker, Bard of Bethel: The Life and Times of Boston’s Father Taylor 1793-1871, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. The history of maritime ministry’s institutions and individuals illuminates its modern iterations around the world. Knickerbocker, who retired from the Maine Merchant Academy library and studies American religious and cultural history in New England, offers a striking […]
