The New Yorker:

On international cargo ships, finding illegal passengers is a common occurrence. But on a freighter in the mid-Atlantic, a captain’s response stunned his crew.

By Scott L. Malcomson

Late last February, when four Filipino sailors—a boatswain, an able-bodied seaman, an oiler, and an engineer—first met in an Indian port to join their new ship, the Maersk Dubai, there was no indication that they had signed up for anything out of the ordinary. None of the four knew any of the other Filipino members of the Maersk Dubai’s crew, but that was to be expected; merchant seamen change ships all the time. It was also no surprise to them that all the chief officers on the ship were Taiwanese. This sort of segregation has become common on merchant ships. Often a barely functional English is the only shared language on board, and many sailors will refer to officers, and even to each other, by job title rather than by name. As experienced seamen, the four Filipino sailors joining the freighter knew that the chain of command is all that holds such an intimate yet distrustful community together. They did not know that their reluctance to violate that chain of command on the Maersk Dubai could have fatal consequences.

As the Dubai sailed west, another itinerant group gathered in the Spanish port of Algeciras, near Gibraltar. These men were Romanians, mostly farm boys from Transylvania. Some had known each other back home, but most had met pe drum—“on the road,” as the Romanians say—travelling in the shadows of the law. They wanted to come to the New World, and they planned to accomplish this by stowing away aboard a ship—preferably one bound for Canada, which is rightly believed to be less harsh toward illegal immigrants than is the United States. When the Dubai arrived at Algeciras, in early March, the Romanians were waiting.

Go to link