It was a hot day one summer when Kent Williams walked into the Fort Vancouver Seafarers Center and saw five Russian men staring with lights off at the center’s small aquarium.
They were seafarers, just ashore after spending weeks aboard a cargo ship. They were placid in heavy coats, noted Williams, who had reddened from the sun and retreated into khaki shorts.
As executive director, he moved to help. He flipped on the lights and began pointing out free magazines and books they could read or take. One of the men turned and said no.
“Just want to watch the fish,” he said, through a thick Russian accent.
“That’s all they wanted,” recalled Williams, 73. “And that’s all they needed — peace and quiet just to sit and watch the fish go back and forth. It was almost like meditation.”
Seafarers are the rarely seen men and women keeping world trade afloat. There are about 1.6 million of them globally, according to the International Chamber of Shipping, manning the bellowing cargo ships crisscrossing oceans for most of the year.
Respites like seafarers centers can be sorely needed. Although there are many on the eastern seaboard, said Williams, there are two on the West Coast: at the Port of Seattle and at the Port of Vancouver. More than 80 volunteers staff the latter, hoping to provide whatever they can, even during the holidays.
Aboard the ships
Pounds upon pounds of steel scraps crashed into the cargo holds of the MV Crest Navigator in late fall.
The ship, one of many that slide into the Port of Vancouver every week, had just arrived from a two week trip from Malaysia. Capt. Abraham Hermosura gave his crew, 19 Filipino men, freedom to roam when they aren’t on shift. He knew they needed it.
“All of us would say (our own job) is a hard job,” he said. “But the difference between seafarers and a normal layman, after work you go home to your family. Not like us. After you work, you go to your room. That is your house.”
Some can go ashore, but only if they have proper clearance. It used to be that seafarers could walk into town more freely, but the passage of the Patriot Act ramped up security at U.S. ports.
If cleared, the seafarers say the first thing they want to do is stock up on junk food and prepaid internet cards. With those, they can communicate with family via Skype or escape the same menu they eat every day.
Mario Duran, chief engineer, said he visited Vancouver Mall to buy jeans, which are cheaper in the United States, as well as Victoria’s Secret perfume.
“My wife and daughter very much like the perfume,” he said.
Duran, like the other crewmen, see their family for a few months a year. Sometimes they will stay in a nearby port and get to see them, other times they take extended vacations.
But Duran, 63, said he’s so accustomed to life at sea that he sometimes goes to a ship even on his days off. He has been in this line of work since he was 20 years old. It was the best option for his future, he said.
“I cannot find my salary in the Philippines. Only in the ships,” he said. Otherwise, it would have been work in a restaurant, as a driver or doing construction, he said.
Even then, the pay isn’t great, said Williams, and that’s part of the reason the seafarers center tries to be as hospitable as possible.
A seafarer’s respite
When seafarers finish trips to the mall, they sometimes visit the Fort Vancouver Seafarers Center. At a cozy 4,000-square-feet, it is the material opposite of a forbidding ship hull.
Inside are armchairs, couches, a pool table, a ping pong table and free knit clothes. There is a wall of coffee mugs and ditty bags filled with toothpaste, brushes, pens, magnifying glasses and anything else volunteers can scrounge together.
There is a chapel room with religious texts in numerous languages. There is a television room with a comfortable leather couch. And, there is a commercial kitchen to give them something different to eat.
All of it works to give seafarers a respite from the constant noise and duty of the seafarer’s life, Williams said. Williams himself spent his career as an export trader and said he knows the feeling of being a stranger in a foreign country.
“Our area, Clark County, Vancouver, Southwest Washington for that matter, is a very welcoming community,” he said. “We care about people who come in here as strangers.”
The center was founded in the 1960s, after a teenaged Anni DeFresne Beach decided to take a Japanese freighter to Taiwan. Though it was fun, she recalled during the center’s 50th anniversary celebration, she had detailed the harsh seafaring life in letters to her parents.
Those letters led to the formation of the center, first as a house on Evergreen Boulevard west of downtown Vancouver. Then, in 1995, the center moved to its space on port property, where it pays a lease of $1 per year.
Port commissioner Eric LaBrandt, who spent a few years in his 20s working aboard an oil rig, said he was proud of what the center could offer.
“You’re surrounded 24 hours a day by metal floors and walls, the hum of the engine, it’s with you always,” he said. “For those sailors, this is their welcome to Vancouver and the United States.”
On Dec. 3, the center hosted a Christmas party, welcoming LaBrandt, port commissioner-elect Don Orange and Vancouver mayor-elect Anne McEnerny-Ogle.
Though none of the seafarers attended, the volunteers put out 550 ditty bags full of Christmas gifts that it will hand out to seafarers as they come in. The center expects to help close to 3,000 seafarers every year, Williams said.
Troy Brynelson: 360-735-4547; troy.brynelson@columbian.com; twitter.com/TroyWB
