You can’t go without being paid for months on end. Nor can seafarers

It was no surprise when a plea for help from a crew stuck on board a VLCC arrested off Singapore landed in the TradeWinds’ inbox.

I felt for the seafarers on the 320,300-dwt tanker Chloe V (built 2011) as I read their sorry tale of being trapped on board for months with expired contracts and back wages owing.

In more than two decades of writing for TradeWinds, I have covered far too many incidents in which seafarers have been abandoned by employers, left in dire straits on board a rusting hulk.