America's Dwindling Merchant Fleet Is Sending Out an SOS

Back in his prime, the U.S. merchant fleet was the largest in the world, with hundreds of cargo ships casting off each month from the Pacific Coast. Andersen still grins about the weeks he lost in Manila, Hong Kong, Malaysia's Sibu and other distant ports, whose names alone could set a young adventurer's heart racing.

"We were the blessed ones," he says, standing in an empty San Francisco hiring hall that once spilled over with eager seafarers. "It's a totally different world now."

These days, Andersen works behind the dispatch counter at the headquarters of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, where he parcels out a handful of jobs each morning. There are regular cargo runs to Hawaii and Alaska, rare spots on oil tankers and, lately, an occasional shipload of arms to the Persian Gulf.

When he first picked up his membership card at that same counter in 1951, the bustling coast-wide union had about 9,000 members working everything from passenger ships to tramp steamers. Today, there are just 800 members, and many are close to retirement.

"There's no work for the young kids," Andersen says. "They might have the desire, but to make a living, they have to go somewhere else."

To explain what happened, he need only point to the giant ships lumbering past union headquarters on the San Francisco Bay. Nearly every one of them is foreign-owned, foreign-flagged and crewed by foreign sailors who count themselves lucky to earn $500 a month.

The same is true from Long Beach to Alaska and all along the Eastern Seaboard. Last year, U.S. ships carried less than 4% of the cargo entering and leaving U.S. ports, according to the Maritime Administration, a division of the Transportation Department. The portion probably would be close to zero if not for a few protective laws and subsidy programs that free-trade advocates would like to abolish.

After decades of bleeding, the U.S. merchant marine, comprising the nation's commercial vessels and seafaring labor force, has reached critical condition, industry veterans say. "We need to do something to at least stem the decline," says Maritime Administrator Capt. William Schubert.

The loss of jobs has gutted once-feisty unions representing deckhands, engineers, mates and pilots, and essentially has closed the door on what had been a bright option for working-class youths.