Anoop James

Anoop James receives me in his office after our dinner in the officers’ mess with the captain and another officer who joined the ship that very day. He is 34, Indian, and lives in the state of Kerala.

He is married and has two children, a six-year-old daughter and an eleven-month-old son.

He wanted to avoid any routine office work with fixed hours, so he enrolled in a four-year marine engineering course at a specialised school. In that way he could satisfy his desire for discovery and human encounters. He is the only sailor in his family, and even in his village, where the family tradition is farming.

Since 2006 he has sailed on many kinds of ships: liquefied gas carriers, crude oil supertankers, vehicle carriers, wood-chip carriers sailing from the Amazon to Japan for the paper industry, and bulk carriers such as the one on which he is currently working, unloading tens of thousands of tonnes of soybeans from Canada, where it was minus 30 degrees Celsius when the ship was loaded.

The crew numbers 22, all Indian. Communication is therefore easy and the atmosphere on board is pleasant, helped by a chief cook whose skills he appreciates.

His present contract lasts six months, which is unusual; the usual pattern is four months on board followed by three months with his family. From one contract to the next his company may assign him to any other ship.

He is chief engineer, an interesting and varied job that requires constant re-evaluation because regulations are always changing over time and from one country to another. He has no fixed working hours, must remain permanently available and never leaves his phone behind. If he is absent, he hands over his responsibilities to his second engineer. His team includes ten sailors out of the 22 on board. He admits that the workload is tiring but carries it with calm and a smile.

He sees little difference in workload between sea and port: the basic work, inspections and calculations, is greater at sea, but the atmosphere alongside is more rushed because port calls must be as short as possible.

He relaxes on board with DVDs and by reading books and magazines. He shows me his Rubik’s Cube, and a thousand-piece jigsaw is being reassembled in the sitting area of his cabin. There is also a gym, of which he is one of only two users.

He speaks with his family every day via Skype and WhatsApp. It is both a pleasure and a source of melancholy because, since she turned four, his daughter has become increasingly aware of his absences. Her requests for him to come home are hard to bear, and he says he finds it difficult to fall asleep after hearing them.

One of his best memories is a four-day call to load salt on Cedros Island, off the Mexican Pacific coast. His eyes light up as he recalls the welcome from the local people, the shared barbecues, the calm atmosphere and the transparent sea.

That almost paradisiacal description contrasts with his admission of fear when the sea rises, when the ship rolls and plunges and waves crash over the deck.

His greatest difficulty remains being far from his family.

He plans to sail until the age of forty in order to save enough money to buy land. His aim is to practise environmentally responsible farming. He will expand the small holding he already owns, together with a local-breed cow that produces only one litre of milk a day but of remarkable quality.