'Seafarers are an invisible group. Not hyped, not fashionable'
H er diary is formidable: committees, spee-ches,
conferences, meetings, lunches, dinners, visits, tours, hours at
the desk digesting charity briefs. Sometimes there are
interviews too, but not very often: if you look back at the
occasions when the Princess Royal has made the headlines it
is nearly always in a speech, on her own terms.
Likewise if you look back at photographs they will show her
doing something, or meeting someone, or looking at the
camera with the air of somebody who is not going to waste a
lot of time on this. She does not pose, or ponce, or prattle,
or Share her Pain. There is something refreshing about her:
the sharpest apple in the royal basket.
I got an hour, though, up in her office at Buckingham Palace.
This interview was to mark a milestone for what is reputedly
her second favourite cause: The Missions to Seamen, the
enduring Victorian charity known to generations of sailors as
the "Flying Angel".
She has been its President since 1984, and this week it
becomes The Mission to Seafarers, in acknowledgement that
a surprising number of them worldwide are now female. "It's
a good word," she says, "not one we've had to make up."
With brief shared horror we contemplate the possibility of
"Seapersons". The famous angel of the logo endures, though
in its sixth shape since 1858. It began as a winged
Burne-Jonesish maiden with a Bible, passed through
increasingly abstract forms to Eric Fraser's 1951 shape
made out of waves, and is now a modern BT-style logo with
arms outstretched in a spirit of inclusiveness.
"Actually," says the Princess, "lots of people just see it as a
spiritual presence, not necessarily a Christian angel.
Eminently practical, I think, to have somebody who can fly.
She can bring help anywhere."
At 50, the Princess Royal is
eminently practical herself: a
seasoned professional with no
illusions about her role and the
nature of her usefulness to her
myriad charities ("Oh, just
keeping the profile up").
However, I have sat on one
committee she chairs and can
confirm that she is more than a
piece of royal icing. She knows
her stuff, has the focus of a laser and her father's unnerving
knack of spearing you with an incredulous eye if you waffle.
Her concept of duty and self-control is visibly in a direct line
from the Queen's, as is her polite but precise social distance
from journalists. It is a knack that would have saved several
less experienced royals all sorts of trouble.
So in an interview she pauses for thought before she speaks;
but not, endearingly, before she laughs. Hers is a dry,
practical humanity, a dogged conviction of what is right and
decent combined with a resigned awareness that there are
some injustices she cannot loudly condemn for fear of
making the situation worse. We have seen it often enough on
Save the Children tours: no time for damp-eyed empathy or
agonised headshaking; she does not cuddle or weep but
looks straight at the wound and then tangles purposefully
with its causes.
She dislikes personal comments intensely, and bans any
personal questions with some force. So here she is in a tartan
skirt and practical boots, high above The Mall, talking about
the Flying Angel and why, in her father's footsteps, she took
on the presidency in 1984 and has since visited 50 Missions,
from Antwerp to Wellington, Fowey to Fremantle,
Singapore to South Tees.
"Well, seafarers are an invisible group, aren't they? Not
fashionable, not hyped. People forget that over 90 per cent
of everything we use has to come by sea, and that these
people are out there in a hostile environment which no
technology can ever really tame." The Mission maintains
chaplains and volunteers in 300 ports worldwide. The first of
its centres that the Princess saw was in Hull, long before she
was grown up.
"It was on a rare visit with the Queen. A very formal day, I
remember, so I was taken by the informality of the Mission.
The atmosphere was very nice, and I think that even then I
was struck by the fact that it was a genuinely ecumenical
organisation. We wouldn't have used that word then, but it
was just there for the crews wherever they came from,
offering useful things that people need. Telephones, and
postboxes, and help with languages, and a shop containing
bog-standard things like soap and toothbrushes and
flannels."
Did she have, I wondered, any real idea of what these
wandering lives were like? "No. I only knew about Royal
Navy ships. But perhaps I had just enough imagination to
understand that if you were in a strange port, knowing
nobody, some help and company would be good."
Nowadays she knows a lot more and expatiates on the
changes in shipping, the container ships with rapid
turnaround times whose ever smaller crews live for months in
cramped conditions, with nowhere to walk outside as every
inch of deck is crammed with profitable freight; on men who
work often alone, then find that their brief hours in port are
spent at the far end of a bleak cargo terminal, expensive
miles from a shop or pub.
"The chaplains used to spend time going out to visit ships at
anchor, now they are up and down the quaysides of these
container terminals; approaching ships, going up ladders and
they are often uncertain of their reception. It's very hard
work."
And that is when everything is going normally. Increasingly,
the Mission has to succour the crews of ships stranded by
bad luck, bad management or cynical exploitation. World
seafaring, out of sight and mind, is rife with abuses and
unhappiness. "There was one Romanian ship in Dubai for
four years. Imagine being a Romanian stuck in Dubai with no
money . . . Ships go down or get impounded and nobody
cares about the crew stuck on the wrong side of the world.
Someone has to look after them."
Practised in diplomacy from her Save the Children work, she
is cautious about apportioning blame, even though the
Mission has often intervened to get dangerous ships
inspected and crews paid. "Sometimes it's commercial
failure, nobody's fault. But you do get some countries which
don't pay and other areas, such as South-East Asia, where
piracy has been a problem. The majority of owners and
managers run ships perfectly well. But sadly there will always
be owners and managers who think it's an inconvenience to
take care of their crews. Even in ports like Rotterdam you
see rust buckets, ships where it's almost at the point where
someone has to say 'No, you're not going anywhere, you are
not fit to go anywhere, you're not paying your crew
properly'."
She raises the subject of the Erika, the tanker whose Indian
master was thrown into prison after its sinking in France and
who was freed after protests by, among others, the Mission.
"Well, they may have had their reasons but imagine it, after a
shipwreck: this chap all alone among French speakers."
As a humanitarian social charity, The Mission to Seafarers
could perfectly well stand alone, but intriguingly its President
comes back to its religious core.
"You don't get given a Bible at the Mission unless you ask
for one, but thousands do. It's a classic case of example
being more powerful than preaching. You show what
Christianity is simply by the way you behave. Obviously its
history goes back to when there used to be a great many
Anglican seamen, but for heaven's sake" - she fixes me with
a keen eye in case I am some sort of sneering atheist - "I
don't think it crossed their minds that when the number of
Anglicans went down they should not go on helping
seafarers. When there's a disaster you don't pick and choose
who you're going to be nice to, do you? Doesn't seem right."
She laughs, and looks exactly like the Duke of Edinburgh for
a moment. "That is not what Christianity does. Everyone's
together. Muslim, Hindu, you name it, and I think they
appreciate the fact that they aren't preached at. And I do
love going to the Centres," she says with a faint reminiscent
smile. "They're relaxed, friendly, domestic places. Just what
you'd need, away from danger and machismo. And
somewhere you can have a jolly good whinge if you want
to."
She is especially impressed with the volunteers. "Fundraising,
or behind the bar, or making tea, or just being there . . .
these sailors are human beings, often very lonely. It's very
human work, this: you are dealing with fairly basic emotions
and needs.
"At the Trust for Carers, the other day, a woman said to me
'To be honest, all I wanted was a hug'." She pauses,
thoughtful. "Sometimes people get carried away with what
they think other people need, but often what people need is
not very much. Basic facilities, a telephone, a drink,
communication, company."
She is interestingly empathetic on the subject of the seafarer's
temperament. This, after all, is the daughter, sister and wife
of naval officers, and since her remarriage a regular yacht
sailor herself. When I quote to her a Mission chaplain who
said that he had never met a sailor without some sense of the
spiritual, she says instantly: "Oh yes, the sea has that effect
on people. You're a long way from anywhere, so who else
do you put your faith in? And its an element that's so
powerful that you always feel humble. No technology can
overcome it." A diversion, while the ever-practical Princess
explains the workings of "a handy piece of kit" for gauging
stresses in container ships, that she saw at an awards
ceremony. "But still there can be a disaster. So you learn
humility."
She also understands the restless, divided soul of the
seafarer. "You long to come home, you love home and your
family, then in a month" - she mimes the action of scratching
irritably at the arm of the chair, nails on edge - "you want to
be back out there again and your family wish you were."
Another laugh.
I try to get her, from experience and observation, to define
the seafaring character. "Far too difficult a question to
answer in less than an hour. But I'll say this: the thing about
working as a crew is that they really understand that you
cannot isolate yourself from other people, because in the end
you depend on them. You may be good at your job but if
you don't understand how it fits in with the rest of the crew,
it's not much good."
She is in dead earnest now, talking beyond seafaring,
seeming for one wild moment to address herself, if obliquely,
to the Bridget Jones generation.
"Life in general nowadays is more and more isolating. Most
people would call it independence, but I'm not sure what that
means. It could mean just plain selfish. It could be more
convenient just to live all by yourself, but if it means that you
don't understand the impact of your life on other people's
lives, and how you depend on other people all the time, it's
no good. At sea, in a crew, you understand that you can't
live alone. And yet at the same time sailors are selfreliant: if
someone's lost or ill you step into their shoes, and that
broadens your understanding too. Maybe," she concludes,
"the word I want is responsibility."
Before I go, I venture the seafaring question of the hour.
"What about Pete Goss's boat, then?" No pause this time:
everyone with a taste for the sea is in shock over the
disintegration of a project conceived by our greatest
present-day sea hero and only just launched by the Queen.
The Queen's daughter says: "Oh yes, did you see the
television pictures? The bow just wobbling, coming off?
Whoo! There'll be a lot of old salts saying told you so, you
can't build a hull that long without problems. But I think most
people understand that it was a genuine attempt at radical
design, not some gung-ho fashion thing. You could argue that
for someone like Pete Goss that kind of setback is grist to
the mill. He's just the right individual," she says stoutly, "to
rise above it and make it work."
Whereon the tape clicks to an end and we fall to animated
discussion of keels. Just as she might do with any beached
sailor in any mission hut from Goole to Dar es Salaam.