Most Merchant Navy seafaring types, those who remain at sea longer than their first trip as a cadet, never really talk about the life and times away from home and their loved ones! From the tears at the airport departure terminal to the hugs and laughter a few months later the voyage and all it holds is brushed-off through a few muted sentences and off-the-cuff water-borne occurrences that say very little of substance. Nothing is ever dwelt or expanded upon, memories are only given to appease the questions asked and once ashore the sailor rapidly brushes off the salt and the sea-legs to become just another mundane landlubber complaining about the weather.
The seafaring life that goes down, the wife in every port, the travel and cultures crossed, is that reality or just some wishful thinking? On a deeper note how do a bunch of men and the occasional woman survive for weeks on end in a steel can? Well, sailors are a tough breed, called mercenaries in the Philippines, unknown and unrecognized in the UK and the western world they lead exciting and often difficult lifestyles! Many are married to nurses, many more have setup shop in Thailand or Brazil after seeing sex-enhanced daylight and many more still just drink their lives away on a variety of cheap spirits and loose girls or boys! Many more still are happily married with children to school sweethearts and others have retired after an extremely fulfilling career.
One thing though, these Captains and Chief Engineers, the able-bodied, oilers and the serangs, whether it is of rough weather and daily survival, of playing cricket with a coconut on an uninhabited beach in the last outback of civilisation (Papua New Guinea), of breaking ice in Northern Russia or jumping planes in Angola with a group of last-minute and desperate freedom fighters, they all have a story to tell but rarely do the words flow!
Here within these pages are the Mariners Articles! Marinated stories and tales of nautical adventure and travel, across oceans, though airports and in hotels the memories of a career at sea are written down for all to read - some of them anyway!
Ieuan Dolby,
November 2008 
