The BeachBoys: An Ocean Folks Series
The first I heard of the BeachBoys, as they are known, was in Sean Christies’ book, “Life Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard: Life Among The Stowaways”. Christie had identified and befriended a small but significant sub-culture, originating in Dar-Es-Salam, Tanzania.
Like much of the global south, urban migration has altered Tanzania’s landscape. People flooding into towns and cities looking for work and opportunities, have to make do with sprawling informal settlements. With few services, rivers of shit and roaming gangs of footpads, these can be precarious places to establish a life. The lucky succeed and move out. The rest can only dream of escape.
The BeachBoys built a sub-culture around heroic narratives of stowing away onboard vessels lining Dar-Es-Salam’s harbour. So called due to their habit of watching the huge freighters glide past from the beaches, their goal was to hitch a ride to the riches of Europe where ones fortune was ripe for the plucking. But the destination was secondary to the passage and what it represented…a chance, an opportunity, a way out.
Years of absence were common amongst the BeachBoys. World tours with far flung destinations, Rio, Cape Town, Rotterdam. No matter how miserable the squalor or pernicious the danger, they would not return to Dar-es-Salam empty handed. The only homecoming conceivable was a mariner’s return, tales of exotic destinations, adversaries overcome, opportunities seized and pockets full of cash.
Every step of the way there was adversity. Captains would often times trick discovered stowaways ashore in Cape Town, where security was more pliable than the fortress ports of the West. Or that self same, port security would hound them night after night, preventing them catching another ride.
In the meantime they melted into Cape Town’s exploding tent city, that colonises the forlorn urban expanse of the Foreshore. Graffiti extolling BeachBoy hardship and ventures, was one of the few indications that they were here. And the BeachBoys live hard. Plastic sheeted huts are their only protection from Cape Town’s howling Souther Easterly wind and freezing winter rains. The acrid smell of burning plastic hangs in low clouds. “Europe” They told me “Please help me get to Europe”.
But aside for the sunny weather, the squalid conditions are the same as the “The Jungle”, Europe’s mega immigrant shanty town located in Calais. Like a starling’s murmuration, the Jungle ripples, ducks and reforms to rhythm of the Gendarmes batons, stretching throughout the frozen wastelands of the port. Neither permanent or ethereal.
The ills of substance abuse cuts a wide swath. Common amongst the residences is the mumbled incoherence of a tik high, or the manic neediness of the down- men desperate for a moments respite from the reality of their failure to escape.
As a mariner I have not been blind to these migrants congregating at the fringes of ports worldwide. Their status is often informal, they glide between the legal and shadow worlds, running tasks and errands for crews. SIM cards, forex, cigarettes and booze are their bread and butter. Over the years these communities have both increased in population, and been driven further from the burgeoning port fence lines, where as many as three, razor wire topped lines delineate those whom are welcome and those that are not. The post 9/11 security landscape a stark divergence from the free-for-all of old.
My interaction with stowaways has been largely theoretical - security drills to search and find stowaways onboard, conducted in hot spots, in an era where governments increasingly penalise ship’s Masters and ship-owners for carrying undocumented people. The dispensed wisdom at these drills is to treat any found, with caution. They are likely to be desperate to evade capture and imprisonment. Stowaway determination continually outflanks the security designed to defeat them, often with appalling results.
After signing on a vessel I knew well, the Chief Mate said they had issues on the previous mission. A noxious odour emanating from the starboard chain locker had revealed itself to be a decomposing corpse sitting atop a pile of chain. During a previous port call, a young man swam out as the vessel swung at anchor. Climbing up the anchor chain he took refuge in the chain locker. Classified as an enclosed space, access to these areas are closely regulated by health and safety regulation. Active ventilation, breathing apparatus and gas samples are the minimum requirements prior to entry.
As metal rusts, the oxidisation process uses up the ambient oxygen. In unventilated spaces this process gradually lowers oxygen levels, until the atmosphere can no longer support life. A silent, painless death was the fate for this poor soul.
An episode that accentuate the risks the BeachBoys take, happened years prior to this. I was partaking in a Trans Atlantic yacht race. One beautiful morning Mid Atlantic one of race fleet members came across the young man tied to a barrel, bobbing in the clear azure sea. He had jumped aboard a Greek flagged vessel in Cape Verde. Although he had stayed concealed for a number of days, he eventually ran out of food and water and surrendered to the crew. A first they treated him well, but some days in, the Captain behaviour changed and he ordered the crew to throw the man overboard. He was lucky, a couple more knots of wind, slight bigger swell, or a distracted watch and and the yacht would not have seen him. He would have perished in an unimaginably cruel way.
As our globalised order breaks down and reconfigures, nation states re-forge their identities and look inwards once more. Fuelled by the glossy magazine consumer porn of modern life, those of us that are lucky enough to have, are decreasingly likely to share. As those of us that “have not”, hungrily search for their slice….the collision of these realities can often be tragic.