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Maersk. The company with the beautiful ships painted bright blue.
What he told me was fascinating. They spend millions every year not just on paint chemistry, but on ensuring every hull in the fleet is the exact same shade of blue with the exact same reflectivity.
Why?
Container shipping is a commodity. Even if you insist your box moves on a Maersk ship, they may hand it to a competitor. That’s why you never see Maersk billboards or television ads.
The ship is the billboard. And almost nobody sees it, because container terminals sit in industrial wastelands far from any city center.
So why spend a fortune polishing a billboard no customer will ever look at?
Because the people who do see it are the ones who matter. Sailors.
When a sailor on a rusty ship passes a Maersk vessel at night, he registers that ship’s judgment. When he gets home, he applies for a job there.
To be the best, Maersk has to hire the best. And the best want to sail beautiful, well maintained ships.
I’m writing all this because the real problem in the strait right now is the hundreds of ships still trapped in the Gulf.
Not all of them, but the Navy has offered protection to some, and the companies and crews have declined. They would rather sit and earn nothing than risk the hull.
Any American naval officer knows that even an ugly destroyer is the most lethal platform on the ocean.
The merchant captains who have to trust that destroyer know nothing about Aegis, weapons doctrine, or Navy combat procedure. They just DO NOT TRUST rusty ships.
What they know is the oldest rule in the trade: your reputation is your paintwork.
We give a rusted, neglected ship a wide berth, because a crew that ignores small things like corrosion probably ignores large things like sleeping or drinking on watch.
A US Navy bridge team would never do either. But the foreign master watching from two miles off has no way to know that.