A method for estimating world maritime employment K.X. Li * , J. Wonham University of Wales Cardi, Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, Cardi CF1 3YP, UK Received 6 March 1998; received in revised form 22 December 1998; accepted 20 January 1999 Abstract Compared with technical research on ships, there is lack of systematic data and research on maritime labour, their number, education and manning eciency. Due to the high mobility of the profession and complication of jurisdictions, there is no exact ®gure of the number of seamen worldwide. This paper es- tablishes a method to estimate maritime labour worldwide as well as on open-registry ¯eets. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Worldwide data on merchant vessels, e.g., numbers of ships, sizes, types, numbers of new building and accidental total loss, have been available for many years. 1 Complete data on the employment of seamen is still not available on a worldwide scale, and not even at national levels in some maritime nations. 2 Calculations of maritime labour demand and supply are based on questionnaires (BIMCO/ISF, 1990, 1995). The fatalities and injuries to seamen worldwide have to be approximated based on data of individual ¯eets (Goss et al., 1991; Li, 1998). Without ``safer, healthier and happier seamen'', the aim of ``safer ships and cleaner oceans'' can only be achieved to a limited extent. There is justi®cation in stating that ``of all sections of the community, sea- faring men ... have been the most ignored and therefore the worst treated''(Kitchen, 1980). Furthermore, it can be argued that the most ignored group of seamen is those working on open- registry ships. The fact that ``The open-registry ¯eets were operating without eective government Transportation Research Part E 35 (1999) 183±189 www.elsevier.com/locate/tre * Corresponding author. Fax: 0171-772-8200; e-mail: kevin.li@a-bilbrough.co.uk 1 Which may date back to 1934, the establishment of the Society of Lloyd's Register, which now has more than 3800 sta based at over 255 oces worldwide. Its statistics on worldwide ¯eets is considered as both authentic and comprehensive. See Farthing (1993). 2 In 1997, the number of seamen in UK, a traditional maritime nation, was based on estimation. See McConville et al. (1998). 1366-5545/99/$ ± see front matter Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S1366-5545(99)00007-1