<\/p>\n
OP-ED By John Konrad<\/a> (gCaptain) Those five words have special meaning. They motivate like no other. They ring for years in the sweat-soaked nightmares of any sailor who has ever heard them. They excite and calm. Words have power and meaning but few words have more meaning to sailors than these five. The first step required to rebuilding the US Merchant Marine is for a strong leader to pronounce these five words:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THIS IS NOT A DRILL<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not long ago I received an invitation from a man with a forgettable name, to meet in a random building, in a nondescript suburb of New York. I did not know this man. In my nearly 15 years running gCaptain I had never come across his name or his company and there didn\u2019t seem to be a trace of him on LinkedIn or Google. Typically, I leave random invitations from unknown people unanswered, but this invitation piqued my interest because it was short, purported urgency, and the man claimed to be the best friend of a shipping magnate I knew well and trusted.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The address turned out to be the former headquarters of a very large and influential company which was abandoned a few decades ago after the company went bankrupt. It was abandoned of suits and ties but the sprawling campus and the building itself were immaculately groomed. I followed the directions to \u201cjust park outside\u201d and parked my car in the immense circular driveway, walked into the building, and was immediately taken by the vast lobby undoubtedly designed by some talented modern architect whose name I should probably know. It had the slight must of disuse almost hidden by citrus scent of a fresh Florida orchard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was grand and disorienting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Entering a glass elevator, I pressed the button for the \u201cCEO suite\u201d and, walking off, was met by a large man in his sixties or early seventies with wide shoulders, a chiseled face, and enormous hands that engulfed mine when we shook. His smile was infectious as he greeted me and escorted me through the doors of a modern glass wall, over a floor of glistening polished wood with an unpronounceable Brazilian name, past glass museum-quality displays with shipping artifacts, past a cedar cigar room, past a bar stocked with only single malt, past signed lithographic art, to a spartan office with a wide window, Persian rug, mahogany desk and a few museum-quality chairs. At this point only one thing was clear to me: this was the proverbial smoke-filled room<\/a> where big deals get done in secrecy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I sat on the chair closest to his desk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cTell me a story,\u201d he said and I replied with a quizzical look. I was still disoriented by the building, the office, and the man. \u201cListen\u201d he replied as he sat at his desk, glanced at the multiple screens of the Bloomberg terminal inlaid in his desk, then rose to sit on the front corner of his desk. \u201cOur corner of the world,\u201d he said in his bright deep voice, \u201cthe shipping world is failing. COVID19 is crippling supply lines, uncertainty has gripped the markets, crews are going to be stuck for months, and American shipping interests are an anemic fucking waste, a few US shipping companies are unlikely to survive COVID, MARAD is providing some leadership but Buzby is too \u00a0focused on the pentagon which has problems of their own starting with Military Sealift Command which turned into total shitshow when COVID hit.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He did not waste time getting to the root of the problem and he did not blame the Jones Act, Congress, unions, banks, or anything else that I\u2019ve heard men in his position of money and wealth blame for the woes of American Shipping. He said \u201cevery fucking problem gCaptain writes about\u201d \u2013 both internationally and domestically \u2013 was the result of one thing. He blamed it all on a \u201cA total lack of fucking leadership.\u201d <\/p>\n What he wanted was a story he could use to recruit a leader. And story that would tell that leader what must be done first and foremost to \u201cfix this sinking ship\u201d to fix America\u2019s merchant fleet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what story to tell. I don\u2019t know how to fix the world\u2019s problems.\u201d I said. \u201cBut I know what we, the US shipping industry, need to do first.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat is that?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe must sound the Alarm,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWell, you are a ship captain.\u201d He replied. \u201cTell me the story about a time you did just that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I did not have time to reflect or plan out a story, so I went to my earliest days of childhood and told a tale I knew by heart. Here is the story I told that day. Here is the story I hope inspires a leader to rise to lead this industry. A story that I already know is too long and unrelated but is what came from my heart when this man put me on the spot.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here is the story I told.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1948 a New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Chief named Hugh Halligan<\/a> invented a new tool that would go on to save millions of lives and would eventually become standard equipment carried aboard nearly every firetruck in the world. The tool \u2013 a thick hardened steel bar bookended with a wedge, an adze, and a claw designed to forcibly penetrate any material \u2013 looks like a medieval implement of destruction welded in bad intentions and wielded by mercenary knights in black armor. The Halligan Bar<\/a>, as the device would be called, was crude, ugly, and highly effective. The tool was expensive because it was difficult to forge by hand so by 1949, Peter Clarke, the blacksmith Chief Halligan convinced to hammer and forge out the tool, was overwhelmed with orders as countless New York Fireman purchased the tool with cash.<\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OP-ED By John Konrad (gCaptain) Those five words have special meaning. They motivate like no other. They ring for years in the sweat-soaked nightmares of any sailor who has ever heard them. They excite and calm. Words have power and meaning but few words have more meaning to sailors than these five. The first step …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[10821,1923,4467,2957,62,3466,4526],"class_list":["post-16766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-drill","tag-long","tag-meeting","tag-save","tag-shipping","tag-short","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/16767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe shipping community needs a leader, he said. Further, he made clear that the leader could not be me, I am too controversial, and it could not be him, he was too old. He did not tell me who the leader should be except someone smart, young, and charismatic. He did not tell me anything else, instead he just made one simple request. \u201cTell me a story.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n