Thank you to everyone who supported QVSR during 2024. Our final total amounted to just over £5,000. We are very grateful to Alastair Norris for sharing all the information about the charity over the past year. The following item is his final contribution.
“I want to begin with a huge “Thank You” to The Mint for raising £5000 for QVSR and for the warm support that you have given the mission over the last year in so many ways. I went up to London for a strategy meeting at the beginning of February and took the opportunity to discuss what The Mint money might do. In the Seafarers’ Centres we are trying to extend the food offering. I can see why. On Wednesday last I was at Portbury Dock visiting the “Grande Atlantico” – a vast car carrier being loaded with Range Rovers bound for Italy. After visiting the captain’s cabin we went to the crew “mess room” and galley. The remains of the meal were evident. No wonder that what the crew want is transport to Gordano Services on the M5 to get KFC and Big Macs. Nine months of “cookies” menu…. ! So what we are doing is equipping all the centres with air friers to provide a simple menu of what the crew want: and that is where some of your money has gone.
And the knitted hats? Some have gone to Bristol: This is a picture of a Filipino sailor on board the huge Indian “bulker” “Maru” which was bringing in huge steel billets. He got one of the blue hats. We took the hats, Bibles, prayer cards, copies of the National Geographic, booklets of comforting words in Tagalog and (because the ship was going to take 10 days to unload) a wifi router – vital for keeping contact with a family you have not seen for 8 months (including
a new born who arrived after you sailed).
It was good to go ship visiting at Bristol. A very different port from the container ports at Immingham, Felixstowe and London Gateway and from the Tilbury cruise liner terminal. Bristol focusses on cars and bulk cargoes (scrap steel, metal ingots, wood chippings, vegetable oil, orange juice, though not all in the same hold). I had two immediate impressions. One was how drab and functional everything was: beige and grey everywhere and endless safety notices and instructions. The other was how grimy everywhere was, oil everywhere. I suddenly realised the simple value of a clean, colourful centre where the most visible word is “Welcome” (in your own language) and where you have space to be alone.
Elsewhere the work goes on. An abandoned Greek ship at Purfleet: the crew have to be cared for. A seafarer’s child killed in Christmas week by an accident half a world away: a chaplain’s comfort needed. Twelve asylum seekers found inside a refrigerated container at Immingham: taken in police custody to the centre to recover from hypothermia.
Thank you for your support. And I do wish our successor Charity of the Year Ocean Stars equal success. “