Cargo Ship Spotting
Every day of the year, night and day, in ports all over the world, huge cargo ships sail in carrying mysterious cargo. The ships generally slip in unnoticed except by port operators and companies. However, at the perimeter of a harbour, you’ll often find a curious group of people standing around in waterproof clothing, armed with binoculars and pads. These are the cargo ship spotters who keep a meticulous track of a port’s activity. They are interested in ships’ length, provenance, engines and ownership. Society tells us there’s nothing wrong spending time in art galleries admiring seascapes and yet cargo ship spotting has a bad name in many quarters. It’s seen as obsessive and strange. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work [hyperlink] celebrates the curiosity and eccentricity of the world’s ship spotters and suggests that these people have a lesson to teach us all about the value of observing bits of the economy in ways that are not simply financial and numerical: in other words, in looking at them a little as we might a work of art.