News 11 Apr, 2019 Seafarer Desertion - The Club's Experience The Club has recently undertaken an analysis of claims involving seafarers who have deserted their vessel over the previous ten years. Although these types of claims are not common and nor are they particularly expensive, they can be disruptive to a vessel’s operation, and take up management time to rectify. In some cases, the deserter will turn up shortly after going missing, in others, they have disappeared for a considerable period of time. The ranks of those that desert a vessel are many and varied, including cadets, crew and officers from all departments, and although it is unusual for senior officers to leave a vessel in these circumstances, in one case a Chief Engineer deserted. The only discernible pattern is that catering staff, chief cooks, cooks, stewards and messboys predominate over other departments in the Club’s statistics, with chief cooks and cooks in particular featuring regularly in deserter cases. Although, statistically, due to the unknown makeup of nationalities serving on entered vessels at any given time, it is impossible to say whether one nationality or another is more likely to desert an entered vessel, a review of our claims files has shown that Vietnamese, Turkish, Chinese and Cuban seafarers predominate. Certain countries do preponderate in relation to where we experience desertion cases, with Canada, South Korea and Australia being popular destinations, followed by the USA and Spain. There are also a handful of trends in relation to which nationality of seafarers predominate in desertion cases in certain countries:  Chinese and Vietnamese seafarers deserting in Australia Turkish and Cuban seafarers deserting in Canada Chinese and Vietnamese seafarers deserting in South Korea Although the number of such cases experienced in a given year can vary considerably, the overall trend when correlated to the growth of the Club’s entered tonnage during the period, is slow