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In this candid personal essay, seafarer and educator Elijah Jose C. Barrios shares his decade-long journey in the maritime industry, transforming his understanding of seafaring from simply “free world travel” to its deeper purpose in global service. Currently serving as a shipboard training officer at the Maritime Academy of Asia and the Pacific (MAAP) and as a third officer with Marlow Navigation, Barrios brings his perspective as an active seafarer, educator, and writer to this reflection. A published author and mental health advocate, his work appears in Seafarer Asia Magazine and The Philippine Daily Inquirer, while his book “Resurgence” explores depression and healing in the maritime community.

My complex relationship with seafaring began with a lie: to travel the world for free.

On our first day in maritime school, my classmates and I were made to believe seafaring would take us places unimaginable for a 15-year-old student. As someone from the province who dreamed big, I bought it. But after ten years of sea experience and a journey 360 degrees around the equator, seafaring gave me so much but took so many things away from me as well.

I lost loved ones while I was away from home. The pain lived with the fact that I was not able to say my goodbyes, not even a whisper of thanks before they were gone. Some colleagues are also hard to deal with. Like this captain who lashed out at me for four hours because I forgot to make him coffee. I never knew I would shed a tear in the navigational bridge, radars as my witness. There were also days when the work piled up like Tetris, and I had to be awake for 48 hours. My cabin was only three flights of stairs above me, but I couldn’t bring myself in because of busy port operations and inspections. I started seafaring when I was only 18. And before I even knew it, I was already an adult in orange coveralls.

But where I draw the line of whether it was all worth it is between me and the bigger world I’m a part of. While I had missed out on many occasions, such as Christmas parties, birthdays, graduations, and whatnot, I was having a unique experience at sea.

There were days when I would be overjoyed by the pods of dolphins freely jumping in and out of the water as the sunset. On nights, I would revel in the unobstructed night sky and appreciate the constellations that seemed bigger opposite the ocean. In many ports, I would have the most beautiful collection of photos for my Instagram. Funnily enough, in one port, I also got detained for two hours because it was illegal to take a photo. It was the element of the unexpected that colored my journey as a seafarer. I definitely never knew what I was going to get.

But what made me realize how generous seafaring is was this voyage from Columbia River to Manila Bay.

From a seafarer’s viewpoint, the voyage instructions were simple: load this amount of wheat from the USA and unload it in the Philippines. The process was also routine: prepare the holds, calculate for stability, conduct the loading operation, secure the cargo, and sail out. But while we were in transit to my home country, I came across the cargo documents. I realized the company chartering the ship was manufacturing my favorite snacks in the Philippines. What were the snacks made of? Wheat.

All of a sudden, I was a child. I was amazed because I became a part of bringing this popular food back home right before it was packed, more so, before it even arrived in our country. I never knew I would see this story out of a snack. Inside the red plastic of heaven goodness, along with the crackers and cheese powders, is a story of thousands of seafarers who tirelessly do their job so everyone around the world can get a bit of this and that. So, this is why we sail. This is why the world needs us: for every little child to taste the world and for every family table to have food.

My complex relationship with seafaring may have begun with a lie. But after a decade of understanding the industry, the truth turned out to be simple: we do not travel the world for free; we travel the world for service.