You're a grand old flag,

You’re a high flying flag

And forever in peace may you wave.

You’re the emblem of

The land I love,

The home of the free and the brave.

Ev’ry heart beats true

'Neath the Red, White and Blue,

Where there’s never a boast or brag.

But should auld acquaintance be forgot,

Keep your eye on the grand old flag.

Seamen know as little about farm subsidies as Iowa farmers do about "flags of convenience," so we shouldn’t be overly critical when many of our fellow citizens are ignorant of this corporate defection.  It isn’t that they’re insensitive; they’re uninformed.  When the hearts of Iowa farmers beat true ‘neath the Red, White and Blue, most have no idea that thousands of ships owned by Americans do not sail under the American flag.  Instead, to avoid taxes, these ships are registered for "convenience" in such countries as  Liberia, Panama or landlocked Luxembourg. They fly red, white and blue flags.  But their colors are not our Colors.

Of course, the colors red, white and blue are not our private property.  France and Russia are just two of many countries whose national flags are various arrangements of these three colors.  But when the red, white and blue star and bars of Liberia are at a masthead, they signify more than sovereignty.  They are evidence that American seamen have been outsourced and a reminder that only a tiny percentage of the world's oceangoing ships remain under American registry.

Cabotage is a term so critical to seafarers that we should be embarrassed it has meant so little to us for so long.  Early in the game, it meant the granting of a  monopoly to citizens for trading between US ports.  Over time that meaning has been widened to grant exclusive status to citizens in such activities as ship registry, manning, construction and repair.  Aliens can hold only a minority share in the ownership of ships under American flag; aliens cannot hold officer licenses; no more than a specified minority of aliens may act as crewmembers of a US ship; to be free of customs duty, no more than a specified amount of ship construction and repair of a US ship can be performed in a foreign yard.  Many of these protections appear in a piece of federal legislation called the Jones Act, while similar controls have been enacted to apply to aircraft ownership and operation.  Given the strength of farm subsidies, the cabotage concept under US law would seem to be alive and well.

But appearances are deceiving.  There's a growing trend, particularly in today's climate of globalization, to minimize and circumvent the Jones Act. While wandering around the Internet, I happened upon a mother lode of facts compiled by the CIA that seems to dispute the Act's health.  Most of the statistics embedded in these pages were gleaned from the CIA World Factbook.

Laws similar to our Jones Act are on the books of many nations, but not nations offering flags of convenience.  Instead, laws in those countries frustrate cabotage.   For example, Panama lists on its rolls about 5500 ships of 1000 gross tons or over and not one out of ten is owned by a Panamanian.  Liberia lists nearly 1700 such ships of which 95% are owned by foreigners.  The Isle of Man, a tiny 350-sq.mile dot in the Irish Sea where a mere 75,000 hardy souls reside, registers 305 ships, more than Belgium, France, Australia and New Zealand combined.  Of those 75,000 Manxmen, the number who own any part of the bulk carriers, break-bulk cargo ships, tankers, container ships, liquefied gas carriers, refrigerated vessels, ro/ro ships and dedicated vehicle carriers making up the 8 million gross tons flying the Manx ensign is probably less than a dozen.

Before we go further I'd like to rebut a possible charge of hypocrisy.  In writing pieces for On the Quarter, I've invoked the sneer that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.  Yet here I am peppering these pages with statistics.  In defense I fall back on the wise caution to be moderate in all things including, of course, abstinence from quoting statistics.  Particularly those downright startling ones from the CIA.

Today's widespread use of flags of convenience violates the advice of a number of our presidents as collected on the website USMM.Org. A case could be made that the hostile behavior of our enemies is no more detrimental to our interests than our callous disregard of such presidential counsel.  Here are fragments of a few such cautions:

• "It is a national humiliation that we are now compelled to pay . . . foreigners for . . . work which should be done by American vessels American-built, American-owned and American-manned." (President Grant)

• "Paying an enormous annual tribute to foreign countries in the shape of freight [is] both intolerable and disgraceful."  "There is nothing more humiliating to the national pride and . . . more hurtful to the national prosperity than the inferiority of our merchant marine."  (President Harrison)
• "From every standpoint it is unwise . . . to continue to rely upon the ships of competing nations for distribution of our goods. (President Theodore Roosevelt)
• "We have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine." (President Wilson)

These are statements made to Congress by only four of our Presidents.  There are many more at the USMM website.  They make for fascinating even if infuriating reading.  The Presidential advice is clear: practice cabotage.

The reality is just as clear: we don't.  We, who rank our country as the most advanced in the history of the world, have let our grand old flag fall to 23rd place in the registration of ships of a thousand gross tons or more.

Panama leads the pack and then, in order, come China, Liberia and Malta (this tiny speck of an island in the Mediterranean is smaller then the Isle of Man).  Only 13 of the thousands of China's ships are foreign-owned, so its national ensign is no flag of convenience.  But Panama, Liberia and Malta are a different story.  Of the many thousands of ships they host, more than nine out of every ten are foreign-owned.  Other unlikely maritime powers include Cyprus, Belize, Comoros, Mongolia, Luxembourg, Bolivia, Paraguay and the Marshall Islands.

In fact, the Marshall Islands (historically a homeport for outrigger canoes) has registered more ships than the US, Sweden, Australia and France put together.  Of course, most of the owners of those ships are in the US, Sweden, Australia or France.  As for the crews, where are they from? Not Boston, Stockholm, Sydney or Marseilles and surely not from Eniwetok, Bikini or Kwajalein.  Like crewmembers on most ships of convenient flags, they were probably born and raised in poverty in some third world country and went to sea as a way to escape.  Instead, they often find themselves trapped in abominable living conditions.  The contrast between them and Amercian, Swedish, Australian and French seamen is stark.

Flags of convenience are one aspect of globalization, a trend growing more and more worrisome.  Fortune 500 corporations (Halliburton, for example) routinely exploit tax advantages, advantages which now extend beyond ship registry to include relocation of corporate headquarters off shore. The Yankee Doodle Dandy would become a whirling dervish should he study the statistics reported on the CIA web site.  The tax money avoided by firms moving boardrooms to places like Dubai would far better be used here at home to help raise our world ranking in such essential categories as personal income (we're 9th), infant mortality (we're 41st) and life expectancy (we're 45th).

We might even increase our gold and foreign exchange reserves from 15th-rank where we are sandwiched between Italy and Thailand.  We have little hope of matching the reserves of front-running China and Japan (they already own almost 30% of our public debt represented by notes and bonds issued by the US Treasury), but at least we might catch up with Mexico.  Globalization is leaving its mark on us in many ways.  The prospect of Chinese automobiles assembled in Mexico and then imported as NAFTA products is causing sleepless nights in Detroit.  Just as unsettling is that the Old Glory two-blocked over a county courthouse in Iowa could have been made in China and, if it was bought at Walmart, didn’t travel to the US on a US-flagged ship.

What can we do about this?  Be informed and inform others.  I encourage you to visit the website of The Maritime Cabotage Task Force to find out what it is trying to do to strengthen the American Merchant Marine.  And keep an eye on USMM.Org as well.  Before we know it Big Business might start selling the rights to show their logos on flags of convenience.  The Minute Maid, PacBell, SBC, PNC or Bank One logo will never be on the flag of Russia but for a modest fee an orange tree might appear in lieu of the mahogany tree on the flag of Belize.

This diatribe will be over after mention of one more song by George M. Cohan.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is the anthem of the State of Connecticut.  The Voice of America begins and ends its worldwide broadcasts with a bar or two.  According to Wikipedia, an old meaning of "doodle" was "simpleton or fool."  Let's hope that the way we've allowed our grand old flag to be mocked won't end up making doodles of us all.