Sixteen Ukrainian sailors marooned in Houston for the last five months while a Greek employer refused to pay salaries, now hope Texas law and order will ship them home with a few bucks in their pockets.
The fate of the crew of the bulk carrier Epta rests with U.S. District Court Judge Lee Rosenthal, who is scheduled to decide Sept. 17 on whether the sailors should have a cut of the $500,000 earned by the vessel's sale in a May forced auction.
Creditors of the 650-foot cargo ship's operator, identified by crew members as Greek Kassos Maritime Enterprises, successfully sued in Rosenthal's court last April to have the Epta arrested and eventually sold off.
Kassos had planned to refit the Epta in the Port of Houston and had hired Ukrainian sailors to do the work.
They arrived in Houston April 6 to discover U.S. Marshals had arrested the vessel in March.
When Kassos ran into subsequent financial difficulties the Ukrainians aboard were left without income and to their own devices.
'These are proud, professional men,' Port of Houston chaplain Michael McGraw said. 'They want to apply their trade just like you and me.'
Faced with what turned out to be the hottest Gulf Coast summer since 1980, the priority technical challenge for ship Chief Engineer Aleksandr Lyubich was getting the air conditioning on line. When he first came on board only one emergency generator worked, and spare parts were simply not there.
'In Ukraine we heard the ship was almost ready for sea,' he told American reporters. 'But after we started repairs we learned things were in very bad condition.'
Ukrainian mechanical ingenuity, which typically ranges from cannibalization of non-critical equipment to machining parts on on-board lathes, had the cold air blowing in cabins by June.
Victuals were more complicated, rapidly depleted to dry goods like rice and noodles as the crew finished off all the ship's fresh produce supplies.
Generous goodwill from Texas residents provided some more, healthy, vittles.
Under McGraw's coordination local churches and private citizens donated fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs to the Epta's crew, who by September had became somewhat of a cause celebre during the dog days of a sticky Houston summer.
'We have food and water so we're OK,' Lyubich told the Houston Chronicle.
Ukrainian sailors – when paid – are among the country's highest salaried workers, earning from $600 to $4,000 monthly. An average Ukrainian factory worker receives an equivalent of $85 monthly.
The Epta crew was promised an average $1,200 per month. With only a few hundred dollars of that paid to date, the opinion of a Texas judge on the disposition of a $500,000 forced auction in Houston is vital.
'No money, how are we supposed to feed our families?' asked Alexander Nikulin, a sailor.
His and his crew mates' hopes of getting a cut of the money sank last Tuesday when Rosenthal ruled that the 16 should be repatriated without pay.
But the accidental American residents for nearly half a year, have their own lawyer. 'This came out of the blue,' said the crew's attorney, Dennis McElwee.
Within 24 hours McElwee had convinced the judge to delay the Ukrainians' forced departure until a Sept 17 rehearing of the case.
In at least one way, the crew of the Eptos has been very lucky. Ukrainian sailors are at once among the world's most skilled and cheapest, a combination making them particularly desirable to ship operators looking to increase profit margins.
Frequently hired by Turkish, Greek, or Cypriot companies, Ukrainian sailors have in recent years found themselves marooned in ports literally across the world as the people that hired them hash out differences with creditors and local dunning agents.
Often, the Ukrainian sailors find themselves stranded without income or support in Third World countries where both the natives and the environment are hostile.
'We had no water, no food, and there was no place to hide from the sun. We were eating porridge and canned fish,' ship's welder Igor Nosov recalled to the Post. After being trapped on a Ukrainian ship 60 miles off Bombay for nearly three months earlier this year.
Other Ukrainian sailors variously have been – in the nine months alone – jailed by Nigerian strongmen or reduced to performing picking up trash in Amsterdam port for part-time wages.
Thw unfortunate occupants of the wharf side at the upper end of the Shipping Channel, the crew of the Eptos has fared better and attracted the attention of relatively generous Houstonians.
Members of the local Ukrainian community housed and in some cases clothes the sailors. A fund has been set up to help them, and the local press has covered their story for the last three months.
A trial, tentatively scheduled for May 1999, will be required to determine who gets what cut of the half million, Rosenthal stated last month.
