WIDESCALE changes are being planned in Southampton for the care of overseas crew members of vessels visiting the port.

A new shore-based welfare centre will be eventually established in the city where seafarers, sometimes far away from their home country and families, will be able to meet while their ships are in the docks.

In another move the Apostleship of the Sea (AOS), the Roman Catholic welfare agency, is to start sending chaplains to work on cargo ships for the first time in a bid to update the church's work with seafarers.

In the long term the AOS says its aim is to develop a multi-faith centre within the docks itself offering welfare support to crew. In the intervening period the organisation is to work alongside the Southampton branches of the Missions to Seafarers and the British and International Sailors Society to provide back-up such as telephones, e-mail facilities and advice to foreign crew.

Southampton docks will soon see chaplains from the AOS, who up to now only previously spent time on cruise ships, joining general cargo, containerships and tankers for the first time in the organisation's 81-year history.

Alex King, director of fundraising and media for the AOS, said: "Many seafarers don't stay overnight any more.

"Even 30 years ago, a ship would come in and the crew would be around for anything up to a couple of weeks, so we would be looking after them for that time.

"Due to globalisation and containerisation they come in and are gone within a few hours, so our ministry has had to change.''

Chaplains joining cargo crews will have to learn a seafaring skill and will spend between three and four weeks at sea.

FACTFILE.

There are three major charities for seafarers in the UK run by the churches - they are the Anglican Church's Mission to Seafarers, the Roman Catholic Apostleship of the Sea and the free churches' British & International Sailors Society.

The Mission to Seafarers, founded in 1856, works in 300 ports around the world making on average 93,000 ship visits a year and welcoming 700,000 seafarers into centres.

The Mission also on average visits 1,000 seafarers in hospital every year and helps in more than 1,000 justice and welfare cases.

The Apostleship of the Sea ministers to more than 300,000 seafarers every year.

Three new centres are planned in Southampton, Tilbury and Liverpool.

The vast majority of the seafarers are foreigners from the Philippines, China and parts of eastern Europe such as Latvia, Estonia, the Ukraine as well as Goan Indians.