I spent many years at sea. I came home. Not everyone does.

On the 12th and 13th of September 2026 I'm cycling roughly 200 miles from the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford to the Humber Bridge in Hull. Two days, two great river crossings, and a great deal of Lincolnshire in between.

I'm doing it for the Sailors' Children's Society, I charity I learnt about just a few years ago, but have been helping them through my work at OCIMF.

I went to sea for over ten years and came ashore having sailed as Master on LNG carriers. I now work in seafarer safety in the energy sector which means I've spent my whole working life on one side or the other of the same question: how do we get these people home in one piece?

Mostly, we manage it. Sometimes we don't.

And here's the thing nobody outside the industry sees: when a seafarer doesn't come home, or comes home too ill to work, the consequences don't land at sea. They land at a kitchen table in Hull or Aberdeen or Plymouth, where a child who has already spent half their life waiting for a parent to come back is now told they aren't coming back at all.

I know what it is to be the one away. I've missed birthdays, Christmases, and a fair chunk of ordinary life, and I did it knowing I'd be back. There are families where that certainty ran out.

The Sailors' Children's Society exists for precisely those families.

It started in Hull in 1821 — a floating chapel called the 'Valiant', moored in the Humber Dock, looking after the men who worked the water. Two centuries later it has supported over 50,000 children, and it does something very specific: it catches the children of seafarers whose families have hit genuine crisis.

Fishing fleets. Royal Navy. Merchant Navy. Ferries, cargo, cruise, offshore. If a parent made their living at sea and the family is now in real hardship, the Society provides monthly hardship grants for food and heating, clothing grants twice a year, a bed if a child hasn't got one, a Family Support Officer, a computer if there isn't one in the house, and a respite break so a family can spend some time together being a family again.

Their aim is straightforward: 'let children be children', even when everything else has gone wrong.

What most people don't know about the people who move their stuff

Around 90% of world trade moves by sea. Almost everything in your house arrived on a ship — the phone you're reading this on, the coffee in your kitchen, the gas that heats your home. I know that last one intimately; I commanded the ships that carried it.

Seafaring is also one of the most dangerous industries in the world to work in, and the people who do it can be stuck aboard for months, sometimes far longer, away from their families. During the pandemic, hundreds of thousands were trapped on ships unable to get home. We were finally called key workers in 2020. It made almost no difference to anyone actually stuck on a vessel.

The country runs on these people and largely doesn't know they exist. Their children definitely don't get a mention.

Where your money goes

£5 buys a book for a child

£10 buys a school uniform jumper

£36 pays a month's hardship grant to a parent, for food and heating

£149 buys a child a bed and a mattress

]£700 funds a respite break — proper time together for a family that's been through the worst

The maths

200 miles. £2,500. That's £12.50 a mile.

- 3 miles keeps a child fed and warm for a month

- 12 miles puts a child in a bed of their own

- 56 miles gives an entire family a respite break

- 200 miles is three and a half respite breaks

Sponsor a mile. I'll be feeling it.

A little time

That's all this takes — thirty seconds and whatever you can spare. I'm covering my own costs, so every pound raised here goes to the Society.

I sailed my ship. I got home. No child of a seafarer should have to sail this one alone.

From 'The Beautiful South' to the home of 'The Beautiful South'

Thank you.

Dave