Monday 21 March 2022 · below the Index · spike
P&O Ferries mass dismissal of seafarers
P&O Ferries dismissed 800 UK seafarers without notice on March 17, 2022, replacing them with agency workers earning significantly lower wages (reported as £1.80–£2 per hour). The action sparked widespread backlash from unions, industry figures, and the public, with calls for boycotts and reinstatement.
Peak 101.0 on Tuesday 22 March 2022. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 86% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 18 March 2022.
How far it spread
Spilled over — 2 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Gas-carrier readership was already running high through this window on the European gas crisis that followed the invasion of Ukraine — including the US–EU gas supply deal announced on 25 March 2022 — so this lift belongs to the energy story, not to this incident.
Container & cargo ships rose on just one day of the window, staying flat either side — readership of a vessel-type article can jump for a day on one popular link or an unrelated story about the same vessel type.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: seafarer victim. Trade press was 3% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 0% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 98% negative overall; 93% strongly so.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: P&O Ferries mass dismissal of seafarers, peak 101.0 on 22 March 2022. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2022-p-o-ferries-mass-dismissal-of-seafarers/