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Oct 16, 2013

Small Hats Make Big Difference for Seamen

watchthiscapBetween Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) asks knitters to help increase awareness of mariners’ contributions by making—and hiding in plain sight—mini mariners’ watchcaps. The hats draw attention to the fact that mariners, whose work is often hidden in plain sight, deliver more than 90% of all imported goods.
 

SCI makes available a pattern for a miniature mariners’ watchcap (along with an informational tag to attach) as part of a nationwide activity called #WATCHthisCAP. Knitters and their friends place completed knits in conspicuous places to educate the public about the world’s maritime workforce. SCI’s #WATCHthisCAP movement hopes these handknit creations will reveal a fact few realize: much of what shoppers purchase on a day-to-day basis comes courtesy of the men and women of maritime commerce.
 

The hats fit bottle tops—from olive oil to wine—but also can garnish other things like gas pumps or bicycles. People can track the placement of the mini hats and monitor their impact on Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag #WATCHthisCAP. The colorful wool on top of everyday items might draw some strange looks, but people examining the tag affixed to each hat soon understand: “From smartphones to blue jeans, cars to fuel, mariners bring us the comforts of our daily lives.”
 

SCI designed the miniature cap to mirror a life-sized watchcap, a hat design that has protected mariners traveling on cold waters for hundreds of years. Annually, thousands of SCI volunteers handcraft these hats to keep mariners’ heads warm. Knitters and crocheters send in their creations—hats and scarves, vests and socks, too—to SCI’s volunteer knitting program, Christmas at Sea, which distributes the garments to mariners arriving into ports around the United States.
 

Anyone interested in participating in this project should visit http://seamenschurch.org/WATCHthisCAP to learn more. SCI supplies tags, patterns and project promotion materials free of charge.
 

About SCI
 
Founded in 1834 and affiliated with the Episcopal Church, though nondenominational in terms of its trustees, staff and service to mariners, the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York & New Jersey (SCI) is the largest, most comprehensive mariners’ agency in North America. Annually, its chaplains visit thousands of vessels in the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Oakland, and along 2,200 miles of America’s inland waterways and into the Gulf of Mexico. SCI’s maritime education facilities provide navigational training to nearly 1,600 mariners each year through simulator-based facilities located in Houston, TX and Paducah, KY. The Institute and its  maritime attorneys are recognized as leading advocates for merchant mariners by the United States Government, including the US Congress, the US Coast Guard, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the United Nations, the International Maritime Organization, the International Labor Organization and maritime trade associations.