But while crews increasingly turn to English as a common language, traditional joke-telling is also declining because of fear of causing offence or being misunderstood.
The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, shows that almost two-thirds of the world merchant fleet have adopted multinational crews. One in ten ships operates with crews composed of five or more nationalities.
Between them Erol Kahveci, Tony Lane, and Helen Sampson, members of the Seafarers International Research Centre in the School of Social Sciences, lived and worked on board cargo vessels and alongside crews for periods of up to six weeks. They interviewed over 380 seafarers, in addition to crewing managers across the world, seafarers' families in India and the Philippines, and transient seafarer communities in Northern Germany and Rotterdam.
Some of the research findings were surprising. Contrary to the expectations of many in the industry, crews of multinational ships were found to work together effectively given the right conditions and company support. There was no indication that nationality correlated with leadership or initiative, challenging the popular stereotype held by many within and beyond the industry.
"There are many positive aspects to the new melting pot at sea," says report author Professor Tony Lane. "Mixed nationality ships seem to enjoy good relationships between different ethnic groups. They work surprisingly well."
The main problem identified by seafarers working with multinational crews related to communication and particularly to the social aspects of communication.
"There is a lot of story telling and fun among crews," adds Professor Lane. "But if you don't speak the ship language fluently, it's often easier to avoid telling jokes altogether. While that can mean less offence being caused to those who used to be the butt of such jokes, the reduction in such banter and badinage can cause loneliness and isolation on board."
Whilst many companies had originally introduced mixed nationality crews to cut costs and stay competitive, such strategies had unexpected benefits, particularly in relation to teamwork. Employers were generally found to be pleasantly surprised by the performance of multi national crews and compared these favourably with their previous experiences of single nationality complements. However, there were sometimes problems where there were only two or three nationalities on board. In such circumstances crews seemed to be divided more strongly on the lines of nationality and sometimes occupational hierarchies were re-aligned on board to coincide with nationality rather than rank.
"Seafarers overwhelmingly said they preferred working with genuinely mixed nationality crews," adds Professor Lane. "And we were surprised to find little evidence of discrimination against particular nationalities, although there were disturbing exceptions. Aboard one ship, ratings collected and marked their cutlery prior to the arrival of new crew members of different nationality. Once their new ship mates had arrived, they kept 'their' cutlery in their cabins and expressed fears about contracting HIV from the new crew members who were 'required' to eat their meals at a separate table."
The authors recommend that in order to facilitate the safe operation of vessels companies should ensure that there are high levels of fluency in the working language of the ship amongst their employees. They also urge that anti-discrimination policies should be adopted aboard ship, and that the circulation of material reinforcing national stereotypes should be avoided.