World Journal

  The Invisible Workforce Keeping Global Trade Moving In November 2023, the Galaxy Leader, a vehicle carrier, was transiting the Red Sea when Houthi forces descended. Armed militants rappelled onto the deck from helicopters. Within hours, the ship was seized, and its multinational crew—nationals from the Philippines, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Mexico—was taken hostage . For months, the world largely forgot about them. The ship remained anchored off Yemen's coast, its crew held in unknown conditions. Their families waited. Their employers negotiated. And the seafarers, who had signed contracts to move vehicles across oceans, found themselves prisoners in a conflict not of their making. They are not alone. Between November 2023 and January 2025, the Houthis carried out over 100 attacks targeting commercial vessels. They sank two ships. They killed at least four sailors . This article is about those sailors—the men and women who keep global trade moving, whose labor is essential ...