On 20 December 2024 the Ministry of Defence announced a seven-year contract worth £476 million under which Foreland Shipping Limited provides four roll-on roll-off ships for British strategic sealift. The Ministry stated that 97 per cent of the company’s UK workforce of around 150 were reservists, and that the ships are operated by sponsored reserves, civilians who join the reserves as a condition of service. Two months later the Danish Defence extended an agreement under which DFDS makes up to eight chartered ships available at short notice to the Danish–German ARK project from 2026, for up to six years, while trading them commercially whenever the armed forces and their allies do not need them. Both arrangements secure access to hulls. Whether they also secure the people who sail those hulls into a war zone is a separate question. A merchant ship becomes usable military transport only when three conditions hold together: the state can call on the ship when it is needed; the operator can put aboard a crew that is large enough, properly certificated and familiar with the vessel; and the chain of contracts linking customer, owner, manager and crew allows the service to continue when risk, cost and working conditions move away from peacetime assumptions. Does the public record show that Europe’s commercial sealift arrangements secure crews, and the terms on which they serve, as firmly as they secure ships?