Martin Lex is the pen name of the 7S1L safety desk: SOLAS, lifesaving and firefighting gear, muster drills, emergency signals and safe work on board. Portrait is illustrative.
The contract comes as paper. Two stapled copies on the agency desk, or a folder handed over in the ship's office with the relief already on the gangway. No scanner, no laptop, a phone with a cracked screen and the crew Wi-Fi. That is enough. The seafarer contract check runs in the phone browser, and a paper contract becomes a report in the time it takes to drink the coffee.
This is the phone and paper version of the workflow: how to photograph a printed SEA so the check can read it, what happens to the photos, and what to do when the report comes back red. The general tool guide for any screen is How to Use the MLC Contract Check. This page stays with the situations where there is only a phone.
Watch: the seafarer contract check on your phone
Three places this happens
The crewing office first. You sit with your seaman's book and your medical, the queue is long, and the printed SEA lands in your hands "to read while you wait". The AB across the room in a seafarer hoodie is on the same bench with the same folder. Use the waiting time. Photograph your copy, run the check, and walk back to the counter with page numbers instead of a feeling that something is off.
Second: the contract arrives on WhatsApp. Agencies send SEAs as a PDF or as a photo set the night before travel, sometimes page by page and out of order. You do not need to print anything. Save the files to your phone, open the tool, and upload exactly what the agent sent. If a page is missing, and the wage annex usually is, ask for it before you fly. A contract you only ever saw on a screen deserves the same reading as one on paper.
Third: sign-on day at the airport. The agent meets you at arrivals with a folder, your relief is booked on the return flight, and the car to the port leaves in an hour. The duffel is packed, the sign-on set folded on top, and the folder in your hand is the last document between you and the ship. This is the worst possible moment to read fine print, and the most common one. Terminal Wi-Fi carries the check fine. Photograph the pages while you wait for the car, because questions asked before the gangway get answers. Questions asked after sailing get shrugs.
Before you start
Open mlc-contract-check.7short1long.com in the browser on your phone. No app store, no account. If you want it on the home screen like an app, the page offers that once; say yes or close it, the check works either way. Find the flag on the stern, on the ship's certificates or on the first page of the contract. Lay the contract flat on the table, not on your knee. And if joining day is still weeks away, sort the phone itself first: storage, eSIM, offline files. That list is in Seafarer Phone Setup Before Joining a Ship.
Step by step on the phone
1. Pick the flag
One tap in the grid. Liberia, Panama, the Marshall Islands, Malta, the Bahamas and twelve more registries have their own module, which adds the flag administration's complaint contact to your report. Flag not in the grid, or not known yet? Pick MLC only and the check runs against the convention baseline. Who stands behind each flag, which law governs the contract and where a complaint goes is on the tool's flag-state pages; from a flag page, the "Check my contract" button opens the tool with that flag already selected.
2. Scan the pages
Tap Scan your contract and photograph each page. Good light, page flat, all four corners in the frame, the annex with the wage table included. Tap again for the next page. You can rotate pages, change their order, and remove any page before anything is sent.
Daylight from a window beats the tube light in the mess room. Stand so your own shadow falls off the page, and hold the phone parallel to the paper instead of at an angle. A slightly dark photo with sharp text reads better than a bright one with glare across the wage table. Photograph everything stapled to the SEA: the wage scale, the CBA reference page, any addendum. Ten pages take about two minutes. The check can only flag what it can see.
No scanner app needed; the tool takes photos directly and turns them into clean scan pages itself. If the SEA already sits on your phone as a PDF, or as the photo set from WhatsApp, upload those files instead of the camera.
3. Tap Check my contract
The reading usually takes under a minute. Keep the page open. The check compares the wording with the MLC 2006 minimums, ITF standards and, if you picked one, the flag state's rules.
What happens to your contract photos
The preparation runs in the browser on your phone. Shrinking, the clean scan look, rotation, page order: all of it happens on the device. Camera metadata is stripped there too, including the GPS position of your agency, your terminal or your ship. While you photograph, sort and delete pages, nothing has left the phone.
Upload happens at one moment only: when you tap Check my contract. The pages go out encrypted, are read once for the analysis, and are not stored. Document content is never logged and is not used to train the model. What the tool keeps is an anonymous count per flag and the red flag statistics for its annual report, nothing that names you. An SEA carries your name, passport number, wage and next ship. Treat the photo set with the same care: once the report PDF is saved, delete the pictures from the gallery or file them with the photos of your signed original.
Reading the report on a small screen
The score and verdict come first, then the clauses, one card each. Green meets the MLC minimum. Amber means the wording is unclear. Red means a core protection is violated or signed away. Missing means the contract says nothing about it. Scroll to the red flags list before you read anything else; it is the part you take back to the desk. Each flag names the MLC standard behind it, which is what you quote when you ask for a clause to be changed.
Then tap Save report as PDF and save the file through your phone's print or share dialog. Keep the file with the photos of your signed original, which MLC Standard A2.1 says you are entitled to, and send a copy to someone ashore.
On ship Wi-Fi
Because the photos are shrunk on the phone first, a ten-page contract goes out as a few megabytes, not as a gallery of 12-megapixel images. That is the difference between a check that finishes on port Wi-Fi and one that times out. If the connection drops, nothing is half stored anywhere; run it again when the signal is back.
What the check is looking for
The same points every seafarer should read before signing: the wage split against the ILO floor of USD 690 per month for an able seafarer from 2026, hours of rest, paid leave, contract length, repatriation at the shipowner's cost, medical care, recruitment fees, the collective agreement and the flag. The full list with the MLC standard for each is in What to Check in a Seafarer Contract. The clauses that fail most often, and what each one costs you when it goes wrong, are in 10 Red Flags in a Seafarer Contract.
What the report can and cannot do
The report is a clause comparison. It reads the wording of your SEA against the MLC 2006 minimums, against ITF standards, and against the recorded facts of the flag you picked: which law governs the contract, where a complaint goes, what the registry publishes about wages and hours. It tells you what is below the floor, what is vague, and what is simply not there.
It is not legal advice, and it does not pretend to be. It cannot tell you whether the company pays on time, whether the ship matches the description, or whether the copy in your hand is identical to the one waiting at the desk (compare page counts yourself). It does not replace the ITF, a union or a lawyer. What it gives you is the exact clause and the exact standard behind it, so the conversation at the counter is about Standard A2.5 and not about a feeling.
When the report comes back red
A red flag is not the end of the job. It is a question with the MLC standard already attached. Go back to the desk and ask it plainly: "Clause 9 says I pay my own flight home. Standard A2.5 puts repatriation on the shipowner. Can you correct this?" A serious crewing agent has heard the question before and can fix the wording. An agent who gets angry at the question has answered it.
Ask for the corrected copy in print or as a PDF before you travel, never as a verbal promise at the gangway. If the office charged you a fee for the job itself, that is against MLC Regulation 1.4 and belongs in the same conversation. And if the wording will not move and the wage sits below the floor, the ITF takes contract questions from crew before departure. You do not have to wait until something has gone wrong at sea.
The routine for the day itself, documents, copies, first hours on board, is in the seafarer sign-on checklist. The report from your phone is one line in it.
Paper contract, phone, one coffee: MLC Contract Check.
Source note
This article is editorial context for working crew, not legal advice. The standards named here come from the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, as amended (ILO): Standard A2.1 on the signed agreement, Standard A2.5 on repatriation, Regulation 1.4 on recruitment fees. The USD 690 floor for an able seafarer from 1 January 2026 follows the ILO Joint Maritime Commission subcommittee agreement on the minimum basic wage. Contract help before departure: ITF Seafarers. How the tool reads a contract is documented in the MLC Contract Check methodology and sources.
FAQ
Can I check a seafarer contract on my phone?
Yes. The MLC Contract Check runs in the phone browser, reads photos of a paper contract directly, and returns a clause by clause report in about a minute. No app and no account needed.
How do I scan a paper contract without a scanner?
Photograph each page with the phone camera: good light, page flat, all four corners in the frame, wage annex included. The tool shrinks the photos and gives them a clean scan look on your device, so no scanner app is needed.
Do I need to install an app?
No. The check runs in the phone browser. You can add it to the home screen if you want the icon, and then it opens like an app, but the browser version is the full tool.
Are my contract photos uploaded and kept?
The shrunk, cleaned photos are sent encrypted when you tap Check my contract, read once, and not stored. Camera metadata is removed on your phone before that. What remains afterwards is an anonymous count per flag and the red flags for the annual report.
What if the contract arrives as photos on WhatsApp?
Save the images to your phone and upload them like your own photos; the check reads them the same way. Ask the agent for any missing page, especially the wage annex, before travel day.
Can I paste the text instead of taking photos?
Yes. Under the upload box there is a line for pasting contract text. A real contract has at least a few hundred characters; make sure wages, rest hours, repatriation and medical care are in the part you paste.
7SHORT1LONG® is a Seafarer Identity Brand. The phone in your pocket is the only office most crew ever get.
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