They are the guardian angels of all merchant sailors on the high seas.

They are the Mission to Seafarers – a Christian charity serving the world's 1.5 million-plus merchant sailors manning about 52,000 vessels trading internationally.

And when those ships call into Tauranga, the local Mission to Seafarers offers respite from one of the most dangerous professions in the world.

The Mission to Seafarers is tucked away from the public gaze, behind the security gates at the Port of Tauranga and surrounded by the hurly burly of the nation's busiest port.

It quietly gets on with its work, each year offering more than 15,000 seamen a quiet space with sofas, a TV, piano, chapel, table tennis, pool tables, computers and phones. It's a home when the real home and family may be thousands of kilometres and months at sea away.

There are also wise and experienced heads to listen and advise when necessary.

To assist the mission in its work, a fundraising concert is being held at St Andrews Church, Macville Street in Mount Maunganui at 7pm on Saturday, June 16.

The programme includes singer Wendy Coster, a brass duo of Peter Cranson and Mark Marney, the Bay of Plenty Mens' Choir, Althorpe and Copper Crest choirs, organist Keith Bowen and the 2018 winner of the Toastmasters New Zealand most entertaining speech. Tickets are just $5 and, of course, all proceeds go to the mission.

Some of the problems seamen endure are loneliness, lack of a social life, on-board politics, piracy, estrangement, personal and family problems, health, reduction in shore leaves, lack of shore jobs and the reduction in size of crews and stringent maritime laws.

For more than 150 years The Mission to Seafarers has dispensed compassion and care to seafarers confronted by these issues.