provided there was any bridge to bridge communications.
Merchies seem to be reticent to talk on that radio.
In my experience sailing on the Pacific, Japanese bridge watch standers know only “Mariner’s English,” using the same 300 or so “official words” on VHF. Just business, then silence.
Filipino watch standers will talk to you all night as long as you’re in VHF range about their years in the USA, their brother in San Diego, their other brother in the USN, etc.
Way out in the middle of nowhere I’d often chat with the lights seen on the horizon on VHF radio. Often I’d ask them how my 48’ steel sailboat looked on radar, and they’d say they didn’t see it at all, or my 67’ aluminum mast. Merchies turn the gain way down to ignore “sea clutter” (and sailboats.) (This was before small AIS for sailboats.)