I was a student in France in 92. I shipped a crate of stuff to myself from the USA, and thanks to a dockworkers strike, it arrived 5 months later, a week before I was to leave.
We moved over in '91 and deliberately had our stuff shipped to Le Havre rather than Marseilles because of that possiblity (not to mention just flat out having our stuff stolen) despite the fact that we were moving to Nice (about 90 minutes from Marseilles and a 12 hour drive from Le Havre).