WHERE SHIPS GO TO DIE
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Oct 9, 2009, 3:32:54 PM10/9/09
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http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/where-ships-go-to-die/
THE GHOST FLEET OF JOHOR
http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Port/singaporeport/Map.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html
Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of
Singapore
BY Simon Parry / 28th September 2009
The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia
could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are
more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not
that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just
peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering
container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a
pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing
he needs.
His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an
o fficer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about
the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which
I can't immediately put my finger on. Then I have it - his 750ft-long
merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves
don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same
with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to
500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a
destination between them.
My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this
giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I
am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his
ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them. Navigating a precarious
course around the hull of this Panama-registered hulk, I reach its bow
and notice something else extraordinary. It is tied side by side to a
container ship of almost the same size. The mighty sister ship sits
empty, high in the water again, with apparently only the sailor and a
few lengths of rope for company.
Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity
between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European offi cer
peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world's
biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on
board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the
only other people on the ship. 'They are telling us to go away,' the
boat driver explains. 'No one is supposed to be here. They are very
frightened of pirates.'
Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is
surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime
history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and
American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container
ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden
between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC
Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But
their water has been stolen.
They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that
have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn
along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor
state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour. It is so far off the
beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these
ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists
would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague
still crippling the world's economies.
So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be
maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are
left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and
collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and
seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year. Local fisherman
Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for
prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was
nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came
one day, and every day there are more of them. Some of them stay for a
few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to
look from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few
passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'
The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships'
lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages
that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches
from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among
the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from
mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating
experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea,
staring at a city of light. Ah Wat says: 'We don't understand why they
are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board.
When we sail past them in our fishing boats we never see anyone. They
are like real ghost ships and some people are scared of them. They
believe they may bring a curse with them and that there may be bad
spirits on the ships.'
As daylight creeps across the waters, flags of convenience from
destinations such as Panama and the Bahamas become visible. In
reality, though, these vessels belong to some of the world's biggest
Western shipping companies. And the sickness that has ravaged them
began far away - in London, where the industry's heart beats, and
where the plummeting profits and hugely reduced cargo prices are most
keenly felt. The Aframax-class oil tanker is the camel of the world's
high seas. By definition, it is smaller than 132,000 tons deadweight
and with a breadth above 106ft. It is used in the basins of the Black
Sea, the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the China Sea and the
Mediterranean - or anywhere where non-OPEC exporting countries have
harbours and canals too small to accommodate very large crude carriers
(VLCC) or ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs). The term is based on the
Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) tanker rate system and is an
industry standard.
You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational
desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an
Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost
£31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500). This is why
the chilliest financial winds anywhere in the City of London are to be
found blowing through its 400-plus shipping brokers. Between them,
they manage about half of the world's chartering business. The bonuses
are long gone. The last to feel the tail of the economic whiplash,
they - and their insurers and lawyers - await a wave of redundancies
and business failures in the next six months. Commerce is contracting,
fleets rust away - yet new ship-builds ordered years ago are still
coming on stream.
Just 12 months ago these financiers and brokers were enjoying fat
bonuses as they traded cargo space. But nobody wants the space any
more, and those that still need to ship goods across the world are
demanding vast reductions in price. Do not tell these men and women
about green shoots of recovery. As Briton Tim Huxley, one of Asia's
leading ship brokers, says, if the world is really pulling itself out
of recession, then all these idle ships should be back on the move.
'This is the time of year when everyone is doing all the Christmas
stu ff,' he points out. 'A couple of years ago those ships would have
been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you've got
something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing
nothing.'
Aframaxes are oil bearers. But the slump is industry-wide. The cost of
sending a 40ft steel container of merchandise from China to the UK has
fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year. The
cost of chartering an entire bulk freighter suitable for carrying raw
materials has plunged even further, from close to £185,000 ($300,000)
last summer to an incredible £6,100 ($10,000) earlier this year.
Business for bulk carriers has picked up slightly in recent months,
largely because of China's rediscovered appetite for raw materials
such as iron ore, says Huxley. But this is a small part of
international trade, and the prospects for the container ships remain
bleak.
Some experts believe the ratio of container ships sitting idle could
rise to 25 per cent within two years in an extraordinary downturn that
shipping giant Maersk has called a 'crisis of historic dimensions'.
Last month the company reported its first half-year loss in its 105-
year history. Martin Stopford, managing director of Clarksons,
London's biggest ship broker, says container shipping has been hit
particularly hard: 'In 2006 and 2007 trade was growing at 11 per cent.
In 2008 it slowed down by 4.7 per cent. This year we think it might go
down by as much as eight per cent. If it costs £7,000 a day to put the
ship to sea and if you only get £6,000 a day, than you have got a
decision to make. Yet at the same time, the supply of container ships
is growing. This year, supply could be up by around 12 per cent and
demand is down by eight per cent. Twenty per cent spare is a lot of
spare of anything - and it's come out of nowhere.' Stopford explains:
'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about
8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person
and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West.
If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo
that isn't moving.'
Three thousand miles north-east of the ghost fleet of Johor, the
shipbuilding capital of the world rocks to an unpunctuated chorus of
hammer-guns blasting rivets the size of dustbin lids into shining
steel panels that are then lowered onto the decks of massive new
vessels. As the shipping industry teeters on the brink of collapse,
the activity at boatyards like Mokpo and Ulsan in South Korea all
looks like a sick joke. But the workers in these bustling shipyards,
who teem around giant tankers and mega-vessels the length of several
football pitches and capable of carrying 10,000 or more containers
each, have no choice; they are trapped in a cruel time warp.
A decade ago, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (who died last
month) issued a decree to his industrial captains: he wished to make
his nation the market leader in shipbuilding. He knew the market
intimately. Before entering politics, he studied economics and worked
for a Japanese-owned freight-shipping business. Within a few years he
was heading his own business, starting out with a fleet of nine ships.
Thus, by 2004, Kim Dae-jung's presidential vision was made real. His
country's low-cost yards were winning 40 per cent of world orders,
with Japan second with 24 per cent and China way behind on 14 per
cent.
But shipbuilding is a horrendously hard market to plan. There is a
three-year lag between the placing of an order and the delivery of a
ship. With contracts signed, down-payments made and work under way,
stopping work on a new ship is the economic equivalent of trying to
change direction in an ocean liner travelling at full speed towards an
iceberg. Thus the labours of today's Korean shipbuilders merely
represent the completion of contracts ordered in the fat years of 2006
and 2007. Those ships will now sail out into a global economy that no
longer wants them. Maersk announced last week that it was
renegotiating terms and prices with Asian shipyards for 39 ordered
tankers and gas carriers. One of the company's executives, Kristian
Morch, said the shipping industry was in uncharted waters. As he told
the global shipping newspaper Lloyd's List only last week: 'You have a
contraction of oil demand, you have a falling world economy and you
have a contraction of financing capabilities - and at the same time as
a lot of new ships are being delivered.'
Demand peaked in 2005 when, with surplus tonnage worldwide standing at
just 0.7 per cent, ship owners raced to order, fearing docks and
berths at major shipyards would soon be fully booked. That spell of
'panic buying' has heightened today's alarming mismatch between supply
and demand. Keith Wallis, East Asia editor of Lloyd's List, says,
'There was an ordering frenzy on all types of vessel, particularly
container ships, because of the booming trade between Asia and Europe
and the United States. It was fuelled in particular by consumer demand
in the UK, Europe and North America, as well as the demand for raw
materials from China.'
Orders for most existing ships to be delivered within the next six to
nine months would be honoured, he predicted, and the ships would go
into service at the expense of older vessels in the fleet, which would
be scrapped or end up anchored off places like southern Malaysia. But,
says Wallis, 'some ship owners won't be able to pay their final
instalments when the vessels are completed. Normally, they pay ten per
cent down when they order the ship and there are three or four stages
of payment. But 50 to 60 per cent is paid on delivery.'
South Korean shipyard Hanjin Heavy Industries last week said it had
been forced to put up for sale three container ships ordered at a cost
of £60 million ($100 million) by the Iranian state shipping line after
the Iranians said they could not pay the bill. 'The prospects for
shipyards are bleak, particularly for the South Koreans, where they
have a high proportion of foreign orders. Whole communities in places
like Mokpo and Ulsan are involved in shipbuilding and there is a lot
of sub-contracting to local companies,' Wallis says. 'So far the
shipyards are continuing to work, but the problems will start to
emerge next year and certainly in 2011, because that is when the
current orders will have been delivered. There have hardly been any
new orders in the past year. In 2011, the shipyards will simply run
out of ships to build.'
Christopher Palsson, a senior consultant at London-based Lloyd's
Register-Fairplay Research, believes the situation will worsen before
it gets better. 'Some ships will be sold for demolition but the net
balance will be even further pressure on the freight rates and the
market itself. A lot of ship owners and operators are going to find
themselves in a very difficult situation.' The current downturn is the
worst in living memory and more severe even than the slump of the
early Eighties, Palsson believes. 'Back then the majority of the crash
was for tankers carrying crude oil. Today we have almost every aspect
of shipping affected - bulk carriers, tankers, container carriers...
the lot. It is a much wider-spread situation that we have today. China
was not a major player in the world economy at that time. Neither was
India. We had the Soviet Union. We had shipbuilding in the United
Kingdom and Europe. But then, back in those days the world was a very
different place.'
HUNGER STRIKE
http://maritimenews.info/shipping-news/stranded-russian-sailors-go-on-a-hunger-strike-in-dubai/
Stranded Russian sailors go on a hunger strike in Dubai
Shipping News / October 4, 2009
Three Russian seamen from a vessel stranded in the port of Dubai began
a hunger strike on Friday, an International Transport Workers’
Federation official said. The Magdalena, owned by a German company and
flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, has been anchored in Dubai
since early August. The vessel’s owner reportedly owes the crew
$230,000 in wage arrears. Onboard are nine Russians, two Ukrainians,
four citizens of the Philippines, and one Estonian. “The captain of
the vessel said that three crew members… went on hunger strike. The
vessel’s owner has also been informed,” Pyotr Osichansky said.
The seamen demand repatriation and the repayment of wage arrears, and
refuse to perform their duties. In early September the crew asked for
international aid as they were running out of food and water. A week
later two weeks’ worth of water supplies, provisions for three weeks,
and fuel for 50 days were provided. A total of 23 Russian sailors are
currently in a similar situation on two other vessels – the Piryit
bulk carrier, which is stranded near the port of Cristobal in Panama,
and the Southern Pearl vessel is anchored off the Bulgarian coast.
ABANDONED SAILORS
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/03/nyregion/crew-of-ukrainian-freighter-stranded-in-new-york-harbor.html
Crew of Ukrainian Freighter Stranded in New York Harbor
BY Robert D. McFadden / August 3, 1999
For three and a half months, a Ukrainian freighter has been stranded
in New York Harbor, her cargo holds and fuel tanks empty, her master
awaiting orders that never come, her 26-member crew idle and recently
unpaid, food and supplies dwindling -- a ship dead in the water,
caught in a ghostly maritime limbo. Riding at anchor in Gravesend Bay
off Brooklyn, a mile southeast of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the
458-foot merchantman, Banner of October, has repeatedly requested
supplies from its owner's American representative but has received
inadequate stores of food, water and medicine, and no shipping orders.
''I said to owners, please, please, people like eating,'' the master,
Capt. Aleksandr Golub, 62, said in a shipboard interview last night. A
seamen's welfare organization, alerted earlier by the Coast Guard to
the ship's plight, had brought aboard an emergency two-day supply of
chicken, beef, fruits and vegetables for the crew of 23 men and 3
women, all Ukrainians. ''It's bad,'' said Valery Ignatov, the
seafarers' union representative, when asked about conditions aboard
the weather-beaten black and red freighter, which had carried used
cars and trucks from New York and Miami to the Dominican Republic and
Haiti in recent years. ''No food. No water. No oil. Pay late.''
Captain Golub attributed the problems of his ship to the financial
troubles of its owner, the state-run Azov Shipping Company, of
Mariupol, Ukraine. He also attributed the suicide of his predecessor
as ship's master to depression over company turmoil that had left the
crew unpaid for more than a year. The Coast Guard, which went aboard
for a routine inspection on Saturday and found provisions running out,
had known of the ship since Jan. 13, when Captain Ivan Kozlov, the
previous master, was found hanged in his stateroom, off Sandy Hook,
N.J., touching off a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry that
found no foul play.
Douglas Stevenson, a lawyer for the Seamen's Church Institute and its
affiliated Center for Seafarers' Rights, nonprofit organizations that
have long sought to protect the welfare of seafarers, went aboard last
night to meet with the crew and said afterward that the Banner of
October was only one of a half-dozen Azov ships that are stranded
around the world, off Europe, Asia and Africa. He said the crews of
those and many other stranded ships had been caught in the backwash of
recent years' economic turmoil in Ukraine, other former Soviet states
and third-world countries whose troubled economies have affected
shipping.
The Coast Guard said that Azov Shipping, based in a port on the Sea of
Azov, connected by a narrow inlet to the Black Sea, is represented in
the United States by Azov Shipping International, based in Secaucus,
N.J. Captain Golub identified the company's local representative as
Captain Vladimir Shamshin, who could not be reached at the company's
offices last night. Mr. Stevenson, who is also the director of the
Center for Seafarers' Rights in New York, said he intended to go to
Ukraine later this month to talk with government officials about the
problems of vessels that have been stranded, abandoned or inadequately
supplied by financially troubled shipping companies.
The plight of the Banner of October is not unusual. Merchant crews,
especially those on ships flying so-called flags of convenience from
nations that have lax health and safety standards, are often exploited
by employers who force them to labor hard in dangerous conditions for
low pay, Mr. Stevenson said. A check of international commercial
shipping that was reported in February found at least 10 ships, with
crews totaling more than 200 members, that had been stranded in ports
around the world, left by owners who could not, or would not, spend
money for wages and for the maintenance and provisioning of ships that
their companies considered temporarily or permanently unproductive.
The Banner of October, built in the Soviet Union in 1977, had been
chartered for two-week trips carrying about 500 used vehicles --
trucks from New York and cars from Miami to Puerto Plata in the
Dominican Republic, and Port au Prince, Haiti. It usually returned to
New York without cargo, Captain Golub said. The ship's last voyage
from the Caribbean ended in New York on April 13, the captain said,
and since then, there have been no more shipments and no further
orders. As the ship lay at anchor, various requests for supplies were
made over the last three and a half months, he said. One shipment -- a
22-day supply of food -- was received on July 1, and the captain said
the crew had made it last until now, stretching it out over more than
30 days. The last pay was received in June, he said.
There was also no Freon for air-conditioning, he said, and the crew
had to swelter though July's record-setting heat without coolants.
Most remained below deck during the day to escape the heat and slept
on deck at night to catch a breeze. The crew continued to maintain the
ship, which the Coast Guard found to be well kept in its inspections,
one last spring and another on Saturday. ''Things checked out O.K.,
except we were concerned about the amount of food they had on board,''
said John Hillin, a civilian who is the Coast Guard's official in
charge of foreign vessels in the port. He and Mr. Stevenson said the
Ukrainian consul in New York had been notified and had pledged to
contact Azov officials and try to resolve problems by getting funds to
purchase supplies.
Captain Golub said that Captain Shamshin, the Azov official in
Secaucus, had told him that the ship would be reprovisioned on Friday
at a dock in Red Hook, Brooklyn, but he also noted that arrangements
to pick up a cargo in the port today had fallen through and that no
new cargoes had been lined up. ''All contracts are canceled, and
they're just sitting there and don't know what to do,'' Andreas Krenz,
a port chaplain for the Seamen's Church Institute, said after helping
to deliver emergency supplies of food and water to the ship yesterday.
''The fridge is actually empty, and they have just a little butter
left and a couple of pieces of meat.''
The ship's radio operator, Valery Kostenko, 33, was lounging in a day
room last night with Anatoly Lichkatyn, 30, the fourth engineer. Both
wore shorts, T-shirts and sandals and were watching a video of
''Lethal Weapon,'' translated into Russian. Like other crew members,
Mr. Kostenko spoke a broken English. Asked about the supply situation,
he said: ''No provisions on the ship. No supplies.'' Captain Golub
added: ''Nothing medicine also.'' The crew had not been ashore since
the ship arrived in New York Harbor three and a half months ago, the
master said, but most of its members seemed last night to be less
frustrated than glumly resigned to their situation.
DISOWNED SHIPS
http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/04/stranded.ship/
Stranded Pakistani seamen pray for Texas deliverance / December 4,
1998
Five miles off South Padre Island, Texas, a Pakistani freighter is
anchored in a seafarer's limbo. "Please, for God's sake, help us. We
are dying," pleaded Maqsood Ahmed, the desperate captain of the
Pakistani-flagged Delta Pride. The captain and his crew, 22 men in
all, have been stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for nearly five months
after the ship's owner, Star Shipping Lines, went bankrupt. For most
of that time, the 738-foot Delta Pride, which has no cargo, was
anchored off Tampico, Mexico, before moving last week to the Texas
Gulf coast.
Provisions exhausted
There is little fuel or water on board. For a time, the only food was
rotting potatoes and mildewed cabbage. Most of the crew are suffering
from sores and skin rashes. In addition, they have not been paid in
almost two years. The Coast Guard says the crew radioed on November
24th that its provisions were exhausted. The message called for food,
water and medical attention. A doctor and emergency provisions have
been sent.
Crew members don't have passports so, for now, they are barred from
U.S. shores and the Coast Guard will not allow the Delta Pride to dock
in nearby Brownsville. "Without knowing the condition of the vessel,
we're not going to bring in a vessel that could endanger the port or
the other users of the port until we think it's safe to come in,"
Coast Guard Captain Dan Guerrero told CNN. However, the Coast Guard
said any crew member who has a medical emergency will be brought
ashore immediately.
Help and prayers
The bankruptcy of the ship's owners has left the crew without a way to
get home. The Allied Bank of Pakistan holds the lien on the craft. A
ship service company hired by the bank has paid for a small amount of
fuel. Brownsville maritime organizations have donated food and water
to last for a few weeks. Five times a day, the ship's Muslim crew
spreads prayer mats on the rusty deck and prays to Allah. Captain
Ahmed also recalls looking at his last $10 bill on a nightstand as he
asked for guidance. "It's written, IN GOD WE TRUST, and I said, 'Thank
God I got my answer. You told me to go to America.'"
BANKRUPTCY
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1553230.stm
Help for stranded shipmates / 20 September, 2001
A seamens' charity in north-east Lincolnshire has come to the rescue
of a crew on a Maltese ship left without food, water or money. The
"Black Sea Star" brought cargo from the Middle East to Immingham a
month ago. The Maltese vessel was arrested temporarily over fuel bills
unpaid at another port. It then emerged that the crew from Georgia in
the former Soviet Union had not been paid for up to 18 months and was
surviving on a diet of potatoes. The ship was carrying road
construction machinery to the UK from the Suez Canal.
It was arrested by the Admirality Marshall Officer on 5 September
2001. The welfare of the 11 crew members then became the responsibilty
of this authority. But when the arrest order was lifted a few days
later after their employers could not be contacted, the men were left
without any support. Workers from the Immingham Seafarers Commission
discovered them in a sorry state. Padre David Craig, the centre's
cleric, said: "The men were really depressed. They hadn't seen fresh
food for a while. "They were desperate to contact their families. The
captain is 70 years old."
Bankruptcy claims
The Maltese authorities cannot find the ship's owners. Telex messages
received from Georgia claimed bankruptcy on their behalf. The men
refused to hand over their cargo to the Dutch company who commissioned
its delivery until they had been paid. The firm gave them a bonus
payment as a gesture of good will which they accepted. This has
enabled six of them to get a flight back to their families from
Humberside airport this weekend.
The remaining five continue to get provisions from the Immingham
charity while the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF)
attempt to get their back-pay. The vessel has navigational defects and
is not allowed to leave the port. The Associated Ports Authority can
petition another arrest order if port fees remain unpaid. The ship
will then be sold by tender to cover these expenses. Padre Craig said
this was one of the worst rescue missions he had ever been involved
with. "They'd been living on variations of potato soup. There is no
welfare state in Georgia and the mens' families have been without any
money for all this time."
SAILOR'S FUND
http://www.smslegal.com/sms.cfm?a=cms,c,33,3,0
Sailors from Ukraine Thank Supporters
{The following was published in the The Ukrainian Weekly}
Dear Editor:
Thanks from Ukraine for the help and support provided by The Ukrainian
Weekly readers during a desperate situation of this past summer. On
September 20, the stranded group of Ukrainian sailors from the 650-
foot cargo ship Epta left Houston and returned to Ukraine. They were
deported without any of the six months' pay that was owed them for the
repairs and maintenance they were hired to do on the Epta. The sailors
left Houston disheartened to face the grim realities of the mounting
debts that their families had incurred while they were stranded in
Houston. The U.S. Marshall's Office had seized the ship and forced the
issue into bankruptcy court, and the matter was to go to court in May
of 1999.
However, on December 24, a settlement of the case involving the
sailors' wages was reached with the other creditors of the ship Epta.
A judge's order allowed the distribution of the funds for the sailors'
wages (approximately $76,000) to take place immediately. This amount
represents only a portion of their back pay, but it will help them
repay the tremendous debts their families had acquired in order to
survive. It is a happy ending to an unpleasant situation that occurred
this summer in the Port of Houston.
The Ukrainian sailors want to thank all the organizations and
individuals, both Ukrainian and American, in Houston and beyond, who
were instrumental in helping them survive under difficult
circumstances. The Sailors' Fund, organized by the Ukrainian Catholic
Church of the Pokrova in Houston, coordinated the collection of money
(approximately $30,000), food, clothing and telephone cards while this
situation was being resolved. The Ukrainian American Cultural Club and
the Ukrainian National Women's League of Houston also provided
valuable help and generous contributions to the Sailors', Fund.
The Ukrainian sailors were abandoned thousands of miles from home by
ruthless ship owners and operators. They were left penniless to fend
for themselves. To their rescue came many Ukrainian Americans and
their organizations. The Ukrainian American community should be proud
of the kindness and generous support it provided to solve this problem
for these sailors.
Greg and Nadia Buchai
Sugar Land, Texas
{Greg Buchai, a Houston financial adviser, and attorney Dennis McElwee
negotiated a settlement for the sailors.}
REPO MAN, INTERNATIONAL WATERS
http://www.vesselextractions.com/
http://www.vesselextractions.com/index2.htm
http://www.vesselextractions.com/company/operations/Florida%20Shipper%20Article%20--%20Patric%20M%20Recovery.pdf
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/01/local/me-repoman1
This repo man drives off with ocean freighters
BY Dan Weikel / March 1, 2007
If repossessing a used Chevrolet can be tricky, consider retrieving
the Aztec Express, a 700-foot cargo ship under guard in Haiti as civil
unrest spread through the country. Only a few repo men possess the
guile and resourcefulness for such a job. One of them is F. Max
Hardberger, of Lacombe, La. Since 1991, the 58-year-old attorney and
ship captain has surreptitiously sailed away about a dozen freighters
from ports around the world. "I'm sure there are those who would like
to add me to a list of modern pirates of the Caribbean, but I do
whatever I can to protect the legal rights of my clients," said
Hardberger, whose company, Vessel Extractions in New Orleans, has
negotiated the releases of another dozen cargo ships and prevented the
seizures of many others.
His line of work regularly takes him to a corner of the maritime
industry still plagued by pirates, underhanded business practices and
corrupt government officials, waters the Aztec Express sailed right
into. The saga began in 2003 when the vessel's Greek owner died and
his company did not keep up payments on a $3.3-million mortgage.
Bahamian court records show that an American businessman who had used
the vessel to haul 235 used cars from the northeastern United States
to Haiti did not pay the charter fee, contributing to the loan
default. Once the ship arrived in the Haitian port of Miragoane, the
businessman bribed judicial officials to seize the vessel and sell it
to him in a rigged auction, according to court records.
Meanwhile, a violent rebellion threatened to topple President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, making it impossible for the lender or the owner's
relatives to contest the sale. The condition of the Aztec Express
further complicated matters. Its main engines were out of commission,
having been idle and untended for months. Hardberger was hired by the
New Jersey-based mortgage holder. He flew to Haiti and drove with an
armed bodyguard to Miragoane. He gathered two important pieces of
information. Watchmen stationed on the Aztec Express sold fuel from
the vessel on the black market. Second, port authorities had a
cellphone, but they could use it only at the harbor's soccer field,
where cellular service was reliable.
Hardberger managed to get the guards off the ship by offering to buy
fuel. When they came down to the dock to discuss the transaction, off-
duty Haitian riot police hired by Hardberger held them at bay.
Meanwhile, an oceangoing tugboat also hired by Hardberger slipped into
port and backed up to the Aztec Express. Under a full moon, the crew
began cutting the anchor chains with blowtorches. In case harbor
officials noticed and tried to call for help on their cellphone,
Hardberger had paid a witch doctor $100 to cast spells on the port's
soccer field. The witch doctor marked the field with gray powder, a
clear warning to believers in voodoo, the nation's dominant religion.
No call ever went out.
Once the freighter was freed, the tug hauled the ship out of port and
headed for the Bahamas, where British-based maritime laws give a high
priority to lenders' claims. The next day, however, another tug
intercepted the ship. Its captain said he had been sent to take over
the operation. Hardberger's team checked with the marine towing
company hired for the repossession and found that no relief boat had
been sent. It then summoned the Bahamian coast guard, which detained
the other tug on suspicion of attempted piracy.
Hardberger said the second tugboat had been sent by the American
businessman when he learned that the Aztec Express had been pulled out
of Haiti. In the Bahamas, a court upheld the ship's repossession and
ordered its sale to settle the lender's claim. "Haiti has a corrupt
legal system where cronyism and corruption are the order of the day,"
Judge John Lyons wrote in his decision. "Justice is dispensed
according to who can pay the going rate."
Hardberger said small-to-medium-size cargo ships such as the Aztec
Express are among the most vulnerable to chicanery and illegal
seizures. Often operated by small shipping lines, these modern-day
tramp steamers regularly visit developing countries plagued by
unstable and corrupt governments. In the worst-off nations, Hardberger
said, it is possible to seize a $10-million ship with a $100 bribe to
a justice of the peace. "You need more than what an attorney can do in
some of these countries," said John Lightbown, a ship owner who
recently sought Hardberger's help to avert a seizure in Haiti. "Deals
can be bought and sold under the table. Max gets into the middle of
things. He's been around the block," he said. "I don't know anyone who
does this, except for Max," said Jonathan S. Spencer, a New York-based
maritime adjuster who determines the monetary losses of shipping
accidents. "It's hard to say how much people like him are used. They
work in gray areas of the law. They are very discreet, and the people
who hire them are discreet as well."
With his graying hair, walrus mustache and moderate build, Hardberger
doesn't fit the profile of a swashbuckler. He taught history and
English at parochial schools in Louisiana and Mississippi after
graduating from the University of New Orleans and earning a master's
degree from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Outside the
classroom, he worked on Gulf Coast oil rigs and the vessels that
served them. For several years in the 1980s he skippered a cargo ship
in the Caribbean and later wrote "Freighter Captain," a novel based on
the experience.
In 1998, after a four-year correspondence course, he passed the
California bar exam on the first try. He now practices maritime law,
mostly in the Caribbean, but regularly comes to Southern California to
handle cases. Hardberger fell into the ship extraction business in
1991 while managing two freighters for Morgan Price & Co., a
wastepaper exporter in Miami. Morgan Price had chartered one of the
vessels, the Patric M, to a Peruvian company that used it to carry
steel to Venezuela.
When the company refused to pay Morgan Price $80,000, the Miami firm
instructed the captain to dock at Puerto Cabello in Venezuela, its
destination, but not unload the cargo. In retaliation, Hardberger
said, the Peruvian firm bribed court officials to detain the Patric M
in port and allow the company to operate it. A judge even jailed the
master and chief engineer, but not before the engineer was forced at
gunpoint to power up the vessel's cranes so unloading could proceed.
Hardberger flew to Venezuela. He says he persuaded court officials to
put the captain and chief engineer under house arrest at a hotel.
Hardberger then met with the two men. The captain refused to
participate in the repossession, fearing for his safety. When the
chief engineer agreed to help, he and Hardberger slipped out of the
hotel through a laundry room.
In the evening, they took a taxi to the waterfront and walked along
the port wall that was topped with barbed wire, finally gaining entry
by crawling under a railroad gate. Once inside the port, Hardberger
said, they hid in doorways, culverts and the shadows of shipping
containers to elude guards and stevedores. "Extractions are a big
risk. If you get caught, you are looking at a very serious charge,"
Hardberger said. "In some countries, you could wait two or three years
for trial and end up with a 20-year sentence."
At the unguarded ship, both men climbed the gangway, and Hardberger
found the first mate, a heavy-set Panamanian, who agreed to cooperate.
The Patric M's crew, which had not been replaced by the Peruvian
company, was assembled in the mess for a briefing. Everyone signed on
to the plan. Later in the evening, the crew cut the ship's lines from
the deck. The main engine came to life with a few deep thumps.
Proceeding at "dead slow ahead," Hardberger steered the 340-foot cargo
ship past a naval base and through the narrow harbor entrance. En
route to Aruba, Hardberger said, he received a radio message saying
Venezuela had notified Interpol - the global police agency - that the
ship had departed without permission.
He soon found an isolated anchorage off the island of Vieques, Puerto
Rico. The crew ground off the original name and identification numbers
that are stamped into the steel of every cargo ship when it is built.
All the Patric M's documents - plans, ledgers, log books and
certifications - were copied and altered to reflect its new name. The
originals were destroyed, including its Panamanian registration forms.
Then, Hardberger said, he found a country willing to register
stateless vessels, no questions asked. He declined to name the
country, but there were only a few at the time, such as Honduras,
Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. International regulatory agencies
have since banned the practice. About a year after acquiring its new
identity, the Patric M was sold by Morgan Price.
"International waters," Hardberger said, "are worse than the Wild
West. In many ways, there is little or no opportunity to avenge the
wrongs people have done to you." For the last 3 1/2 years, Hardberger
has operated Vessel Extractions with Michael L. Bono, an admiralty law
attorney and one of his former high school students. Before
repossessing a ship, they make sure the vessel has been seized
illegally and the claims filed against it are fraudulent.
If negotiations and legal methods fail, the company will proceed with
an extraction, a step that might include payments to local officials
if a nation's government is corrupt. Those payments, Hardberger said,
are made under exceptions in the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials to
retain or obtain business. "In a rogue state, you can't tie your hands
behind you," Hardberger said. "It is common to find that the court
system is rife with corruption."
Extracting a ship can cost a client $100,000 or more. If a
repossession is requested, Hardberger and his team quietly enter the
country involved. They seek out friendly officials and trusted local
contacts such as ship agents who tend to a vessel's logistical needs
in port. "You need to pick up clues about the ship and what is said in
the bars, at the ship chandlers and in the local whorehouses,"
Hardberger said. "Crews are not that sophisticated and talk about
their orders and departure times. You can really keep track of a
vessel this way." Hardberger said he does not carry a firearm, though
he has hired bodyguards, as he did with the Aztec Express. Stealth and
trickery are the preferred methods. "I do not want my face seen," he
added.
Such tactics were employed in April 1999, when Hardberger was asked to
extract a 280-foot cargo ship that had put in for repairs at
Drapetsona, a part of the Greek port of Piraeus. "It's a place," he
says, "where ship names are repainted quickly." The small freighter
was Hungarian and, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, was still
equipped with a commissar's office. It contained a secret radio room
and the complete works of Lenin. When the repair company charged four
times the agreed-upon price to fix a huge dent in the stern,
Hardberger said, the owner refused to pay. Port officials then denied
the vessel a clearance to leave.
Hardberger and the ship's agent got permission to move the ship to a
port anchorage under the ruse that she needed refueling. The new
location would make it possible for a crew to reach the vessel by
launch. Then, with everything in place, Hardberger waited for the
weekend of Greek Easter, a religious festival marked by rich pageantry
and widespread celebration. To help the coast guard enjoy the event,
Hardberger arranged for the ship agent to drop off several cases of
ouzo at the station, which overlooked the port.
At 2 a.m. on a Sunday, a crew boarded the unattended freighter and
sailed it out of the harbor unnoticed. Hardberger, who coordinated the
operation from shore, sat in a seaman's bar in Piraeus with friends,
including the ship's agent. In the ancient port, they toasted their
success with vodka.
ALANG: WHERE SHIPS GO TO DIE
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&q=21%C2%B024%273%22N+++72%C2%B09%2757%22E&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&ll=21.395621,72.182493&spn=0.023056,0.032401&z=15&iwloc=A
http://www.wesjones.com/shipbreakers.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/bigbreak/resources.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/alang-the-place-where-ships-go-to-die-1779656.html
Thanks to recession, Gujarat's ship-breaking yards are booming, but
impact on environment is toxic
BY Andrew Buncombe / 31 August 2009
It is known as the graveyard of ships, a place where ageing vessels
are torn apart by unskilled labourers and the metal then sold on as
scrap. In recent years these often deadly and dangerous ship breakers'
yards, which stretch a full seven miles along the coastline of the
Indian state of Gujarat, have themselves been a little on their
uppers. Booming demand for freight meant that it made sound economic
sense to keep even older ships in operation, and many of the labourers
in the Gujarati yards were laid off.
But now, by no small irony, these workers in the world's largest ship-
breaking yard have been saved by the global recession. The economic
downturn and a subsequent fall in demand for cargo ships has meant
that for many ship owners it makes better sense to send an ageing ship
to the scrapyard rather than to keep her maintained but idle. But
while the recession may have been good news for the owners of the ship-
breaking firms, it is very bad news for the environment. The scrapping
of ships in South Asia – Bangladesh and Pakistan are also major
scrappers – is a rudimentary, almost medieval affair. Ships are
allowed to beach on the sands and then armies of men with little or no
training pull apart the ships with hand-tools. Toxic substances such
as mercury and asbestos are allowed to seep into the environment.
One of the attractions to the ship owners of having their vessels
dismantled here is that the ship breakers in this part of the world
receive little of the regulatory oversight that takes place in Europe
or the US. For the ship owners, it means they can dispose of their
ships more cheaply, while for the scrappers it means bonanza-time.
Over the last 10 months, the scrappers at Alang in Gujarat have
received and dismantled around 280 ships, up from 163 during the same
period a year earlier. Some breakers believe that over a 12-month
period from January, they might reach a total of 400 ships.
"The costs of a laid-up vessel are considerable. It costs a lot to
keep it empty. If there is no cargo, it is better to lose them," said
Nikhil Gupta, owner of the Hare Krishna Steel Corporation and a senior
official with the breaker's trade organisation, the Ship Recycling
Industries Association of India. Speaking by telephone, he added:
"After 35 or 40 years these ships are not as safe, and the insurance
premiums go up. In the past there was a lot of trade and it made sense
to keep them."
Pat Swayne of the Baltic Exchange, the London-based maritime trading
house, said there is no question that increasing numbers of older
ships are being scrapped. "Previously many ships that were able to
make a lot of money [for the owner], are now facing rising costs," he
said. "If you decide to lay up a ship then you have to find somewhere
to lay it up and the question is where do you lay it up? The older a
ship is, the more costs are associated with it. Scrapping becomes a
very viable option."
Since the mid-1980s, the vast breakers' yards at Alang have developed,
under only loose regulation, along a stretch of coast that enjoys a
tidal range of around 13 metres, making it easier to beach a condemned
vessel directly onto the shoreline. Previously the industry was based
in Mumbai, but gradually it moved to Alang and continued to expand.
Now, Alang accounts for than half of all the ships scrapped worldwide,
followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh, which each scrap almost a quarter
of the remainder. Mr Gupta said that as a result of upturn in
scrapping, up to 40,000 workers are now directly employed by the
breakers at around 170 plots along the coast. Around 130 plots are in
use today, up from just 25 in 2006.
For those directly and indirectly involved in breaking, the cash tills
are jingling and many breakers have recently been tempted back into
the industry. In the surrounding area there has already been a visible
impact on the area. New homes are sprouting along the 35-mile stretch
of road that links Alang to the city of Bhavnagar, and the local roads
are awash in what some call "snazzy sedans". On the edge of Alang a
huge flea market has sprung up, selling multifarious equipment and
fittings taken from the ships.
Locals say that when an owner decides to scrap a vessel, they rarely
have the time or opportunity to make a full assessment of the value of
such things. As a result, the flea market sells everything from ships
motors and cutlery sets to fridges and lifeboats at bargain prices.
"Last year I bought a torque wrench here for about 3,500 rupees (£44),
which would have cost me 50,000 on the open market," Vasant Pachal, an
engineering workshop owner from the city of Vadodara, recently told
The Hindustan Times while browsing at the market. "Apart from the
great deals, I get to see the latest in technology every time I come
here."
Yet for environmentalists and labour campaigners, the upturn in
business means something else. Campaigners point out that the working
conditions for the often undocumented migrant labourers from India's
poorest states, can be highly dangerous and there are regular reports
of injuries and fatalities. Earlier this month, six workers died when
a fire broke out at one of the plots. Activists say the impoverished
workers have no bargaining power.
Dwarika Nath Rath, a Gujarat-based activist and member of the
Socialist Unity Centre of India, a small Communist party, has for many
years been monitoring the human toll of the operations. "These
workers, coming from places like Orissa and Bihar, say that if they
want to save their families they have to die themselves," he said.
"The main problem is that there is no regulation, there is no law.
These people need to be given ID cards and registered as workers. When
an accident happens these people are not in the log-book." Ingrid
Christiansen, a Delhi-based official with the International Labour
Organisation, the UN body that oversees working conditions, said that
there had been some advances in working conditions at the breakers'
yards but that there was "room for improvement".
In May, an international convention meeting in Hong Kong agreed new
rules that sought to regulate the worst of the industry's excesses,
but campaigners say it has made little difference. Indeed, the
convention rejected a proposal supported by over 100 human rights and
environment protection organisations to phase out beaching operations
– where ships are dumped at high tide and then drift to beaches to be
taken apart. "Beach breaking would never be allowed in Europe," said
Ingvild Jenssen, director of the Belgium-based campaign group Platform
on Shipbreaking. "When a vessel is broken without containment on a
tidal beach there is bound to be pollution of the coastal zone.
Experience with ship repair pollution in Europe and the US, and
consequent rules for how these activities must be dealt with in
contained environments, illustrates the problems."
The booming market on the Gujarat coast has brought back an old
customer – to the consternation of campaigners. They claim that among
the ships that will be hauled onto the beaches and pulled apart in the
coming weeks are two US vessels, MV Pvt James Anderson and MV 1st Lt
Alex Bonnyman. They will be the first such US ships scrapped in south
Asia since 1998, when the Clinton administration – under pressure from
campaigners – ordered a moratorium on the scrapping of US government-
owned ships in south Asia. "This is really shocking," said Jim
Puckett, of the Basel Action Network, another campaign group. "Now we
have elected an environmental President, and his administration for
the first time in 10 years is willing to ignore the law and dump toxic
waste from US flagged ships on developing countries."
PREVIOUSLY ON SPECTRE --- DUBAI SKIPS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/dubai-skips/
SO IS IT MOM OR CHEVROLET?
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/mom-or-chevrolet/
TODAY'S PIRATE
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/todays-pirate/
CASHLESS CAPITALISM
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/cashless-capitalism/
WORLDWIDE FOOD RIOTS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/worldwide-food-riots/
TAKEN TO THE STREET
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/taken-to-the-streets/
FAIRLY BAD INDICATORS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/fairly-bad-indicators/
APRIL FOOLS! DOLLAR ACTUALLY FINE
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/april-fools-dollar-actually-fine/
THE GHOST FLEET OF JOHOR
http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Port/singaporeport/Map.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html
Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of
Singapore
BY Simon Parry / 28th September 2009
The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia
could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are
more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not
that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just
peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering
container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a
pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing
he needs.
His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an
o fficer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about
the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which
I can't immediately put my finger on. Then I have it - his 750ft-long
merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves
don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same
with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to
500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a
destination between them.
My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this
giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I
am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his
ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them. Navigating a precarious
course around the hull of this Panama-registered hulk, I reach its bow
and notice something else extraordinary. It is tied side by side to a
container ship of almost the same size. The mighty sister ship sits
empty, high in the water again, with apparently only the sailor and a
few lengths of rope for company.
Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity
between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European offi cer
peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world's
biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on
board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the
only other people on the ship. 'They are telling us to go away,' the
boat driver explains. 'No one is supposed to be here. They are very
frightened of pirates.'
Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is
surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime
history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and
American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container
ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden
between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC
Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But
their water has been stolen.
They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that
have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn
along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor
state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour. It is so far off the
beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these
ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists
would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague
still crippling the world's economies.
So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be
maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are
left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and
collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and
seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year. Local fisherman
Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for
prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was
nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came
one day, and every day there are more of them. Some of them stay for a
few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to
look from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few
passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'
The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships'
lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages
that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches
from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among
the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from
mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating
experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea,
staring at a city of light. Ah Wat says: 'We don't understand why they
are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board.
When we sail past them in our fishing boats we never see anyone. They
are like real ghost ships and some people are scared of them. They
believe they may bring a curse with them and that there may be bad
spirits on the ships.'
As daylight creeps across the waters, flags of convenience from
destinations such as Panama and the Bahamas become visible. In
reality, though, these vessels belong to some of the world's biggest
Western shipping companies. And the sickness that has ravaged them
began far away - in London, where the industry's heart beats, and
where the plummeting profits and hugely reduced cargo prices are most
keenly felt. The Aframax-class oil tanker is the camel of the world's
high seas. By definition, it is smaller than 132,000 tons deadweight
and with a breadth above 106ft. It is used in the basins of the Black
Sea, the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the China Sea and the
Mediterranean - or anywhere where non-OPEC exporting countries have
harbours and canals too small to accommodate very large crude carriers
(VLCC) or ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs). The term is based on the
Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) tanker rate system and is an
industry standard.
You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational
desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an
Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost
£31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500). This is why
the chilliest financial winds anywhere in the City of London are to be
found blowing through its 400-plus shipping brokers. Between them,
they manage about half of the world's chartering business. The bonuses
are long gone. The last to feel the tail of the economic whiplash,
they - and their insurers and lawyers - await a wave of redundancies
and business failures in the next six months. Commerce is contracting,
fleets rust away - yet new ship-builds ordered years ago are still
coming on stream.
Just 12 months ago these financiers and brokers were enjoying fat
bonuses as they traded cargo space. But nobody wants the space any
more, and those that still need to ship goods across the world are
demanding vast reductions in price. Do not tell these men and women
about green shoots of recovery. As Briton Tim Huxley, one of Asia's
leading ship brokers, says, if the world is really pulling itself out
of recession, then all these idle ships should be back on the move.
'This is the time of year when everyone is doing all the Christmas
stu ff,' he points out. 'A couple of years ago those ships would have
been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you've got
something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing
nothing.'
Aframaxes are oil bearers. But the slump is industry-wide. The cost of
sending a 40ft steel container of merchandise from China to the UK has
fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year. The
cost of chartering an entire bulk freighter suitable for carrying raw
materials has plunged even further, from close to £185,000 ($300,000)
last summer to an incredible £6,100 ($10,000) earlier this year.
Business for bulk carriers has picked up slightly in recent months,
largely because of China's rediscovered appetite for raw materials
such as iron ore, says Huxley. But this is a small part of
international trade, and the prospects for the container ships remain
bleak.
Some experts believe the ratio of container ships sitting idle could
rise to 25 per cent within two years in an extraordinary downturn that
shipping giant Maersk has called a 'crisis of historic dimensions'.
Last month the company reported its first half-year loss in its 105-
year history. Martin Stopford, managing director of Clarksons,
London's biggest ship broker, says container shipping has been hit
particularly hard: 'In 2006 and 2007 trade was growing at 11 per cent.
In 2008 it slowed down by 4.7 per cent. This year we think it might go
down by as much as eight per cent. If it costs £7,000 a day to put the
ship to sea and if you only get £6,000 a day, than you have got a
decision to make. Yet at the same time, the supply of container ships
is growing. This year, supply could be up by around 12 per cent and
demand is down by eight per cent. Twenty per cent spare is a lot of
spare of anything - and it's come out of nowhere.' Stopford explains:
'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about
8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person
and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West.
If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo
that isn't moving.'
Three thousand miles north-east of the ghost fleet of Johor, the
shipbuilding capital of the world rocks to an unpunctuated chorus of
hammer-guns blasting rivets the size of dustbin lids into shining
steel panels that are then lowered onto the decks of massive new
vessels. As the shipping industry teeters on the brink of collapse,
the activity at boatyards like Mokpo and Ulsan in South Korea all
looks like a sick joke. But the workers in these bustling shipyards,
who teem around giant tankers and mega-vessels the length of several
football pitches and capable of carrying 10,000 or more containers
each, have no choice; they are trapped in a cruel time warp.
A decade ago, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (who died last
month) issued a decree to his industrial captains: he wished to make
his nation the market leader in shipbuilding. He knew the market
intimately. Before entering politics, he studied economics and worked
for a Japanese-owned freight-shipping business. Within a few years he
was heading his own business, starting out with a fleet of nine ships.
Thus, by 2004, Kim Dae-jung's presidential vision was made real. His
country's low-cost yards were winning 40 per cent of world orders,
with Japan second with 24 per cent and China way behind on 14 per
cent.
But shipbuilding is a horrendously hard market to plan. There is a
three-year lag between the placing of an order and the delivery of a
ship. With contracts signed, down-payments made and work under way,
stopping work on a new ship is the economic equivalent of trying to
change direction in an ocean liner travelling at full speed towards an
iceberg. Thus the labours of today's Korean shipbuilders merely
represent the completion of contracts ordered in the fat years of 2006
and 2007. Those ships will now sail out into a global economy that no
longer wants them. Maersk announced last week that it was
renegotiating terms and prices with Asian shipyards for 39 ordered
tankers and gas carriers. One of the company's executives, Kristian
Morch, said the shipping industry was in uncharted waters. As he told
the global shipping newspaper Lloyd's List only last week: 'You have a
contraction of oil demand, you have a falling world economy and you
have a contraction of financing capabilities - and at the same time as
a lot of new ships are being delivered.'
Demand peaked in 2005 when, with surplus tonnage worldwide standing at
just 0.7 per cent, ship owners raced to order, fearing docks and
berths at major shipyards would soon be fully booked. That spell of
'panic buying' has heightened today's alarming mismatch between supply
and demand. Keith Wallis, East Asia editor of Lloyd's List, says,
'There was an ordering frenzy on all types of vessel, particularly
container ships, because of the booming trade between Asia and Europe
and the United States. It was fuelled in particular by consumer demand
in the UK, Europe and North America, as well as the demand for raw
materials from China.'
Orders for most existing ships to be delivered within the next six to
nine months would be honoured, he predicted, and the ships would go
into service at the expense of older vessels in the fleet, which would
be scrapped or end up anchored off places like southern Malaysia. But,
says Wallis, 'some ship owners won't be able to pay their final
instalments when the vessels are completed. Normally, they pay ten per
cent down when they order the ship and there are three or four stages
of payment. But 50 to 60 per cent is paid on delivery.'
South Korean shipyard Hanjin Heavy Industries last week said it had
been forced to put up for sale three container ships ordered at a cost
of £60 million ($100 million) by the Iranian state shipping line after
the Iranians said they could not pay the bill. 'The prospects for
shipyards are bleak, particularly for the South Koreans, where they
have a high proportion of foreign orders. Whole communities in places
like Mokpo and Ulsan are involved in shipbuilding and there is a lot
of sub-contracting to local companies,' Wallis says. 'So far the
shipyards are continuing to work, but the problems will start to
emerge next year and certainly in 2011, because that is when the
current orders will have been delivered. There have hardly been any
new orders in the past year. In 2011, the shipyards will simply run
out of ships to build.'
Christopher Palsson, a senior consultant at London-based Lloyd's
Register-Fairplay Research, believes the situation will worsen before
it gets better. 'Some ships will be sold for demolition but the net
balance will be even further pressure on the freight rates and the
market itself. A lot of ship owners and operators are going to find
themselves in a very difficult situation.' The current downturn is the
worst in living memory and more severe even than the slump of the
early Eighties, Palsson believes. 'Back then the majority of the crash
was for tankers carrying crude oil. Today we have almost every aspect
of shipping affected - bulk carriers, tankers, container carriers...
the lot. It is a much wider-spread situation that we have today. China
was not a major player in the world economy at that time. Neither was
India. We had the Soviet Union. We had shipbuilding in the United
Kingdom and Europe. But then, back in those days the world was a very
different place.'
HUNGER STRIKE
http://maritimenews.info/shipping-news/stranded-russian-sailors-go-on-a-hunger-strike-in-dubai/
Stranded Russian sailors go on a hunger strike in Dubai
Shipping News / October 4, 2009
Three Russian seamen from a vessel stranded in the port of Dubai began
a hunger strike on Friday, an International Transport Workers’
Federation official said. The Magdalena, owned by a German company and
flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, has been anchored in Dubai
since early August. The vessel’s owner reportedly owes the crew
$230,000 in wage arrears. Onboard are nine Russians, two Ukrainians,
four citizens of the Philippines, and one Estonian. “The captain of
the vessel said that three crew members… went on hunger strike. The
vessel’s owner has also been informed,” Pyotr Osichansky said.
The seamen demand repatriation and the repayment of wage arrears, and
refuse to perform their duties. In early September the crew asked for
international aid as they were running out of food and water. A week
later two weeks’ worth of water supplies, provisions for three weeks,
and fuel for 50 days were provided. A total of 23 Russian sailors are
currently in a similar situation on two other vessels – the Piryit
bulk carrier, which is stranded near the port of Cristobal in Panama,
and the Southern Pearl vessel is anchored off the Bulgarian coast.
ABANDONED SAILORS
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/03/nyregion/crew-of-ukrainian-freighter-stranded-in-new-york-harbor.html
Crew of Ukrainian Freighter Stranded in New York Harbor
BY Robert D. McFadden / August 3, 1999
For three and a half months, a Ukrainian freighter has been stranded
in New York Harbor, her cargo holds and fuel tanks empty, her master
awaiting orders that never come, her 26-member crew idle and recently
unpaid, food and supplies dwindling -- a ship dead in the water,
caught in a ghostly maritime limbo. Riding at anchor in Gravesend Bay
off Brooklyn, a mile southeast of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the
458-foot merchantman, Banner of October, has repeatedly requested
supplies from its owner's American representative but has received
inadequate stores of food, water and medicine, and no shipping orders.
''I said to owners, please, please, people like eating,'' the master,
Capt. Aleksandr Golub, 62, said in a shipboard interview last night. A
seamen's welfare organization, alerted earlier by the Coast Guard to
the ship's plight, had brought aboard an emergency two-day supply of
chicken, beef, fruits and vegetables for the crew of 23 men and 3
women, all Ukrainians. ''It's bad,'' said Valery Ignatov, the
seafarers' union representative, when asked about conditions aboard
the weather-beaten black and red freighter, which had carried used
cars and trucks from New York and Miami to the Dominican Republic and
Haiti in recent years. ''No food. No water. No oil. Pay late.''
Captain Golub attributed the problems of his ship to the financial
troubles of its owner, the state-run Azov Shipping Company, of
Mariupol, Ukraine. He also attributed the suicide of his predecessor
as ship's master to depression over company turmoil that had left the
crew unpaid for more than a year. The Coast Guard, which went aboard
for a routine inspection on Saturday and found provisions running out,
had known of the ship since Jan. 13, when Captain Ivan Kozlov, the
previous master, was found hanged in his stateroom, off Sandy Hook,
N.J., touching off a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry that
found no foul play.
Douglas Stevenson, a lawyer for the Seamen's Church Institute and its
affiliated Center for Seafarers' Rights, nonprofit organizations that
have long sought to protect the welfare of seafarers, went aboard last
night to meet with the crew and said afterward that the Banner of
October was only one of a half-dozen Azov ships that are stranded
around the world, off Europe, Asia and Africa. He said the crews of
those and many other stranded ships had been caught in the backwash of
recent years' economic turmoil in Ukraine, other former Soviet states
and third-world countries whose troubled economies have affected
shipping.
The Coast Guard said that Azov Shipping, based in a port on the Sea of
Azov, connected by a narrow inlet to the Black Sea, is represented in
the United States by Azov Shipping International, based in Secaucus,
N.J. Captain Golub identified the company's local representative as
Captain Vladimir Shamshin, who could not be reached at the company's
offices last night. Mr. Stevenson, who is also the director of the
Center for Seafarers' Rights in New York, said he intended to go to
Ukraine later this month to talk with government officials about the
problems of vessels that have been stranded, abandoned or inadequately
supplied by financially troubled shipping companies.
The plight of the Banner of October is not unusual. Merchant crews,
especially those on ships flying so-called flags of convenience from
nations that have lax health and safety standards, are often exploited
by employers who force them to labor hard in dangerous conditions for
low pay, Mr. Stevenson said. A check of international commercial
shipping that was reported in February found at least 10 ships, with
crews totaling more than 200 members, that had been stranded in ports
around the world, left by owners who could not, or would not, spend
money for wages and for the maintenance and provisioning of ships that
their companies considered temporarily or permanently unproductive.
The Banner of October, built in the Soviet Union in 1977, had been
chartered for two-week trips carrying about 500 used vehicles --
trucks from New York and cars from Miami to Puerto Plata in the
Dominican Republic, and Port au Prince, Haiti. It usually returned to
New York without cargo, Captain Golub said. The ship's last voyage
from the Caribbean ended in New York on April 13, the captain said,
and since then, there have been no more shipments and no further
orders. As the ship lay at anchor, various requests for supplies were
made over the last three and a half months, he said. One shipment -- a
22-day supply of food -- was received on July 1, and the captain said
the crew had made it last until now, stretching it out over more than
30 days. The last pay was received in June, he said.
There was also no Freon for air-conditioning, he said, and the crew
had to swelter though July's record-setting heat without coolants.
Most remained below deck during the day to escape the heat and slept
on deck at night to catch a breeze. The crew continued to maintain the
ship, which the Coast Guard found to be well kept in its inspections,
one last spring and another on Saturday. ''Things checked out O.K.,
except we were concerned about the amount of food they had on board,''
said John Hillin, a civilian who is the Coast Guard's official in
charge of foreign vessels in the port. He and Mr. Stevenson said the
Ukrainian consul in New York had been notified and had pledged to
contact Azov officials and try to resolve problems by getting funds to
purchase supplies.
Captain Golub said that Captain Shamshin, the Azov official in
Secaucus, had told him that the ship would be reprovisioned on Friday
at a dock in Red Hook, Brooklyn, but he also noted that arrangements
to pick up a cargo in the port today had fallen through and that no
new cargoes had been lined up. ''All contracts are canceled, and
they're just sitting there and don't know what to do,'' Andreas Krenz,
a port chaplain for the Seamen's Church Institute, said after helping
to deliver emergency supplies of food and water to the ship yesterday.
''The fridge is actually empty, and they have just a little butter
left and a couple of pieces of meat.''
The ship's radio operator, Valery Kostenko, 33, was lounging in a day
room last night with Anatoly Lichkatyn, 30, the fourth engineer. Both
wore shorts, T-shirts and sandals and were watching a video of
''Lethal Weapon,'' translated into Russian. Like other crew members,
Mr. Kostenko spoke a broken English. Asked about the supply situation,
he said: ''No provisions on the ship. No supplies.'' Captain Golub
added: ''Nothing medicine also.'' The crew had not been ashore since
the ship arrived in New York Harbor three and a half months ago, the
master said, but most of its members seemed last night to be less
frustrated than glumly resigned to their situation.
DISOWNED SHIPS
http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/04/stranded.ship/
Stranded Pakistani seamen pray for Texas deliverance / December 4,
1998
Five miles off South Padre Island, Texas, a Pakistani freighter is
anchored in a seafarer's limbo. "Please, for God's sake, help us. We
are dying," pleaded Maqsood Ahmed, the desperate captain of the
Pakistani-flagged Delta Pride. The captain and his crew, 22 men in
all, have been stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for nearly five months
after the ship's owner, Star Shipping Lines, went bankrupt. For most
of that time, the 738-foot Delta Pride, which has no cargo, was
anchored off Tampico, Mexico, before moving last week to the Texas
Gulf coast.
Provisions exhausted
There is little fuel or water on board. For a time, the only food was
rotting potatoes and mildewed cabbage. Most of the crew are suffering
from sores and skin rashes. In addition, they have not been paid in
almost two years. The Coast Guard says the crew radioed on November
24th that its provisions were exhausted. The message called for food,
water and medical attention. A doctor and emergency provisions have
been sent.
Crew members don't have passports so, for now, they are barred from
U.S. shores and the Coast Guard will not allow the Delta Pride to dock
in nearby Brownsville. "Without knowing the condition of the vessel,
we're not going to bring in a vessel that could endanger the port or
the other users of the port until we think it's safe to come in,"
Coast Guard Captain Dan Guerrero told CNN. However, the Coast Guard
said any crew member who has a medical emergency will be brought
ashore immediately.
Help and prayers
The bankruptcy of the ship's owners has left the crew without a way to
get home. The Allied Bank of Pakistan holds the lien on the craft. A
ship service company hired by the bank has paid for a small amount of
fuel. Brownsville maritime organizations have donated food and water
to last for a few weeks. Five times a day, the ship's Muslim crew
spreads prayer mats on the rusty deck and prays to Allah. Captain
Ahmed also recalls looking at his last $10 bill on a nightstand as he
asked for guidance. "It's written, IN GOD WE TRUST, and I said, 'Thank
God I got my answer. You told me to go to America.'"
BANKRUPTCY
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1553230.stm
Help for stranded shipmates / 20 September, 2001
A seamens' charity in north-east Lincolnshire has come to the rescue
of a crew on a Maltese ship left without food, water or money. The
"Black Sea Star" brought cargo from the Middle East to Immingham a
month ago. The Maltese vessel was arrested temporarily over fuel bills
unpaid at another port. It then emerged that the crew from Georgia in
the former Soviet Union had not been paid for up to 18 months and was
surviving on a diet of potatoes. The ship was carrying road
construction machinery to the UK from the Suez Canal.
It was arrested by the Admirality Marshall Officer on 5 September
2001. The welfare of the 11 crew members then became the responsibilty
of this authority. But when the arrest order was lifted a few days
later after their employers could not be contacted, the men were left
without any support. Workers from the Immingham Seafarers Commission
discovered them in a sorry state. Padre David Craig, the centre's
cleric, said: "The men were really depressed. They hadn't seen fresh
food for a while. "They were desperate to contact their families. The
captain is 70 years old."
Bankruptcy claims
The Maltese authorities cannot find the ship's owners. Telex messages
received from Georgia claimed bankruptcy on their behalf. The men
refused to hand over their cargo to the Dutch company who commissioned
its delivery until they had been paid. The firm gave them a bonus
payment as a gesture of good will which they accepted. This has
enabled six of them to get a flight back to their families from
Humberside airport this weekend.
The remaining five continue to get provisions from the Immingham
charity while the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF)
attempt to get their back-pay. The vessel has navigational defects and
is not allowed to leave the port. The Associated Ports Authority can
petition another arrest order if port fees remain unpaid. The ship
will then be sold by tender to cover these expenses. Padre Craig said
this was one of the worst rescue missions he had ever been involved
with. "They'd been living on variations of potato soup. There is no
welfare state in Georgia and the mens' families have been without any
money for all this time."
SAILOR'S FUND
http://www.smslegal.com/sms.cfm?a=cms,c,33,3,0
Sailors from Ukraine Thank Supporters
{The following was published in the The Ukrainian Weekly}
Dear Editor:
Thanks from Ukraine for the help and support provided by The Ukrainian
Weekly readers during a desperate situation of this past summer. On
September 20, the stranded group of Ukrainian sailors from the 650-
foot cargo ship Epta left Houston and returned to Ukraine. They were
deported without any of the six months' pay that was owed them for the
repairs and maintenance they were hired to do on the Epta. The sailors
left Houston disheartened to face the grim realities of the mounting
debts that their families had incurred while they were stranded in
Houston. The U.S. Marshall's Office had seized the ship and forced the
issue into bankruptcy court, and the matter was to go to court in May
of 1999.
However, on December 24, a settlement of the case involving the
sailors' wages was reached with the other creditors of the ship Epta.
A judge's order allowed the distribution of the funds for the sailors'
wages (approximately $76,000) to take place immediately. This amount
represents only a portion of their back pay, but it will help them
repay the tremendous debts their families had acquired in order to
survive. It is a happy ending to an unpleasant situation that occurred
this summer in the Port of Houston.
The Ukrainian sailors want to thank all the organizations and
individuals, both Ukrainian and American, in Houston and beyond, who
were instrumental in helping them survive under difficult
circumstances. The Sailors' Fund, organized by the Ukrainian Catholic
Church of the Pokrova in Houston, coordinated the collection of money
(approximately $30,000), food, clothing and telephone cards while this
situation was being resolved. The Ukrainian American Cultural Club and
the Ukrainian National Women's League of Houston also provided
valuable help and generous contributions to the Sailors', Fund.
The Ukrainian sailors were abandoned thousands of miles from home by
ruthless ship owners and operators. They were left penniless to fend
for themselves. To their rescue came many Ukrainian Americans and
their organizations. The Ukrainian American community should be proud
of the kindness and generous support it provided to solve this problem
for these sailors.
Greg and Nadia Buchai
Sugar Land, Texas
{Greg Buchai, a Houston financial adviser, and attorney Dennis McElwee
negotiated a settlement for the sailors.}
REPO MAN, INTERNATIONAL WATERS
http://www.vesselextractions.com/
http://www.vesselextractions.com/index2.htm
http://www.vesselextractions.com/company/operations/Florida%20Shipper%20Article%20--%20Patric%20M%20Recovery.pdf
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/01/local/me-repoman1
This repo man drives off with ocean freighters
BY Dan Weikel / March 1, 2007
If repossessing a used Chevrolet can be tricky, consider retrieving
the Aztec Express, a 700-foot cargo ship under guard in Haiti as civil
unrest spread through the country. Only a few repo men possess the
guile and resourcefulness for such a job. One of them is F. Max
Hardberger, of Lacombe, La. Since 1991, the 58-year-old attorney and
ship captain has surreptitiously sailed away about a dozen freighters
from ports around the world. "I'm sure there are those who would like
to add me to a list of modern pirates of the Caribbean, but I do
whatever I can to protect the legal rights of my clients," said
Hardberger, whose company, Vessel Extractions in New Orleans, has
negotiated the releases of another dozen cargo ships and prevented the
seizures of many others.
His line of work regularly takes him to a corner of the maritime
industry still plagued by pirates, underhanded business practices and
corrupt government officials, waters the Aztec Express sailed right
into. The saga began in 2003 when the vessel's Greek owner died and
his company did not keep up payments on a $3.3-million mortgage.
Bahamian court records show that an American businessman who had used
the vessel to haul 235 used cars from the northeastern United States
to Haiti did not pay the charter fee, contributing to the loan
default. Once the ship arrived in the Haitian port of Miragoane, the
businessman bribed judicial officials to seize the vessel and sell it
to him in a rigged auction, according to court records.
Meanwhile, a violent rebellion threatened to topple President Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, making it impossible for the lender or the owner's
relatives to contest the sale. The condition of the Aztec Express
further complicated matters. Its main engines were out of commission,
having been idle and untended for months. Hardberger was hired by the
New Jersey-based mortgage holder. He flew to Haiti and drove with an
armed bodyguard to Miragoane. He gathered two important pieces of
information. Watchmen stationed on the Aztec Express sold fuel from
the vessel on the black market. Second, port authorities had a
cellphone, but they could use it only at the harbor's soccer field,
where cellular service was reliable.
Hardberger managed to get the guards off the ship by offering to buy
fuel. When they came down to the dock to discuss the transaction, off-
duty Haitian riot police hired by Hardberger held them at bay.
Meanwhile, an oceangoing tugboat also hired by Hardberger slipped into
port and backed up to the Aztec Express. Under a full moon, the crew
began cutting the anchor chains with blowtorches. In case harbor
officials noticed and tried to call for help on their cellphone,
Hardberger had paid a witch doctor $100 to cast spells on the port's
soccer field. The witch doctor marked the field with gray powder, a
clear warning to believers in voodoo, the nation's dominant religion.
No call ever went out.
Once the freighter was freed, the tug hauled the ship out of port and
headed for the Bahamas, where British-based maritime laws give a high
priority to lenders' claims. The next day, however, another tug
intercepted the ship. Its captain said he had been sent to take over
the operation. Hardberger's team checked with the marine towing
company hired for the repossession and found that no relief boat had
been sent. It then summoned the Bahamian coast guard, which detained
the other tug on suspicion of attempted piracy.
Hardberger said the second tugboat had been sent by the American
businessman when he learned that the Aztec Express had been pulled out
of Haiti. In the Bahamas, a court upheld the ship's repossession and
ordered its sale to settle the lender's claim. "Haiti has a corrupt
legal system where cronyism and corruption are the order of the day,"
Judge John Lyons wrote in his decision. "Justice is dispensed
according to who can pay the going rate."
Hardberger said small-to-medium-size cargo ships such as the Aztec
Express are among the most vulnerable to chicanery and illegal
seizures. Often operated by small shipping lines, these modern-day
tramp steamers regularly visit developing countries plagued by
unstable and corrupt governments. In the worst-off nations, Hardberger
said, it is possible to seize a $10-million ship with a $100 bribe to
a justice of the peace. "You need more than what an attorney can do in
some of these countries," said John Lightbown, a ship owner who
recently sought Hardberger's help to avert a seizure in Haiti. "Deals
can be bought and sold under the table. Max gets into the middle of
things. He's been around the block," he said. "I don't know anyone who
does this, except for Max," said Jonathan S. Spencer, a New York-based
maritime adjuster who determines the monetary losses of shipping
accidents. "It's hard to say how much people like him are used. They
work in gray areas of the law. They are very discreet, and the people
who hire them are discreet as well."
With his graying hair, walrus mustache and moderate build, Hardberger
doesn't fit the profile of a swashbuckler. He taught history and
English at parochial schools in Louisiana and Mississippi after
graduating from the University of New Orleans and earning a master's
degree from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Outside the
classroom, he worked on Gulf Coast oil rigs and the vessels that
served them. For several years in the 1980s he skippered a cargo ship
in the Caribbean and later wrote "Freighter Captain," a novel based on
the experience.
In 1998, after a four-year correspondence course, he passed the
California bar exam on the first try. He now practices maritime law,
mostly in the Caribbean, but regularly comes to Southern California to
handle cases. Hardberger fell into the ship extraction business in
1991 while managing two freighters for Morgan Price & Co., a
wastepaper exporter in Miami. Morgan Price had chartered one of the
vessels, the Patric M, to a Peruvian company that used it to carry
steel to Venezuela.
When the company refused to pay Morgan Price $80,000, the Miami firm
instructed the captain to dock at Puerto Cabello in Venezuela, its
destination, but not unload the cargo. In retaliation, Hardberger
said, the Peruvian firm bribed court officials to detain the Patric M
in port and allow the company to operate it. A judge even jailed the
master and chief engineer, but not before the engineer was forced at
gunpoint to power up the vessel's cranes so unloading could proceed.
Hardberger flew to Venezuela. He says he persuaded court officials to
put the captain and chief engineer under house arrest at a hotel.
Hardberger then met with the two men. The captain refused to
participate in the repossession, fearing for his safety. When the
chief engineer agreed to help, he and Hardberger slipped out of the
hotel through a laundry room.
In the evening, they took a taxi to the waterfront and walked along
the port wall that was topped with barbed wire, finally gaining entry
by crawling under a railroad gate. Once inside the port, Hardberger
said, they hid in doorways, culverts and the shadows of shipping
containers to elude guards and stevedores. "Extractions are a big
risk. If you get caught, you are looking at a very serious charge,"
Hardberger said. "In some countries, you could wait two or three years
for trial and end up with a 20-year sentence."
At the unguarded ship, both men climbed the gangway, and Hardberger
found the first mate, a heavy-set Panamanian, who agreed to cooperate.
The Patric M's crew, which had not been replaced by the Peruvian
company, was assembled in the mess for a briefing. Everyone signed on
to the plan. Later in the evening, the crew cut the ship's lines from
the deck. The main engine came to life with a few deep thumps.
Proceeding at "dead slow ahead," Hardberger steered the 340-foot cargo
ship past a naval base and through the narrow harbor entrance. En
route to Aruba, Hardberger said, he received a radio message saying
Venezuela had notified Interpol - the global police agency - that the
ship had departed without permission.
He soon found an isolated anchorage off the island of Vieques, Puerto
Rico. The crew ground off the original name and identification numbers
that are stamped into the steel of every cargo ship when it is built.
All the Patric M's documents - plans, ledgers, log books and
certifications - were copied and altered to reflect its new name. The
originals were destroyed, including its Panamanian registration forms.
Then, Hardberger said, he found a country willing to register
stateless vessels, no questions asked. He declined to name the
country, but there were only a few at the time, such as Honduras,
Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. International regulatory agencies
have since banned the practice. About a year after acquiring its new
identity, the Patric M was sold by Morgan Price.
"International waters," Hardberger said, "are worse than the Wild
West. In many ways, there is little or no opportunity to avenge the
wrongs people have done to you." For the last 3 1/2 years, Hardberger
has operated Vessel Extractions with Michael L. Bono, an admiralty law
attorney and one of his former high school students. Before
repossessing a ship, they make sure the vessel has been seized
illegally and the claims filed against it are fraudulent.
If negotiations and legal methods fail, the company will proceed with
an extraction, a step that might include payments to local officials
if a nation's government is corrupt. Those payments, Hardberger said,
are made under exceptions in the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials to
retain or obtain business. "In a rogue state, you can't tie your hands
behind you," Hardberger said. "It is common to find that the court
system is rife with corruption."
Extracting a ship can cost a client $100,000 or more. If a
repossession is requested, Hardberger and his team quietly enter the
country involved. They seek out friendly officials and trusted local
contacts such as ship agents who tend to a vessel's logistical needs
in port. "You need to pick up clues about the ship and what is said in
the bars, at the ship chandlers and in the local whorehouses,"
Hardberger said. "Crews are not that sophisticated and talk about
their orders and departure times. You can really keep track of a
vessel this way." Hardberger said he does not carry a firearm, though
he has hired bodyguards, as he did with the Aztec Express. Stealth and
trickery are the preferred methods. "I do not want my face seen," he
added.
Such tactics were employed in April 1999, when Hardberger was asked to
extract a 280-foot cargo ship that had put in for repairs at
Drapetsona, a part of the Greek port of Piraeus. "It's a place," he
says, "where ship names are repainted quickly." The small freighter
was Hungarian and, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, was still
equipped with a commissar's office. It contained a secret radio room
and the complete works of Lenin. When the repair company charged four
times the agreed-upon price to fix a huge dent in the stern,
Hardberger said, the owner refused to pay. Port officials then denied
the vessel a clearance to leave.
Hardberger and the ship's agent got permission to move the ship to a
port anchorage under the ruse that she needed refueling. The new
location would make it possible for a crew to reach the vessel by
launch. Then, with everything in place, Hardberger waited for the
weekend of Greek Easter, a religious festival marked by rich pageantry
and widespread celebration. To help the coast guard enjoy the event,
Hardberger arranged for the ship agent to drop off several cases of
ouzo at the station, which overlooked the port.
At 2 a.m. on a Sunday, a crew boarded the unattended freighter and
sailed it out of the harbor unnoticed. Hardberger, who coordinated the
operation from shore, sat in a seaman's bar in Piraeus with friends,
including the ship's agent. In the ancient port, they toasted their
success with vodka.
ALANG: WHERE SHIPS GO TO DIE
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&q=21%C2%B024%273%22N+++72%C2%B09%2757%22E&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&ll=21.395621,72.182493&spn=0.023056,0.032401&z=15&iwloc=A
http://www.wesjones.com/shipbreakers.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/bigbreak/resources.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/alang-the-place-where-ships-go-to-die-1779656.html
Thanks to recession, Gujarat's ship-breaking yards are booming, but
impact on environment is toxic
BY Andrew Buncombe / 31 August 2009
It is known as the graveyard of ships, a place where ageing vessels
are torn apart by unskilled labourers and the metal then sold on as
scrap. In recent years these often deadly and dangerous ship breakers'
yards, which stretch a full seven miles along the coastline of the
Indian state of Gujarat, have themselves been a little on their
uppers. Booming demand for freight meant that it made sound economic
sense to keep even older ships in operation, and many of the labourers
in the Gujarati yards were laid off.
But now, by no small irony, these workers in the world's largest ship-
breaking yard have been saved by the global recession. The economic
downturn and a subsequent fall in demand for cargo ships has meant
that for many ship owners it makes better sense to send an ageing ship
to the scrapyard rather than to keep her maintained but idle. But
while the recession may have been good news for the owners of the ship-
breaking firms, it is very bad news for the environment. The scrapping
of ships in South Asia – Bangladesh and Pakistan are also major
scrappers – is a rudimentary, almost medieval affair. Ships are
allowed to beach on the sands and then armies of men with little or no
training pull apart the ships with hand-tools. Toxic substances such
as mercury and asbestos are allowed to seep into the environment.
One of the attractions to the ship owners of having their vessels
dismantled here is that the ship breakers in this part of the world
receive little of the regulatory oversight that takes place in Europe
or the US. For the ship owners, it means they can dispose of their
ships more cheaply, while for the scrappers it means bonanza-time.
Over the last 10 months, the scrappers at Alang in Gujarat have
received and dismantled around 280 ships, up from 163 during the same
period a year earlier. Some breakers believe that over a 12-month
period from January, they might reach a total of 400 ships.
"The costs of a laid-up vessel are considerable. It costs a lot to
keep it empty. If there is no cargo, it is better to lose them," said
Nikhil Gupta, owner of the Hare Krishna Steel Corporation and a senior
official with the breaker's trade organisation, the Ship Recycling
Industries Association of India. Speaking by telephone, he added:
"After 35 or 40 years these ships are not as safe, and the insurance
premiums go up. In the past there was a lot of trade and it made sense
to keep them."
Pat Swayne of the Baltic Exchange, the London-based maritime trading
house, said there is no question that increasing numbers of older
ships are being scrapped. "Previously many ships that were able to
make a lot of money [for the owner], are now facing rising costs," he
said. "If you decide to lay up a ship then you have to find somewhere
to lay it up and the question is where do you lay it up? The older a
ship is, the more costs are associated with it. Scrapping becomes a
very viable option."
Since the mid-1980s, the vast breakers' yards at Alang have developed,
under only loose regulation, along a stretch of coast that enjoys a
tidal range of around 13 metres, making it easier to beach a condemned
vessel directly onto the shoreline. Previously the industry was based
in Mumbai, but gradually it moved to Alang and continued to expand.
Now, Alang accounts for than half of all the ships scrapped worldwide,
followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh, which each scrap almost a quarter
of the remainder. Mr Gupta said that as a result of upturn in
scrapping, up to 40,000 workers are now directly employed by the
breakers at around 170 plots along the coast. Around 130 plots are in
use today, up from just 25 in 2006.
For those directly and indirectly involved in breaking, the cash tills
are jingling and many breakers have recently been tempted back into
the industry. In the surrounding area there has already been a visible
impact on the area. New homes are sprouting along the 35-mile stretch
of road that links Alang to the city of Bhavnagar, and the local roads
are awash in what some call "snazzy sedans". On the edge of Alang a
huge flea market has sprung up, selling multifarious equipment and
fittings taken from the ships.
Locals say that when an owner decides to scrap a vessel, they rarely
have the time or opportunity to make a full assessment of the value of
such things. As a result, the flea market sells everything from ships
motors and cutlery sets to fridges and lifeboats at bargain prices.
"Last year I bought a torque wrench here for about 3,500 rupees (£44),
which would have cost me 50,000 on the open market," Vasant Pachal, an
engineering workshop owner from the city of Vadodara, recently told
The Hindustan Times while browsing at the market. "Apart from the
great deals, I get to see the latest in technology every time I come
here."
Yet for environmentalists and labour campaigners, the upturn in
business means something else. Campaigners point out that the working
conditions for the often undocumented migrant labourers from India's
poorest states, can be highly dangerous and there are regular reports
of injuries and fatalities. Earlier this month, six workers died when
a fire broke out at one of the plots. Activists say the impoverished
workers have no bargaining power.
Dwarika Nath Rath, a Gujarat-based activist and member of the
Socialist Unity Centre of India, a small Communist party, has for many
years been monitoring the human toll of the operations. "These
workers, coming from places like Orissa and Bihar, say that if they
want to save their families they have to die themselves," he said.
"The main problem is that there is no regulation, there is no law.
These people need to be given ID cards and registered as workers. When
an accident happens these people are not in the log-book." Ingrid
Christiansen, a Delhi-based official with the International Labour
Organisation, the UN body that oversees working conditions, said that
there had been some advances in working conditions at the breakers'
yards but that there was "room for improvement".
In May, an international convention meeting in Hong Kong agreed new
rules that sought to regulate the worst of the industry's excesses,
but campaigners say it has made little difference. Indeed, the
convention rejected a proposal supported by over 100 human rights and
environment protection organisations to phase out beaching operations
– where ships are dumped at high tide and then drift to beaches to be
taken apart. "Beach breaking would never be allowed in Europe," said
Ingvild Jenssen, director of the Belgium-based campaign group Platform
on Shipbreaking. "When a vessel is broken without containment on a
tidal beach there is bound to be pollution of the coastal zone.
Experience with ship repair pollution in Europe and the US, and
consequent rules for how these activities must be dealt with in
contained environments, illustrates the problems."
The booming market on the Gujarat coast has brought back an old
customer – to the consternation of campaigners. They claim that among
the ships that will be hauled onto the beaches and pulled apart in the
coming weeks are two US vessels, MV Pvt James Anderson and MV 1st Lt
Alex Bonnyman. They will be the first such US ships scrapped in south
Asia since 1998, when the Clinton administration – under pressure from
campaigners – ordered a moratorium on the scrapping of US government-
owned ships in south Asia. "This is really shocking," said Jim
Puckett, of the Basel Action Network, another campaign group. "Now we
have elected an environmental President, and his administration for
the first time in 10 years is willing to ignore the law and dump toxic
waste from US flagged ships on developing countries."
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