This seems like a natural progression of allowing ships to be flagged in countries that barely even have foreign affairs outside of ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience). That seems like a good place to start - ports would benefit from only allowing docking if your ship is flagged in a country with some definition of seaworthiness
Most of the world these days has Port State Control. Starting with Europe, (the Paris MOU signed in the 1980s) and then Tokyo and most of South America. Under Port State Control the Port States (ie the countries with ports in them) enforce IMO rules for ships in their port as well as Flag States (the country whose flag is flown by the ship and whose national register they are on)
However it makes no sense to refuse entry. Instead states operating PSC will choose to inspect some fraction of the ships and detain them (which they are allowed to do under international law, though since the signatories of early MOUs are countries with serious navies it arguably doesn't matter whether it's legal anyway) if they are unsatisfactory.
The Paris MOU is particularly notable for its black, grey and white lists, which aren't bans of the sort you seem to envision but instead control inspection rates. Since inspection means time not loading/unloading/ sailing elsewhere, which means lost income, a ship wants fewer inspections, but of course if uninspected a ship with unacceptable defects might go for a long period without being detained. The fix is that the Paris MOU counts up how often ships flying particular flags were inspected and what the outcome was over a period of IIRC one year, if flag A has enough (fractionally) good inspections, they're whitelisted and next period ships flying that flag are least likely to be inspected - some still are, but fewer. on the other hand if flag X has too many (fractionally) bad inspections, they're blacklisted and ships flying that flag are much more likely to be inspected next period - though not certain.
Now, as originally conceived before the meeting to sign it, the Paris MOU was, like a lot of French things, mostly about workers rights. But, coincidentally a massive maritime accident occurred and so suddenly instead of "Boring technical conference agrees uninteresting European rules" which is maybe one column inch on page 14 of your paper, now you've got a journalist on a plane to the conference to ask government officials what they're going to do about to prevent accidents like the one on TV, which is good for at least a paragraph on the front page. So the actual Paris MOU signed is very enthusiastic about mechanical problems with the actual ship even though there's still stuff in there about the rights of the sailors.
Not an abandonment, but somewhat similar to the Dali, there were 15 ships stranded in the Suez canal from 1967 to 1975. Known as the Yellow Fleet they had problems knowing what to do with the crew over that length of time.
In October 1967, the officers and crews of all fourteen ships met on the Melampus to found the "Great Bitter Lake Association" which provided mutual support. Crew members continued to regularly meet on board their ships, organized social events, founded a yachting club and held the "Bitter Lake Olympic Games" to complement the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Life boat races were arranged and soccer games were played on the largest ship, the MS Port Invercargill, while church services were held on the West German motorship Nordwind and movies were shown on the Bulgarian freighter Vasil Levsky. The Swedish Killara had a pool.
> If a ship doesn't have insurance it should not be allowed to dock.
That's already the case in the vast majority of ports to pay for situations like the Baltimore bridge collapse, although most damage is a lot smaller and more pedestrian like scraping the dock on approach.
Ports generally require protection and indemnity insurance to pay for damage to third parties and the port, hull and machinery insurance so the boat doesn't get stranded in the port, and wreck removal insurance to remove it if it does. Anyone going through the Panama or Suez canal has to have even more insurance to cover the extra risk of blocking a major global shipping channel.
But would you even start a journey towards a port that requires insurance if you don't have it? You're not going to get the benefit of docking at that port (unloading the ship and getting paid for the cargo).
This is still arguably better. These crew aren't going to be paid by these irresponsible owners anyway. Let them abandon ship in international waters after a couple of missed paychecks.
The only way that would be better would be from the port authority's perspective. I'm sure the guys stuck on a ship 100 miles off any shore would not find it too pleasant.
Crew rescue isn't too difficult to arrange. The coast guard can do this, and auction off the ship to recoup the costs. But at least the crew aren't wasting their time.
I'm not entirely understanding this. If the ships are genuinely abandoned, what stops the crew from making them their own and/or selling them? Is it simply the paperwork or what?
Often the crew don't have visas for the country where the ship was abandoned. So they can't transit from the port to the nearest airport and then home unless Customs/Immigration agree to allow it.
They also usually haven't been paid for that time. So they are motivated to stay (usually under deplorable conditions) because of the chance that the new owners will give them their back pay.
Sometimes the local community will ferry food out to the crews. But if the ship runs out of fuel to power the generators they'll be without air conditioning and more importantly - navigation lights to show they're anchored.
This seems like the failure: abuse of shipping/visa exemptions.
At minimum, it would be fair to mandate that port countries provide visas for the sole purposes of mariners transiting back home, at the mariners' discretion.
You're not going to keep someone from staying on a boat if they think they're going to get paid... but you can at least resolve the international red tape that prohibits them from choosing to leave the boat.
They did not generate the problem, get no profit from resolving the problem, and actually end up footing the bill for the problem from some random irresponsible owner.
The only reason they don’t just sink them is because of the PR backlash - and that would end up costing them even more in weapons and cleanup.
It’s more like someone abandoning random RVs in your town - full of orphans. Just, ugh. What a nightmare for everyone.
At the point the ship has been allowed to dock, due diligence on the owner/papers should have already been performed. If that process fails, it should be improved at that stage.
It seems inhumane from an ethical perspective to essentially maroon a person on an abandoned ship, simply because it's slightly more convenient.
Who is doing the marooning though - the owners, or the various authorities randomly nearby when the owner abandons them?
The authorities doing anything besides arresting the owners is just enabling more owners doing the same thing and dumping the mess on their doorstep. Bad policy.
The owners obviously. The local authorities through inaction.
My point is there's functionally no difference (and arguably, one which benefits the owners) by stranding crew on abandoned ships. Either way you're left with an abandoned ship.
What does my moral system have to do with it? Or yours?
Are you a taxpayer in any of the jurisdictions involved? Do you own any of these boats?
Are you going to fly over there and solve this problem yourself individually?
Near as I can tell, you’re just moralizing about how other people should solve the problems created by the ship owners without doing anything to actually solve the problem, and with no skin in the game.
Same as me, of course. But I’m trying to explain the reasoning of the folks with skin in the game.
It’s easy to be high and mighty when it isn’t your actual problem, and you don’t have to pay for it.
That's one thing if you're, say, Saudi Arabia and don't particularly care about human rights.
Different matter in countries that generally try to be more decent to people...
... but in this case (per your reasoning) are looking the other way past human suffering to make sure that shipowners don't have more incentive to dump boats.
I'm saying "That's a shitty moral justification for causing human suffering."
Are you saying you think it's a good one, per your personal opinion? Or that you don't, but it doesn't matter because you're not a minister of transportation?
When you factor in liabilities the value of the ship can be negative. Often there are port fees that the shipper doesn't pay and because they're in a different country they're unserviceable so the port takes the crew hostage.
FTA: Even if they did sell the ship, it often won't make the workers whole
> Abandoned ships are sometimes so old and worn that “even the scrap guys lose money stripping it of anything of value,” said Eric White, a ship inspector for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, or ITF, a seafarers’ union.
> Left hanging by Teeters were the ships’ crews of mostly Ukrainian seafarers, who suddenly had no way of sending money to families back home in what was now a war zone after Russia’s invasion. In total, the 22 men were owed $130,000 covering more than three months, White said. If not for $22,000 in donations from local seafarers’ charities, none of them would have made it off the ship and back home, according to White.
At the time of abandonment, the ship may not be seaworthy. If it requires more repairs or fuel than the crew can afford from their own resources, then they cannot move the ship.
They're still paying the necessary fees to keep control of the ship, because otherwise local authorities or a creditor or whatever would seize it. They simply stopped paying the crew because the consequences of that are avoidable or acceptable to them.
To put it more bluntly, they're afraid of their creditors, because their creditors can get justice, because the justice system requires money to effectively use. The workers don't have money, so they aren't a threat.
Sailors and fishermen are recruited internationally from poor countries, then treated like slaves. No country's law reaches these ships, and they're ultimately owned by corporations that have no reason to care.
A lot of shenanigans happen at sea. Cruise ships are registered in countries favorable to them so passengers have zero chance in court when someone gets hurt or a family member disappears (its happened). If you're an American for instance, you'll never take on a cruise ship owner in an American court, it's got to go through some tiny nation of the ship's home port. Passengers agree to this when they buy the ticket.
Aircraft do sometimes get abandoned at remote airfields when the owner goes bankrupt. There are people whose job is to go retrieve them for creditors, when possible. They get ferry permits and waivers to operate the aircraft without its proper documentation and authorizations, and since the equipment history can't be relied on they are basically test pilots for the duration of the return trip.
I once talked to a guy who did this in the 80s and 90s; His first repo trip was to pick up a 727 that had been abandoned by a defunct American cargo operator at some airfield in the Middle East. Being the desert, the creditors felt it had a good chance of being serviceable due to the dry environment. He shows up with a repo crew, they inspect the airplane, test what they can, and it's in ragged shape but seems airworthy by all the testing they can do on the ground. There is a snag though - Someone had taken all of the log books and documents, which renders the airplane basically radioactive when it lands back stateside.
The cost of recertifying everything will exceed the value of even a new aircraft, and a lot of the electronics and other technical components can't be resold for aviation use without their repair logs. Unless by some miracle the missing documents can be retrieved from the bankrupt former owners, it renders the whole thing just bulk metal scrap. Not what the creditor wants.
So he asks around the airfield (as best as he can through the language barrier) for anyone who knows the history of the airplane or its former crew and where the documentation might be found. Eventually he finds someone who indicates enthusiastically that he has just what they need. The pilot goes about other things, flight planning, getting fuel, filing the ferry paperwork, then arrives back at the airplane to see where they stand. Indeed, their friend on the ground had found some of the aircraft's documentation, and had arranged what he found in the manner the local crews were accustomed to; In the pocket where the FAA airworthiness documentation was supposed to be, he had helpfully provided a Quran. They ended up with just enough of the documents though, and in a three leg trip that included almost being arrested in West Germany due to a paperwork error, they safely returned home.
I hear so many negative things about Chinese fishing fleets. When I was in Africa, I was shown how the chinese ships would be stuck in drydock because they needed repairs or fuel and no locals would sell to them.
But the government is cozy so they are allowed to continue. In some cities, the land is literally sold to the Chinese government in exchange for funds to pad the coffers, or nominal "services" like removing piles of dirt on the land from mining activities.
It's mad neo-colonialism. Instead of armies, you just buy leaders.
> For the next 20 hours, on a typical day, the bleary-eyed crew would be hauling up fishing nets. If sharks got entangled they would hack off their fins, tossing the mutilated creatures back into the water to die. When dolphins were ensnared, the captain shot them, cut out their teeth and bartered them with passing ships in return for whisky.
> Illegal fishing is also harming local fishermen. Chinese vessels routinely fish in waters close to the shoreline reserved by law for small-scale local fishers. According to the EJF, Chinese trawlers in Mozambique often line their nets with a fine mesh, allowing them to catch smaller fish usually targeted only by locals. They have also been known to intimidate the local fishermen, ripping their nets and hounding them out of their usual fishing grounds. The volume of fish caught by small-scale fishers in Mozambique has slumped by 30% over the past 25 years.
But a lot of popular flags are lax at employment rules—kind of why they're often picked. But you also have to have the resources for law suits, regardless of flag/registration.
There is an amazing book describing all of these issues and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlaw_Ocean. It was an eye opener for me, I had no idea what kind of awful stuff goes on in the maritime space
Funny - I thought that must be a misspelling of the book by William Langewiesche, "The Outlaw Sea", which I have read and is quite good. I'll have to check out the other one.
This is crazy. I’d think as soon as they stopped paying him he does not work for them, and they’ve abandoned the ship unmanned. He could claim the ship as salvage, sell it, and sue them for his back pay for anytime he did work.
A ship has to be found unmanned in most cases to claim salvage. If it is a hazard in navigable waters and you get permission from the local Coast Guard (or whatever authority) you can put a lien on a ship that you safely remove from those waters to restore normal traffic.
And yes, he can sue his employer. That is likely as effective as trying to get blood from a turnip
If I wanted one of these ships, what would maritime law say if I were to dispose of a few thousand gallons of diesel into its tank, and the crew decided to move it into international waters then abandon it?
Presumably, it’d be up to the employer to recover damages from their former (aka my current) employees.
it is complicated, but if it as a berth and paying fees to be stored there you likely are in the wrong. But if the owner stops paying berthing fees, the berth owner has a case against the ship owner. At this point it becomes legal to remove the boat by cooperating with the berth owner. A court is unlikely to grant you ownership of the ship outright however.
Facts like these are what are missing from these stories. They always say something like "the company was going bankrupt" or whatever. Somehow they paid for fuel, berthing fees, port entry fees, docking fees and a host of other stuff you need to do international shipping. They quit paying the crew because they can get away with it.
it would be dependent on the country the ship is registered in firstly. Secondly it is based on the country the owning company is in. Basically as an employee you can go either the maritime court route or whatever civil court system the country has.
Most ships are registered in Liberia, so good luck making and collecting a claim based off their law.
I don't know much about the particulars of maritime law but it's a venerable domain with a massive body of precedent and historically a very high level of routine perfidy to base case law around. I don't imagine this would be the clever loophole you're hoping it is.
I don't think that follows. The crew would be acting in accordance with the ship's master (remember, everyone on board is abandoning ship in an orderly manner). Someone would surely be liable to the ship's owner but that sounds more like a random tort / breach of contract than a mutiny. In a military they might be AWOL or deserters or something, but they're not in a military.
I think you're right about piracy though. Hedora could salvage the now-abandoned ship but I don't think that transfers ownership - it produces something vaguely like a lien. (Presumably space law in _The Expanse_ is different, or maybe the Roci was technically a prize?)
To use the ‘expanse’ example - how long (and what did it take) before the Martians were interested in doing anything but trying to capture or destroy the Rocinante on sight?
Good luck doing any of that as a random Ukrainian or Thai sailor stuck at sea.
I don't understand why you can't just get the police to put them in a van and take them to the airport, and put them on a flight back to their home country or wherever they live.
It's most likely due to visa and immigration laws.
When a vessel is docked in a port, they are able to disembark and operate under a special visa that lasts the duration of their vessel's stay, and they are required to leave with the vessel when it disembarks from the port. Since the vessel has left the port, their visas are no longer applicable and they would be arrested if they left the vessel.
I think op is asking why we can't just wave our hands here, legally. Obviously they don't have a valid visa, but these are extenuating circumstances. Just take them to an airport and send them home. If they're chaperoned the whole time, who really cares if they have a valid visa while traveling to the airport?
Because even deportation has legal hoops you have to jump through. If they get deported, even willingly, what happens when they come back to American on another vessel?
Their special visas to disembark while at port would most likely not be approved if they have a big "deported" note on it.
On top of that, a lot of these workers are kept in exploitative working conditions and are owed thousands of dollars in backpay. Leaving the vessel to be willingly deported effectively negates any chance of actually being paid and can kill your career right then and there. I highly doubt that's a risk any of them are willing to take.
I don't understand why you can't just get the police to put them in a van and take them to the airport, and put them on a flight back to their home country or wherever they live.
I'm not sure I want to give local police the power to put whoever they want on a plane to "wherever".
> I'm not sure I want to give local police the power to put whoever they want on a plane to "wherever".
I presumed that the proposal is a shorthand for "why the police can't offer to escort them to the airport and let them board an airplane to a destination of their own choosing". As in the police would be there to make sure they don't "abscond" in the country without a valid visa, but the seafarers can get back to their family. (if they so choose)
> and let them board an airplane to a destination of their own choosing". As in the police would be there to make sure they don't "abscond"
Maybe being overly pedantic, but "destination of their own choosing" won't work. Airlines will refuse to board, because they're generally responsible for the costs of flying that person back if they're refused entry at the destination (if their due diligence wasn't done re passport/visa, rather than an immigration official's decision).
I was talking from the perspective of the interaction between the stranded mariners and the police. I emphasised the "destination of their own choosing" because it appeared that the comment I was responding to had a misunderstanding. They thought the proposal is that the police kidnaps the mariners and sends them to wherever the police wants to. I was clarifying that it would happen in consultation with them, and the mariners would select the destination.
That does not mean that there would be no other constrains on them flying. Presumably they would choose their home country as their destination. Or some other country where they have a right to be.
But if you choose to be pedantic why did you only mention the "visa requirement" constrain? Why not list all the others. To just name a few: Their destination has to be a real place. They cannot fly to Narnia, or Middle Earth, or La-La Land. Their destination has to have a continuous atmosphere from their departure airport. Otherwise the airplane can't fly. So for example they cannot choose the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon. It has to have an airport. So Monaco is out right away. It has to be existing on the day they depart. So they cannot fly to Pangea, nor to the USSR. Because they don't exist anymore. It also has to be a place where there are scheduled flights to. So they cannot choose McMurdo Station either. And yeah, visa requirements too.
Who will keep the bilge pumps of the ship running? They are not just flees on the back of a dog. They are keeping the ship working, afloat and in good condition. (as good as it can be, given the circumstances)
I understand that the situation is less than ideal, and i hope they get a crew change at the end of whatever contract period they have. And I sure hope their wages are being paid correctly. The mobile phone situation is really bad too. I hope that got rectified since.
Imagine if they haven't hit the bridge. They would be most probably still on the same ship doing the same job. Just the ship would be in some other patch of water. Would you still describe them as "stuck onboard" if that were the case?
That's true: the entire crew is indefinitely detained due to the criminal investigation. They're confined to the ship, and US agents have confiscated all of their personal electronics.
- "The crew, made up of 20 Indians and a Sri Lankan national, has been unable to disembark because of visa restrictions, a lack of required shore passes and parallel ongoing investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FBI."
..
- "According to Mr Messick, the crew has been left largely without communication with the outside world for "a couple of weeks" after their mobile phones were confiscated by the FBI as part of the investigation."
- "They can't do any online banking. They can't pay their bills at home. They don't have any of their data or anyone's contact information, so they're really isolated right now," Mr Messick said. "They just can't reach out to the folks they need to, or even look at pictures of their children before they go to sleep. It's really a sad situation."
If they're both lucky and fortunate and if the weather is nice and assuming there's not more than 500 people to 3 phones. Source: dealing with it right now.
Do you really think a bunch of Indian sailors are going to have an easier time landing in some random location in Baltimore of all places? While on the run from the authorities?
> Crew members or the countries where the ships are registered or docked can pursue the shipowners in court. But recovering past wages can be a yearslong battle that often fails.
And if you just stay on the ship long enough, a court will appear right on the deck?
Sorry, man, this is a self-inflicted problem. Not being paid for 10 years starts with not being paid for a month, and then three and so on. At some point, it's just your choice.
Even if the money were to materialize, there is no way the guy is getting paid for the time spent on the ship after it was abandoned.
That's like continuing to show up to work to an abandoned office building after the company has folded, expecting to get paid for all that time one day.
I think that guy is just running away from something. While he stays on the ship, he has an ongoing excuse for all his inaction (in his mind) and doesn't have to face anything. Obviously, he's clothed and fed somehow, probably from doing odd jobs at the docks? And that lifestyle tied to the ship suits him fine.
I agree, that's a long time to stay on the boat. It's almost like they were forced to be there somehow, like maybe they don't have a visa and can't leave the port?
