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It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situati

It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. If you think this would be unfair to the ships owners this is exactly the point. Force them to fix the situation or lose control of it entirely. Don't leave an actual human in some Kafkaesque nightmare of being jailed on a derelict vessel because you are terrible at running a shipping company. The article says there are hundreds of these cases around the world, and because only regular people are being harmed nobody is trying that hard to fix it. This is unconscionable. Edit: Fixed my faulty memory about the number of ships in this situation.

newsclues 6y ago
If you dig into the class of people who own ships, you’ll realize that the government doesn’t want to offend the wealthy class.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  A lot of shipping issues are complicated because we have no global government and we have a lot of international waters and shipping, by its very nature, tends to involve ships passing from one legal jurisdiction to another repeatedly. It's not about not wanting to offend wealthy people. It's in part a matter of "Who has authority here?" There's a lot I don't understand about it, but this seems like it's probably a fairly modern development and it's high time we created meaningful solutions so this cannot happen again. Glad to see he got free and a reporter was talking to him and he was broadcasting via internet. But that should not be how something like this gets resolved, on some kind of ad hoc basis after so long. And someone here said someone volunteered to take his place, so it's apparently not really resolved, though he got relief.
warmwaffles 6y ago
I don't know how collateral on a mortgage on a ship this size works. But I am pretty sure even if they handed it to him, he couldn't do anything with it because it would have a Lein on it. Your point still remains valid though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 6y ago
  Lein’s don’t normally work that way after a boat was seized. Handing it to the remaining sailor isn’t identical, but don’t assume loans have much weight here. The mess of US civil forfeiture laws originally showed up in maritime law such that the owners and outstanding loans became irrelevant. In effect the physical object is what’s confiscated breaking any ties to anyone that had a prior ownership stake.
- bdowling 6y ago
  > he couldn't do anything with it because it would have a Lein on it. If he had title, then he could sell it. The lienholder, however, would have a claim on the proceeds of the sale.
mgolawala 6y ago
Yeah that is the part I do not understand. Isn't there a law at sea where if you find an abandoned ship, it is basically yours? Perhaps this law doesn't apply in Egyptian national waters? If he is the legal guardian of the ship, why wouldn't he be able to just sell it for profit and move on? Was it just that there would be no buyer for it, even to scrap it? Or could there have been fines/liens on that ship such that no one would want to buy it? If that is the case it seems odd that he couldn't himself abandon the ship to the lien holders.
- jandrese 6y ago
  It's not abandoned. The government assigned this guy as the caretaker of the property.
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    That’s slavery
    - furyg3 6y ago
      They may have been paying him. (it would still be slavery, however, you have a right to quit your job).
      - jandrese 6y ago
        He was unpaid and the Egyptian courts won't let him leave.
- treeman79 6y ago
  Find a 500 year d ship full of gold and everyone owns it. Even the original insurance company.
- bluGill 6y ago
  International salvage law is complex, but essentially no. The ship is stills owned.by someone even when at the bottom of the sea and if you take anything from the ship without permission that is theft. Salvagers work on contract with the owners in most cases. When they don't there are generally big lawsuits because they are entitled for compensation for their work, but if they don't give anything brought up back the the owners they are in possession of stolen property, and the law around this is complex. If the vessel is more than 1000 years old we probably can't trace an onwer anymore and you can get by with calling it abandoned in some cases. Though even here the country who's waters it is in might consider the wreck a treasure. He is the guard, not the owner. As such he can't sell it. The owners are probably in complex bankruptcy court and the lien holders will eventually get to figure out what to do with it, but that will take years to resolve. Indeed the expense of resolving this might be more than the ship is worth so nobody actually wants to resolve it.
Debug_Overload 6y ago
> The article says there are thousands of these cases It said 250, not thousands.
aqme28 6y ago
You're assuming that it's valuable to a scrapping company. Sometimes a grounded ship is more trouble than it's worth.
- wahern 6y ago
  The ship looked quite large. I would imagine scrappers in Turkey or Pakistan would have paid well, considering the price of steel. But you'd need investors to pay for transport and any Egyptian fees. And to secure investors you'd need to resolve property rights, at least tentatively, to the point the ship could be released, likely requiring some experienced maritime lawyer able to work quickly to avoid getting bogged down in litigation. I bet there would be significant profit in it, at least from the perspective of a handful of individuals, and especially if things could be arranged to make the sailor judgment proof--e.g. have his share of any proceeds go to family members--so free loaders (i.e. lazy ship owners, clients, and insurers) couldn't swoop in at the end to claim any proceeds. But it's not just a matter of profit; it's a matter of opportunity costs. All the parties most capable of pulling this off clearly felt there was more profit to be had by walking away and pursuing other opportunities. Surely people on HN understand this phenomenon: there are an infinite number of profitable opportunities out there, but some are better than others, and there's only a finite amount of time and capital.
duxup 6y ago
Yeah I don't understand what value there is here in assigning it to the crew member who apparently can't decline? Even if he could manage the ship, a random crew member is highly unlikely to have resources to care for a ship like that... what value is there in assigning him this responsibility? They just punishing someone for the sake of it?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I suspect it is like assigning child support to fathers even if they were raped or it is not their kid. Somebody needs to do it and the crew members are the simplest people to task it to.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Do what? The ship had no fuel, it went adrift and ran aground...
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    Do what exactly? Keep the ship company so it won't feel lonely? It doesn't seem like there was anything for him to do during those years.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    'assigning ... to fathers even if.. it is not their kid." Say what?
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      If the poster meant “people legally designated as fathers” and was referring to, e.g., the presumption (conclusive in some jurisdictions) of paternity based on marriage at time of birth, its not completely senseless.
- jandrese 6y ago
  I think his job was basically security guard for the property. Also, if the ship were to come unmoored and collide with another vessel they would need someone to blame.
pulse7 6y ago
The problem was that this man >>signed<< a document where he agreed to be "legally bound to this ship"... So be careful before you are signing something...
- munk-a 6y ago
  Alternatively - if you're not in the Eygptian legal system - be careful of trying to make someone sign something they don't comprehend - in the US at best the contract will be invalidated and at worst you might be held responsible for any damages if it was your job to clearly communicate the rights the parties had w.r.t. the contract before signing. That all said - that's a hard battle and one you're probably not going to win unless you a) don't be speak english or b) don't have full control of your mental faculties - "I couldn't be arsed to read the contract" is generally not a defense unless the contract goes out of its way to be intentionally misleading.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  You are putting way to much stock in "signing a document". Anybody can document an injustice, and make it feel "justified" - but that doesn't make it justified. If I were to convince someone to sign a document saying they have to work for me for free, I'm still a slaveholder. Pick which one - morality or legality - there is no way that document should have been held as valid for longer than a few months, nor was there any way that document was morally ok
- smcl 6y ago
  We don't know what the situation was here. It could even be that all the sailors were required to sign some standard-looking documentation (no idea what, agreement to terminate their contract with x% of salary, papers allowing them to enter Egypt) before leaving the ship, but he was given something that was different and bound him to the ship as its guardian. Your advice still stands of course.
Invictus0 6y ago
> It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. This doesn't really solve the problem, it just moves the problem around to the free market. What if no one wanted to buy it for scrap? Would he be responsible for cleaning up the situation himself? The court should have impounded the ship using Egypt's own coast guard and billed the company for the coast guard's time.
TheCondor 6y ago
Suppose he did sell the ship, without proper authority, wouldn’t that be a civil matter between he and the owners? It was basically derelict, right? It seems like a salvage company could come in, pay any fines to Egypt, fuel the ship a d then drive it away and it would be theirs. That further incentives the owners to handle their business.
- jandrese 6y ago
  It would probably be difficult to find a salvage company willing to take on that much legal risk. Maybe the guy could have made some calls down to Somalia and convinced some pirates that a big prize was ripe for the taking if they were willing to take a road trip?

newsclues 6y ago

If you dig into the class of people who own ships, you’ll realize that the government doesn’t want to offend the wealthy class.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
A lot of shipping issues are complicated because we have no global government and we have a lot of international waters and shipping, by its very nature, tends to involve ships passing from one legal jurisdiction to another repeatedly. It's not about not wanting to offend wealthy people. It's in part a matter of "Who has authority here?" There's a lot I don't understand about it, but this seems like it's probably a fairly modern development and it's high time we created meaningful solutions so this cannot happen again. Glad to see he got free and a reporter was talking to him and he was broadcasting via internet. But that should not be how something like this gets resolved, on some kind of ad hoc basis after so long. And someone here said someone volunteered to take his place, so it's apparently not really resolved, though he got relief.

warmwaffles 6y ago

I don't know how collateral on a mortgage on a ship this size works. But I am pretty sure even if they handed it to him, he couldn't do anything with it because it would have a Lein on it. Your point still remains valid though.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Retric 6y ago
Lein’s don’t normally work that way after a boat was seized. Handing it to the remaining sailor isn’t identical, but don’t assume loans have much weight here. The mess of US civil forfeiture laws originally showed up in maritime law such that the owners and outstanding loans became irrelevant. In effect the physical object is what’s confiscated breaking any ties to anyone that had a prior ownership stake.
bdowling 6y ago
> he couldn't do anything with it because it would have a Lein on it. If he had title, then he could sell it. The lienholder, however, would have a claim on the proceeds of the sale.

mgolawala 6y ago

Yeah that is the part I do not understand. Isn't there a law at sea where if you find an abandoned ship, it is basically yours? Perhaps this law doesn't apply in Egyptian national waters? If he is the legal guardian of the ship, why wouldn't he be able to just sell it for profit and move on? Was it just that there would be no buyer for it, even to scrap it? Or could there have been fines/liens on that ship such that no one would want to buy it? If that is the case it seems odd that he couldn't himself abandon the ship to the lien holders.

jandrese 6y ago
It's not abandoned. The government assigned this guy as the caretaker of the property.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  That’s slavery
  - furyg3 6y ago
    They may have been paying him. (it would still be slavery, however, you have a right to quit your job).
    - jandrese 6y ago
      He was unpaid and the Egyptian courts won't let him leave.
treeman79 6y ago
Find a 500 year d ship full of gold and everyone owns it. Even the original insurance company.
bluGill 6y ago
International salvage law is complex, but essentially no. The ship is stills owned.by someone even when at the bottom of the sea and if you take anything from the ship without permission that is theft. Salvagers work on contract with the owners in most cases. When they don't there are generally big lawsuits because they are entitled for compensation for their work, but if they don't give anything brought up back the the owners they are in possession of stolen property, and the law around this is complex. If the vessel is more than 1000 years old we probably can't trace an onwer anymore and you can get by with calling it abandoned in some cases. Though even here the country who's waters it is in might consider the wreck a treasure. He is the guard, not the owner. As such he can't sell it. The owners are probably in complex bankruptcy court and the lien holders will eventually get to figure out what to do with it, but that will take years to resolve. Indeed the expense of resolving this might be more than the ship is worth so nobody actually wants to resolve it.

Debug_Overload 6y ago

> The article says there are thousands of these cases It said 250, not thousands.

aqme28 6y ago

You're assuming that it's valuable to a scrapping company. Sometimes a grounded ship is more trouble than it's worth.

wahern 6y ago
The ship looked quite large. I would imagine scrappers in Turkey or Pakistan would have paid well, considering the price of steel. But you'd need investors to pay for transport and any Egyptian fees. And to secure investors you'd need to resolve property rights, at least tentatively, to the point the ship could be released, likely requiring some experienced maritime lawyer able to work quickly to avoid getting bogged down in litigation. I bet there would be significant profit in it, at least from the perspective of a handful of individuals, and especially if things could be arranged to make the sailor judgment proof--e.g. have his share of any proceeds go to family members--so free loaders (i.e. lazy ship owners, clients, and insurers) couldn't swoop in at the end to claim any proceeds. But it's not just a matter of profit; it's a matter of opportunity costs. All the parties most capable of pulling this off clearly felt there was more profit to be had by walking away and pursuing other opportunities. Surely people on HN understand this phenomenon: there are an infinite number of profitable opportunities out there, but some are better than others, and there's only a finite amount of time and capital.

duxup 6y ago

Yeah I don't understand what value there is here in assigning it to the crew member who apparently can't decline? Even if he could manage the ship, a random crew member is highly unlikely to have resources to care for a ship like that... what value is there in assigning him this responsibility? They just punishing someone for the sake of it?

MattGaiser 6y ago
I suspect it is like assigning child support to fathers even if they were raped or it is not their kid. Somebody needs to do it and the crew members are the simplest people to task it to.
- duxup 6y ago
  Do what? The ship had no fuel, it went adrift and ran aground...
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Do what exactly? Keep the ship company so it won't feel lonely? It doesn't seem like there was anything for him to do during those years.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  'assigning ... to fathers even if.. it is not their kid." Say what?
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    If the poster meant “people legally designated as fathers” and was referring to, e.g., the presumption (conclusive in some jurisdictions) of paternity based on marriage at time of birth, its not completely senseless.
jandrese 6y ago
I think his job was basically security guard for the property. Also, if the ship were to come unmoored and collide with another vessel they would need someone to blame.

pulse7 6y ago

The problem was that this man >>signed<< a document where he agreed to be "legally bound to this ship"... So be careful before you are signing something...

munk-a 6y ago
Alternatively - if you're not in the Eygptian legal system - be careful of trying to make someone sign something they don't comprehend - in the US at best the contract will be invalidated and at worst you might be held responsible for any damages if it was your job to clearly communicate the rights the parties had w.r.t. the contract before signing. That all said - that's a hard battle and one you're probably not going to win unless you a) don't be speak english or b) don't have full control of your mental faculties - "I couldn't be arsed to read the contract" is generally not a defense unless the contract goes out of its way to be intentionally misleading.
kennywinker 6y ago
You are putting way to much stock in "signing a document". Anybody can document an injustice, and make it feel "justified" - but that doesn't make it justified. If I were to convince someone to sign a document saying they have to work for me for free, I'm still a slaveholder. Pick which one - morality or legality - there is no way that document should have been held as valid for longer than a few months, nor was there any way that document was morally ok
smcl 6y ago
We don't know what the situation was here. It could even be that all the sailors were required to sign some standard-looking documentation (no idea what, agreement to terminate their contract with x% of salary, papers allowing them to enter Egypt) before leaving the ship, but he was given something that was different and bound him to the ship as its guardian. Your advice still stands of course.

Invictus0 6y ago

> It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. This doesn't really solve the problem, it just moves the problem around to the free market. What if no one wanted to buy it for scrap? Would he be responsible for cleaning up the situation himself? The court should have impounded the ship using Egypt's own coast guard and billed the company for the coast guard's time.

TheCondor 6y ago

Suppose he did sell the ship, without proper authority, wouldn’t that be a civil matter between he and the owners? It was basically derelict, right? It seems like a salvage company could come in, pay any fines to Egypt, fuel the ship a d then drive it away and it would be theirs. That further incentives the owners to handle their business.

jandrese 6y ago
It would probably be difficult to find a salvage company willing to take on that much legal risk. Maybe the guy could have made some calls down to Somalia and convinced some pirates that a big prize was ripe for the taking if they were willing to take a road trip?