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My wife and I visited the shipbreaking yards near Chittagong on our honeymoon. It was remarkable. I make field recordings; I was able to do a fair amount of fie

My wife and I visited the shipbreaking yards near Chittagong on our honeymoon. It was remarkable. I make field recordings; I was able to do a fair amount of field recording before a nervous foreman invited us to tea, gave us a calendar from the shipbreakers' association, and politely escorted us off the property. Apparently there had been journalists by in months prior doing some investigative journalism into issues of various kinds and while it was pretty clear we were not that, it wasn't worth his job to be wrong. Could not argue. Before we got booted some more junior and affable guys invited us to come through the former hold of a half-dismantled oil tanker and then up on to the fragment of deck remaining and the control tower. Amazing to be where thousands of tons of oil had been in living memory. The specialization of labor and application of manual force to an industrial process on that scale was mesmerizing, but as you can tell from the photographs, was unsafe in innumerable ways. Always wanted to visit the ones in Gujarat as well.

fuzzfactor 2y ago
>Amazing to be where thousands of tons of oil had been in living memory. On chemical tankers each cargo compartment is "thoroughly" cleaned before accepting its next parcel, and after cleaning somebody goes down the hatch into the dark hold with their explosion-proof flashlight all the way to the bottom to walk around and check it out. Living memory in this case can be hours to days. Year 'round, port after port on a 24/7 basis. And it can be a couple dozen tanks per ship. When you go all around the inside, plus see the condition of the piping, deck, offices, mess, and things like that it all adds up to a fine line between vessels ready for the scrap heap versus ones you know are going to have many voyages ahead of them. For these depreciating assets after they are fully depreciated.
10ku1n 2y ago
As soon as I saw the name "Aaron" and "I make field recordings" I knew I'd stumbled upon a "Quiet American" in the wild. How funny. I still listen to "maritime suite", "annapurna" and "rockets of the mekong" occasionally. Did you ever end up receiving that photo print of the goose I sent you back in 2009?

fuzzfactor 2y ago

>Amazing to be where thousands of tons of oil had been in living memory. On chemical tankers each cargo compartment is "thoroughly" cleaned before accepting its next parcel, and after cleaning somebody goes down the hatch into the dark hold with their explosion-proof flashlight all the way to the bottom to walk around and check it out. Living memory in this case can be hours to days. Year 'round, port after port on a 24/7 basis. And it can be a couple dozen tanks per ship. When you go all around the inside, plus see the condition of the piping, deck, offices, mess, and things like that it all adds up to a fine line between vessels ready for the scrap heap versus ones you know are going to have many voyages ahead of them. For these depreciating assets after they are fully depreciated.

10ku1n 2y ago

As soon as I saw the name "Aaron" and "I make field recordings" I knew I'd stumbled upon a "Quiet American" in the wild. How funny. I still listen to "maritime suite", "annapurna" and "rockets of the mekong" occasionally. Did you ever end up receiving that photo print of the goose I sent you back in 2009?