8 ms·

Stuck at sea for years, a sailor's plight highlights a surge in ship abandonment

191 points by achristmascarl 2y ago

_yb2s 2y ago
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.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  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
  - hedora 2y ago
    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.
    - michaelt 2y ago
      I believe that would make you a "pirate" and the crew "mutineers"
      - wiml 2y ago
        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?)
        lazide 2y ago
        The power imbalance here is significant. 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.
    - sidewndr46 2y ago
      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.
      - gopher_space 2y ago
        You mentioned liens in an earlier comment, and I've been wondering what it would take to apply a worker's or mechanic's lien to general wage theft.
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        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.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      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.
- jdietrich 2y ago
  As mentioned in the article, many older ships are literally worthless - the cost of cutting them up for scrap matches the value of the scrap metal.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    It seems insane that cutting up a ship costs more than mining and refining the steel in the first place.
pavlov 2y ago
Inhuman things happen at sea. 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. Another example: https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-fishing-fleets-in-indian-ocean-accused-of-abuses/a-68977775 https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-fishing-fleets-in-indian-ocean...
- complaintdept 2y ago
  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. (no I've never been on a cruise)
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    Interesting how it works so much differently for international aviation
    - jachee 2y ago
      Hard to abandon a plane in international airspace.
      - Suzuran 2y ago
        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.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
I believe the crew of the MV Dali are still confined to the ship, since striking the bridge in Baltimore back in March.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  The crew’s status as of last week… https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/us/baltimore-bridge-dali-ship-crew/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/us/baltimore-bridge-dali-ship... Not as bad a situation as the main topic, but can’t be easy either.
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    Does that mean they get paid overtime? /s
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  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.
  - masfuerte 2y ago
    In other cases I've read about the sailors are owed substantial back wages and they know that if they abandon the ship they definitely won't get paid.
    - CryptoBanker 2y ago
      The article makes it seem like they never get paid regardless
  - notaustinpowers 2y ago
    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.
somenameforme 2y ago
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?
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  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.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    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.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    They don't pay them. If you want an example look up the ship involved in the Beiruit explosion.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  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.
- vkou 2y ago
  They'll be tried as mutineers and pirates. Marine law is optimized for the well-being of ship owners, not anyone else.
- david_allison 2y ago
  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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mikey_p 2y ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet
- waskip 2y ago
  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.
diebeforei485 2y ago
If a ship doesn't have insurance it should not be allowed to dock. It's not that complicated. When driving into Saudi Arabia in your own car, you are required to show proof of insurance (or can purchase travel insurance at the border).
- Simon_ORourke 2y ago
  That will only lead to areas close enough to land, but within international waters where these uninsured junks will just anchor and wait it out. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/12/abandoned-at-sea-the-crews-cast-adrift-without-food-fuel-or-pay https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/12/a...
  - diebeforei485 2y ago
    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.
    - ghiculescu 2y ago
      Why is that better?
      - diebeforei485 2y ago
        It's better for the workers who can find a different job as soon as the paychecks stop coming, instead of being strung along indefinitely. It's not too hard to get a small boat to rescue them and be shepherded to the airport. The Saudis aren't doing it because they are owed port fees. Negligent boat owners should lose their property just like negligent land (real property) owners do.
      - Simon_ORourke 2y ago
        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.
DrNosferatu 2y ago
What does he eat? Who provides him fresh water?
maCDzP 2y ago
I believe there is a 99% invisible podcast episode about “Great bitter lake”. It’s worth a listen.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
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 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
- tialaramex 2y ago
  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. Anyway, PSC doesn't solve these sailors problems.
ec109685 2y ago
Saudi Arabia should tax port fees a bit and use that to send people like this back to their home country. Inhumane.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Saudi Arabia's leadership chopped up a reporter into pieces of meat. I don't think they'll be first to make such a change until compelled to.
pk-protect-ai 2y ago
I can't understand ... Why can't these guys cut the losses and leave the ship, instead of leaving their families without income for years?
kazinator 2y ago
> 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.
- superb_dev 2y ago
  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?

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.

sidewndr46 2y ago
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
- hedora 2y ago
  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.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    I believe that would make you a "pirate" and the crew "mutineers"
    - wiml 2y ago
      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?)
      - lazide 2y ago
        The power imbalance here is significant. 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.
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    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.
    - gopher_space 2y ago
      You mentioned liens in an earlier comment, and I've been wondering what it would take to apply a worker's or mechanic's lien to general wage theft.
      - sidewndr46 2y ago
        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.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    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.
jdietrich 2y ago
As mentioned in the article, many older ships are literally worthless - the cost of cutting them up for scrap matches the value of the scrap metal.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  It seems insane that cutting up a ship costs more than mining and refining the steel in the first place.

pavlov 2y ago

Inhuman things happen at sea. 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. Another example: https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-fishing-fleets-in-indian-ocean-accused-of-abuses/a-68977775 https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-fishing-fleets-in-indian-ocean...

complaintdept 2y ago
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. (no I've never been on a cruise)
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  Interesting how it works so much differently for international aviation
  - jachee 2y ago
    Hard to abandon a plane in international airspace.
    - Suzuran 2y ago
      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.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

I believe the crew of the MV Dali are still confined to the ship, since striking the bridge in Baltimore back in March.

alistairSH 2y ago
The crew’s status as of last week… https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/us/baltimore-bridge-dali-ship-crew/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/18/us/baltimore-bridge-dali-ship... Not as bad a situation as the main topic, but can’t be easy either.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Does that mean they get paid overtime? /s
IncreasePosts 2y ago
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.
- masfuerte 2y ago
  In other cases I've read about the sailors are owed substantial back wages and they know that if they abandon the ship they definitely won't get paid.
  - CryptoBanker 2y ago
    The article makes it seem like they never get paid regardless
- notaustinpowers 2y ago
  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.

somenameforme 2y ago

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?

giraffe_lady 2y ago
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.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  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.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  They don't pay them. If you want an example look up the ship involved in the Beiruit explosion.
throwaway48476 2y ago
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.
vkou 2y ago
They'll be tried as mutineers and pirates. Marine law is optimized for the well-being of ship owners, not anyone else.
david_allison 2y ago
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.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mikey_p 2y ago

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet

waskip 2y ago
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.

diebeforei485 2y ago

If a ship doesn't have insurance it should not be allowed to dock. It's not that complicated. When driving into Saudi Arabia in your own car, you are required to show proof of insurance (or can purchase travel insurance at the border).

Simon_ORourke 2y ago
That will only lead to areas close enough to land, but within international waters where these uninsured junks will just anchor and wait it out. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/12/abandoned-at-sea-the-crews-cast-adrift-without-food-fuel-or-pay https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/12/a...
- diebeforei485 2y ago
  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.
  - ghiculescu 2y ago
    Why is that better?
    - diebeforei485 2y ago
      It's better for the workers who can find a different job as soon as the paychecks stop coming, instead of being strung along indefinitely. It's not too hard to get a small boat to rescue them and be shepherded to the airport. The Saudis aren't doing it because they are owed port fees. Negligent boat owners should lose their property just like negligent land (real property) owners do.
    - Simon_ORourke 2y ago
      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.

DrNosferatu 2y ago

What does he eat? Who provides him fresh water?

maCDzP 2y ago

I believe there is a 99% invisible podcast episode about “Great bitter lake”. It’s worth a listen.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

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 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

tialaramex 2y ago
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. Anyway, PSC doesn't solve these sailors problems.

ec109685 2y ago

Saudi Arabia should tax port fees a bit and use that to send people like this back to their home country. Inhumane.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Saudi Arabia's leadership chopped up a reporter into pieces of meat. I don't think they'll be first to make such a change until compelled to.

pk-protect-ai 2y ago

I can't understand ... Why can't these guys cut the losses and leave the ship, instead of leaving their families without income for years?

kazinator 2y ago

> 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.

superb_dev 2y ago
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?