5 ms·

so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies u

so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them? in my head this seems like a problem that could be solved by getting on the radio to a nearby port and saying "hey, we've got a tanker carrying $50m worth of crude oil, you can have it if you let us dock", but obviously it can't be that simple if that's not happening. why not?

JohnMakin 8mo ago
When you are flying a foreign flag docked in a port you are complex legal situation - in international law, you follow the laws of the flag country, in addition to being under local jurisdiction (most of the time). And if you’re flying a flag for a boat that’s not registered under that flag, which as this article explains is easily verifiable, who is going to buy the oil, and how? not to mention any possible international sanctions on the oil, customs, the crew getting paid and wanting to return home, wherever that may be, and you get situations that can last for a long time. For this case a boat to boat transfer may be the only real way.
- curiousObject 8mo ago
  Your comment hints at another problem, which is that allowing the cargo into a port possibly could be exploited as a loophole to break sanctions. Yet another big problem is that cargo might be too low in value, or even undesirable. Like the cargo of Ammonium Nitrate that exploded in Beirut a few years ago (it had been taken off the docked ship which then sank in the port. The cargo was stored in the port, then stuck in legal and payment disputes, and the result was horrific).
- segmondy 8mo ago
  let the crew paint a new flag for the country they want to dock at.
  - conception 8mo ago
    Pirates aren’t normally treated… well.
    - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
      The US Navy seems to do quite well.
      - doikor 8mo ago
        Under international law piracy has the for “private ends” clause when defining piracy meaning nation states can’t really do piracy but instead commerce raiding which is a form of warfere.
        SanjayMehta 8mo ago
        Whatever verbiage you use doesn't change the fact that Trump is just another war criminal in a long line of war criminals, starting with Truman.
    - Ms-J 8mo ago
      With a small bribe they will be allowed in. No one is caring about the silly flag.
      - JohnMakin 8mo ago
        these are usually very poor crew trying to escape desperate circumstances. they arent in a bargaining position and are easy prey to pirates depending on the part of the world they are in. Since they’re ghost ships, anyone could basically take what they pleased without anyone knowing, not to mention whatever country is willing to take an unregistered ship to offload oil in amounts that someone annoying could notice. it’s a bad situation for everyone but the seller that convinced the ship it could turn it around.
      - bradgranath 8mo ago
        This is literally everything wrong with the tech industry in a single comment.
jgeada 8mo ago
This seems like one of those problems that arise when we let rich people and corporations arbitrage for the lowest possible legal consequences, in this case flags of convenience that have no standards. There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck. The profits are private, but costs and consequences always laid onto the public. Miserable way to run things.
- notatoad 8mo ago
  >There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck. this is basically what i'm suggesting as the solution here, rather than the problem. if you're in command of a tanker carrying $50m worth of oil, and the company that technically owns it owes you and your crew $175k and doesn't want to pay, surely you're never too far from a country who would be happy to take that boat off your hands and cover the lost wages. how are these boats just waiting around in the ocean for a solution, when there's so much wealth on board?
  - hattmall 8mo ago
    I don't think it's as easy to offload oil as you're assuming. Most of the sketchy countries don't have refineries or storage capacity and they risk some fallout from the sanctions if they do anything with the oil. Like maybe if you could get the boat to North Korea they might pay you $0.01 on the dollar or something.
  - jgeada 8mo ago
    I think their problem is that very few countries have refinery capacity to deal with crude oil, which is what these ships contain. So the crew have limited choices. It is a "someone else's problem", to quote the Hitchhiker's Guide.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - nradov 8mo ago
mschuster91 8mo ago
> so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them? Yes, basically. The situation is really really nasty, every year thousands of sailors are stuck aboard abandoned ships [1][2]. Sometimes, crews get stuck for years [3] - and the situation is made worse by the fact that leaving ship means forfeiting payment. [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/fleet-of-abandoned-ships-is-growing-leaving-sailors-stuck-at-sea/7959843.html https://www.voanews.com/a/fleet-of-abandoned-ships-is-growin... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r4nr2zy2do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r4nr2zy2do [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506
- thrance 8mo ago
  Thanks, that was very interesting. Another reminder of how fucked up our world is.
  - Sabinus 8mo ago
    That's how fucked up our world is outside the jurisdiction of a well functioning government and an engaged and educated populace. It's only as nice as we decide to make it.
    - mschuster91 8mo ago
      the thing is, technically "convenience flags" are outside our jurisdiction... but the companies owning the ships? the companies chartering the ships? these are in Western jurisdictions. We could hold them accountable, but we don't, because freight companies are insanely well connected in politics and too many too rich people profit too much from this kind of exploitation.
- PearlRiver 8mo ago
  I remember with COVID a lot of sailors got stuck and nobody felt responsibility to do anything for them.
3eb7988a1663 8mo ago
Is there such a thing as mid-ocean fuel transfer? I can imagine some intrepid individuals strike up a bargain to siphon the fuel off of the abandoned ship onto one with the appropriate paperwork.
- closewith 8mo ago
  Yes, although it's expensive so eats up a lot of margin. It's one aof the common ways sanctioned oil is whitewashed.
shmerl 8mo ago
Probably fear. Putin's nazi mafia could dispose of the crew or target their families if they do that.
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago
  Or Trump's pirate navy could call them drug dealers and blow them out of the water.
  - shmerl 8mo ago
    They work for Putin's war, so they they should be treated as hostile navy anyway. They'd be lucky if they'll end up arrested and not blown up. Ukraine does blow them up already when opportunity presents itself.
    - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
      The world is lucky that President Putin is a rational actor. Trump and his neocon masters on the other hand seem to be itching to start WW-3. As for The Ukraine - there's no such thing as "Ukraine" - if they are lucky they will be left with a rump state, hopefully landlocked.
      - peppersghost93 8mo ago
        If Putin was a rational actor he probably wouldn't be putting up WWI casualty numbers to capture podunk towns in east Ukraine that few people care about
        SanjayMehta 8mo ago
        Take a look at the body exchange ratios. For every KIA body The Ukraine returns to Russia, they get back 20 to 30. Of course, you don't know this because the West has censored real news.
      - shmerl 8mo ago
pjc50 8mo ago
They have control of the ship, but the ship doesn't own the cargo! It's not legally theirs to sell. As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them. The fact that the cargo is sanctioned makes it even more likely that a port will say "we're not touching that". The "flag of convenience" situation .. well, it's a great way of evading legal responsibility, but it's also a very old one. That's going to persist for some time to come.
- testing22321 8mo ago
  > As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them. Interesting setup that the lowly crew have to follow the rules to stay in shipping but the owner doesn’t. Usual story of the little guy getting screwed. Much like hiring undocumented people for work, the rules need to be changed so the owners get immense fines in these situations.
thenthenthen 8mo ago
There was an artist in residency on a cargo ship that sounded really, interesting. It became even more interesting after the parent company went bankrupt: https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-one-artist-ended-up-stranded-on-a-bankrupt-companys-cargo-ship/#:~:text=For%20almost%20two%20weeks%2C%20Rebecca,Company%2C%20filed%20for%20bankruptcy%20protection. https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-one-artist-ended-up-stra...

JohnMakin 8mo ago

When you are flying a foreign flag docked in a port you are complex legal situation - in international law, you follow the laws of the flag country, in addition to being under local jurisdiction (most of the time). And if you’re flying a flag for a boat that’s not registered under that flag, which as this article explains is easily verifiable, who is going to buy the oil, and how? not to mention any possible international sanctions on the oil, customs, the crew getting paid and wanting to return home, wherever that may be, and you get situations that can last for a long time. For this case a boat to boat transfer may be the only real way.

curiousObject 8mo ago
Your comment hints at another problem, which is that allowing the cargo into a port possibly could be exploited as a loophole to break sanctions. Yet another big problem is that cargo might be too low in value, or even undesirable. Like the cargo of Ammonium Nitrate that exploded in Beirut a few years ago (it had been taken off the docked ship which then sank in the port. The cargo was stored in the port, then stuck in legal and payment disputes, and the result was horrific).
segmondy 8mo ago
let the crew paint a new flag for the country they want to dock at.
- conception 8mo ago
  Pirates aren’t normally treated… well.
  - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
    The US Navy seems to do quite well.
    - doikor 8mo ago
      Under international law piracy has the for “private ends” clause when defining piracy meaning nation states can’t really do piracy but instead commerce raiding which is a form of warfere.
      - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
        Whatever verbiage you use doesn't change the fact that Trump is just another war criminal in a long line of war criminals, starting with Truman.
  - Ms-J 8mo ago
    With a small bribe they will be allowed in. No one is caring about the silly flag.
    - JohnMakin 8mo ago
      these are usually very poor crew trying to escape desperate circumstances. they arent in a bargaining position and are easy prey to pirates depending on the part of the world they are in. Since they’re ghost ships, anyone could basically take what they pleased without anyone knowing, not to mention whatever country is willing to take an unregistered ship to offload oil in amounts that someone annoying could notice. it’s a bad situation for everyone but the seller that convinced the ship it could turn it around.
    - bradgranath 8mo ago
      This is literally everything wrong with the tech industry in a single comment.

jgeada 8mo ago

This seems like one of those problems that arise when we let rich people and corporations arbitrage for the lowest possible legal consequences, in this case flags of convenience that have no standards. There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck. The profits are private, but costs and consequences always laid onto the public. Miserable way to run things.

notatoad 8mo ago
>There is always some poor or corrupt country willing to ignore consequences as long as they can make a buck. this is basically what i'm suggesting as the solution here, rather than the problem. if you're in command of a tanker carrying $50m worth of oil, and the company that technically owns it owes you and your crew $175k and doesn't want to pay, surely you're never too far from a country who would be happy to take that boat off your hands and cover the lost wages. how are these boats just waiting around in the ocean for a solution, when there's so much wealth on board?
- hattmall 8mo ago
  I don't think it's as easy to offload oil as you're assuming. Most of the sketchy countries don't have refineries or storage capacity and they risk some fallout from the sanctions if they do anything with the oil. Like maybe if you could get the boat to North Korea they might pay you $0.01 on the dollar or something.
- jgeada 8mo ago
  I think their problem is that very few countries have refinery capacity to deal with crude oil, which is what these ships contain. So the crew have limited choices. It is a "someone else's problem", to quote the Hitchhiker's Guide.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- nradov 8mo ago

mschuster91 8mo ago

> so these ships are abandoned by the companies that own them, with the crew still on board? and then the crew is just stuck there with dwindling food supplies until somebody comes to rescue them? Yes, basically. The situation is really really nasty, every year thousands of sailors are stuck aboard abandoned ships [1][2]. Sometimes, crews get stuck for years [3] - and the situation is made worse by the fact that leaving ship means forfeiting payment. [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/fleet-of-abandoned-ships-is-growing-leaving-sailors-stuck-at-sea/7959843.html https://www.voanews.com/a/fleet-of-abandoned-ships-is-growin... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r4nr2zy2do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3r4nr2zy2do [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506

thrance 8mo ago
Thanks, that was very interesting. Another reminder of how fucked up our world is.
- Sabinus 8mo ago
  That's how fucked up our world is outside the jurisdiction of a well functioning government and an engaged and educated populace. It's only as nice as we decide to make it.
  - mschuster91 8mo ago
    the thing is, technically "convenience flags" are outside our jurisdiction... but the companies owning the ships? the companies chartering the ships? these are in Western jurisdictions. We could hold them accountable, but we don't, because freight companies are insanely well connected in politics and too many too rich people profit too much from this kind of exploitation.
PearlRiver 8mo ago
I remember with COVID a lot of sailors got stuck and nobody felt responsibility to do anything for them.

3eb7988a1663 8mo ago

Is there such a thing as mid-ocean fuel transfer? I can imagine some intrepid individuals strike up a bargain to siphon the fuel off of the abandoned ship onto one with the appropriate paperwork.

closewith 8mo ago
Yes, although it's expensive so eats up a lot of margin. It's one aof the common ways sanctioned oil is whitewashed.

shmerl 8mo ago

Probably fear. Putin's nazi mafia could dispose of the crew or target their families if they do that.

SanjayMehta 8mo ago
Or Trump's pirate navy could call them drug dealers and blow them out of the water.
- shmerl 8mo ago
  They work for Putin's war, so they they should be treated as hostile navy anyway. They'd be lucky if they'll end up arrested and not blown up. Ukraine does blow them up already when opportunity presents itself.
  - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
    The world is lucky that President Putin is a rational actor. Trump and his neocon masters on the other hand seem to be itching to start WW-3. As for The Ukraine - there's no such thing as "Ukraine" - if they are lucky they will be left with a rump state, hopefully landlocked.
    - peppersghost93 8mo ago
      If Putin was a rational actor he probably wouldn't be putting up WWI casualty numbers to capture podunk towns in east Ukraine that few people care about
      - SanjayMehta 8mo ago
        Take a look at the body exchange ratios. For every KIA body The Ukraine returns to Russia, they get back 20 to 30. Of course, you don't know this because the West has censored real news.
    - shmerl 8mo ago

pjc50 8mo ago

They have control of the ship, but the ship doesn't own the cargo! It's not legally theirs to sell. As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them. The fact that the cargo is sanctioned makes it even more likely that a port will say "we're not touching that". The "flag of convenience" situation .. well, it's a great way of evading legal responsibility, but it's also a very old one. That's going to persist for some time to come.

testing22321 8mo ago
> As staff who are presumably looking to eventually get another job in shipping, they have to follow the rules even if it's not clear what they are or the owner isn't following them. Interesting setup that the lowly crew have to follow the rules to stay in shipping but the owner doesn’t. Usual story of the little guy getting screwed. Much like hiring undocumented people for work, the rules need to be changed so the owners get immense fines in these situations.

thenthenthen 8mo ago

There was an artist in residency on a cargo ship that sounded really, interesting. It became even more interesting after the parent company went bankrupt: https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-one-artist-ended-up-stranded-on-a-bankrupt-companys-cargo-ship/#:~:text=For%20almost%20two%20weeks%2C%20Rebecca,Company%2C%20filed%20for%20bankruptcy%20protection. https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-one-artist-ended-up-stra...