The Outlaw Sea: Chaos and Crime on the World's Oceans [Paperback]

Langewiesche's gloomy, albeit accurate, portrayal of life at sea for the 'low-end' portion of the ocean shipping industry is marked by excellent research and even better writing. The book has some of the hallmarks of the best fiction. It unfolds dramatically and keeps the reader's attention. Langewiesche's portrayal of the passenger ferry Estonia is heartbreaking. The author pulls no punches. At one point, Langewiesche discusses the horror of the loss of 852 lives on the Estonia, notes the worldwide outpouring of grief (particularly in Northern Europe) but then pauses to mention that ferry accidents such as this are a routine way of life in the third world (in Asia and Africa in particular) and yet these accidents barely attract our attention. The terse, matter-of-fact fashion in which Langewiesche imparts this information has a greater impact than it would have if set out in a dogmatic fashion.

Last, Langewiesche turns his eye to the ship breaking business in India. Vessels that have reached the end of their useful life (and as set out in the book a ship owner's definition of useful life is far longer than may be prudent for safe operation) are run onto beaches in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan where they are dismantled in a manner that endangers everyone involved. Life for these ship breakers is nasty, brutal and short. Langewiesche's portrayal is so well written that one can almost smell the befouled air that lingers over the work area. The author also sets out the political confrontation between the ship breakers and Greenpeace. It is an excellent overview of the conflict that arises between first-world political activists and third world throngs struggling to make a life for their families.

I only take two minor issues with the author. First, in discussing the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the coast of Spain, I think the author did not pay sufficient attention to the horrible decision of the Spanish government to deny safe harbor to the damaged vessel. It is mentioned in passing. The decision to force the Prestige out to sea, before she was damaged beyond repair and before there was a major loss of oil, into stormy and unsafe seas was as much, if not more, to blame for the environmental disaster that followed as the general condition of the vessel before the accident. The actions of the Spanish government in this regard were reprehensible.

Second, Langewiesche makes much (rightfully) of the negative impact of the use of flags of convenience (registering vessels under Liberian of Maltese law rather than Britsh, U.S. or Norwegian for example), in terms of vessel safety, poorly trained seamen, etc. However, it would have been useful to point out as a counterbalance the fact that the Exxon Valdez, the vessel responsible for one of the largest oil spills in U.S. history, was a U.S. flag vessel, built to U.S. flag standards, fully accountable to all U.S. maritime laws and regulations with U.S. officers and crew.

This book is well written, informative, and interesting, whether or not one happens to be in this business. I recommend it to anyone interested in first rate, well researched and written non fiction.

Chapter One introduces the reader to this anarchic world of flags of convenience, shadow ownership, holding companies, the cheapest crews money can buy, and unsafe, decrepit ships. This is done via the case of the Kristal, a 27-year-old tanker carrying molasses and a Croatian, Spanish, and Pakistani crew when it split in two and sank in off the coast of Spain in February 2001. The disaster is reconstructed from the testimony of the few survivors, and concludes with furtive settlements to them and an utter inability to determine who actually owned the ship. Through this, Langewiesche describes how most shipping is regulated by the International Marine Organization (a UN agency), and, rather depressingly, how -- despite all kinds of conventions, agreements, regulations, and inspections -- ships are constantly sinking at sea and lives are being lost.

Chapter Two is about security, both of ports and of ships. The vast majority of modern commercial piracy takes place near the Straights of Malacca, and Langewiesche takes the reader through one such case -- the October 1999 hijacking of the $10 million Japanese cargo ship Alondra Rainbow and its $10 million cargo of aluminum. Again, Langewiesche reconstructs the event through individual testimony and court records: from the Indonesian pirate leader's planning via cell phone with a Chinese boss, to the storming of the ship by multinational gang of Malays, Thais, Chinese, and others, to the ship's disappearance, and the pirates' eventual capture and prosecution by India. The disappearance is especially fascinating in this era of GPS and satellite imaging, and an important digression is made on the impossibility of tracking, never mind identifying all the ships at sea (some 30 million by one U.S. Coast Guard estimate). Anyone concerned about terrorists using boats or ports to deliver WMDs to the doorstep of the U.S. will probably not want to read this section, as it is rather chilling stuff.

The very brief third chapter provides a little more background on how international regulations work in practice, here in the case of oil spills. This first grew into a major concern following a series of incidents in the mid-1970s, and blossomed into a full political issue after the Exxon Valdez crash. Langewiesche shows how American and European bureaucracies have responded over the last several decades, and how ineffectual these new rules regulations have been.

Chapters four and five (totaling around 100 pages) deal with the September 1994 sinking of the ferry Estonia in rough Baltic waters, killing more than 850 people. And if you thought "The Perfect Storm" was heartbreaking, wait until you read this. The reconstruction (again, from survivors and the massive legal record) makes for terrifying reading, and no one who reads it will ever take a ride on a Baltic ferry. It's brilliant writing, tackling both the furious legal and technical debate about the cause of the disaster, and the harrowing human side, as people literally claw and climb over each other to survive. At times, the reconstruction gets a little too colorful as the attempts to show how most of the people become Darwinian animals get a bit much, but it's still nightmare-inducing stuff. It's an incredibly convoluted and contested tale, but one that does a very effective job of showing how the ocean can quickly reduce order to chaos and how the failure of regulation can lead to large tragedy.

The final chapter is somewhat tangential to the book's main thrust, as it deals with what happens to ships at the end of their lives rather than the chaos that rules the high seas. Here, Langewiesche covers the shipbreaking beach at Alang, India. Here, ships come to die, driven ashore and then manually broken down in scrap metal and salvageable parts by poorly paid crews who live in squalid work camps and are exposed to all manner of toxins from the dead ships. Various activist campaigns have brought world attention to the plight of these workers, but Langewiesche points out that shipbreaking is a booming field and even more wretched facilities exist elsewhere in South Asia. What the responsibility of shipbuilding nations is becomes a very murky matter and there are no easy answers.

This is a very good book, and each chapter stands on its own as an accessible introduction to one or two maritime topics which could easily merit entire books. Langewiesche is very good at blending travel reportage, investigative interviews, and archival research to create very compelling stories. Throughout, even though the topics can be rather abstract legally or technically arcane, he always writes with great compassion and clarity about the people who are affected.