
'Ghost ship' washes up on Irish coast - RijilV
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51534957
======
ChuckMcM
One wonders if you could drop a battery operated GPS beacon reporting by
satellite on these things to report back their position once a day once it has
been abandoned. Something like that should be able to run for a couple of
years at least.

Maritime salvage law is always interesting as it feels like it was mostly
written in the 1600 and 1700's :-)

~~~
LinuxBender
In addition to that, it feels like the navy / coast guard could drop that GPS
beacon off when they rescue the crew and have a live map that shows the
vessels set adrift so that others can avoid hitting them, especially in a
storm. Vessel ID and size, GPS coordinates and notify the owner to go pick it
up.

~~~
FillardMillmore
Interesting idea, it sounds like it would certainly be technically possible.
But what about the legality? If an owner can't be readily identified, would
there be any legal problem with a foreign government placing a GPS beacon on a
derelict ship? As others have pointed out, maritime law can be somewhat
antiquated in ways, perhaps this is a legal grey zone?

~~~
LinuxBender
I don't know maritime law, but it looks like the law of salvage kicks in? [1]
Hopefully one of the surviving rescued crew could offer hints as to the owner
or shipping company.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage)

~~~
lb1lf
The crew are (were) paid by a crewing agency, typically providing a crew to
the charterer, who finds a ship from some shipowner or other to offer freight
services to commercial clients.

The shipowner is invariably located in a PO Box in a jurisdiction which makes
Swiss banks seem downright extrovert; however, this is just a shell company
controlled by an opaque holding company, &c.

Global shipping is a rather murky business, designed to facilitate tax and
responsibility avoidance.

If this sounds interesting, investigative journalist Ian Urbina published a
most informative (and scary) book on the subject last year - Outlaw Ocean.

~~~
FillardMillmore
That book does sound interesting, thanks for the recommendation. Though the
global shipping industry is not usually what I read about in my leisure time,
this sounds like a worthwhile venture.

~~~
lb1lf
Indeed it is; he looks into various shady aspects of the marine industry -
rogue fisheries, shipping, waste dumping, slavery &c - a grim read by anyone's
standards.

On a related, but lighter note, the memoirs of Max Hardberger (Marine repo
man, more or less) is an excellent collection of sea stories of the
"Improvised ingenuity and brazenness while under fire" kind. I believe it was
called "Seized!"

~~~
FillardMillmore
I'm definitely going to check it out.

And slavery, you say? How does this manifest? Are we talking about Somalian
pirates conscripting poor people in third world countries or something? I have
read that following the collapse of Libya after Qaddafi's overthrow, things
degenerated so badly that slaves began to be bought and sold and are even sold
there today - but I suppose I've never dug too deep into who's buying them and
for what purpose.

And I love a good memoir, especially of a seafarer! That'll be going straight
on my Amazon wishlist, thanks!

~~~
lb1lf
-The slavery bit I referred to is perhaps more accurately described as forced labour; the concept being that crewing agencies of the unscrupulous type trawl the countryside recruiting crew for offshore fisheries; the crew then have their ID papers confiscated and are put on vessels doing long stints offshore without any option of leaving, often for years on end, as the vessels they crew are more like rafts, being resupplied from shore rather than going back ashore themselves.

This is often 'legal' in the sense that the (more often than not illiterate)
crew have signed contracts stating that they need to repay a sign-on fee
equating years worth of wages.

------
joe_the_user
Basically, it's a race-to-the-bottom as far as responsibility for the
externalities [1] of ship-based transportation goes. Why does Bolivia, a land-
locked, third world nations "have one of the largest commercial fleets in the
world"[2]. If responsibility for the negative parts of shipping can be shifted
indefinitely, it means it never goes into costs, which facilitates trade and
"wage arbitrage" [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_labor_arbitrage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_labor_arbitrage)

~~~
PostOnce
Bolivia was not always landlocked, and very much still resents losing its
coastline to Chile during
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific)

They would like to regain control of said coastline. In fact, they have a
holiday to commemorate said loss:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%ADa_del_Mar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%ADa_del_Mar)

[https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2015/05/09/beaches-
of...](https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2015/05/09/beaches-of-the-
future)

~~~
skinnymuch
Wouldn’t Bolivia have been a relatively new country in 1880? Like a multiple
of years have passed since that time than before?

~~~
karatinversion
Roughly the same ratio in Bolivia's history as the Civil War is in the United
States'. Some people still make a big deal out of that.

------
Animats
Well, Ireland still has a Receiver of Wrecks. It's their problem now.

Any of the big salvage companies, Titan or Smit or Mammoet, can deal with such
a wreck if paid to do so. It's expensive, but routine. Ireland has local
salvage companies, too. Once it's decided who pays the bill, one of them will
probably be brought into deal with the mess.

~~~
core-questions
So there's no value in the ship itself that makes the salvage a profitable
operation?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The ship probably has value, the potential lawsuits regarding how it came and
went probably eclipse that. Once you touch it whoever feels wronged is gonna
try and lay claim to any money you made scrapping it and whether or not you
win you get tied up in court doesn't really matter, it's still the last thing
you want to do in a low margin industry. This is one ship, you're not gonna
make a ton of money off it, not worth screwing with for most entities capable
of scrapping it. Whatever town this washed up on is gonna have to pay to get
rid of it. I'm sure some teenagers will find the time to steal some souvenirs
before that happens though.

~~~
sjg007
That's not how it works.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Salvage law isn't gonna stop some locals who don't like the particulars of how
you scrapped it from bogging you down in a court room for a year. There's more
parties involved here than just the owners (whoever they may be).

~~~
toomanybeersies
It will in Ireland. It's not the USA, it's a lot harder to bring lawsuits for
such matters.

------
NwmG
if anyone is interested in this topic of how these things happen and the
general lawlessness of the seas due to tragedy of the commons I highly
recommend Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina

~~~
rezgi
Thanks, that looks like an interesting read after I'm done with Sandworm by
Andy Greenberg (also a good read)

------
_bxg1
> Various authorities had become aware of its aimless drift around the world.
> It was last spotted in September 2019 by a British Royal Navy ship.

I wonder if the mythological archetype of the "ghost ship" originated from
cases like this: unidentified, unmanned ships roaming the seas on their own,
in a time before there was a global record of abandoned ships. Doesn't take a
huge leap of the imagination to assume they're crewed by ghosts.

------
mothsonasloth
On coastal Scotland we get all sorts of things washing up thanks to the Gulf
Stream; from the ubiquitous coconut, to political placards from Jamaica.

------
LeifCarrotson
> Normally, damaged or sunken ships remain the property of their owners, who
> are responsible for securing a solution...

Sounds like that was written on behalf of public companies who imagined they'd
always want to assert their ownership rights. It was not written while mindful
of the possibility of anonymous LLCs who have a salvage bill, an environmental
problem, and rescue operations expenses tied to the ship and would rather it
sank in the middle of the ocean...

~~~
jessaustin
If that's what they would rather, they should have scuttled it before now...

------
pvaldes
Saving dismantling expenses like a pro. Trow it into the nature and now is
problem of another people.

~~~
throwaway894345
I never understood why governments don't require companies to put down cleanup
expenses upfront or purchase insurance or similar so they can't externalize
these costs. Same with virtually any commercial building, etc.

~~~
toomanybeersies
In this specific case, which government? The ship was sailing from Greece to
Haiti, on a Tanzanian flag, when it was abandoned. Which government should've
required a cleanup bond or insurance, the Greek, Haitian, Tanzanian, or the
Irish?

~~~
throwaway894345
Any country should require a ship registered to it be either bonded or insured

~~~
OJFord
And what, Ireland claims it from whichever it was paid to?

And you only need one country not to, so you can register there. You'll never
get every country to sign up to anything like that, because it makes being the
one that doesn't too valuable.

~~~
icebraining
We have mechanisms to deal with stuff like this. You write a treaty where each
member country pledges to implement this scheme, and then member countries
refuse to let commercial ships from countries outside the treaty to dock.

------
BetaCygni
It turns out the premise of the brilliant game "Return of the Obra Dinn" was
not unrealistic at all. Highly recommended!
[https://obradinn.com/](https://obradinn.com/)

------
iamthebot
Can't they just ask the crew who the owner is?

~~~
lb1lf
The crew won't know; they are supplied by a crewing agency acting on behalf of
the charterer acting on behalf of &c.

Really - it is quite common for mariners not to know who the owner is.

~~~
Scoundreller
Pretty common for most employees to have no idea.

