Shipbreaking | Hacker News Reader

Shipbreaking

edwardburtynsky.com

358 pointsthunderbong200 comments

This takes me to my childhood. My dad was an electrical engineer in India and worked at a ship repair dockyard. He once came back with a few shelves and cabinets for our kitchen. These were taken out of ships that were getting cut up in their dockyard. They were complete mismatches in aesthetics but it did not matter to his "why waste such functional ..." attitude. He was excited about what his "workers" could salvage from the ship. Mom didn't care as this was an old house where we have been living for generations and functionality trumped aesthetics.

The most intriguing part to me was the wooden cabinet was painted white with something stencil printed in green. My best guess was that was a Cyrillic script, and about twenty five years back, it wasn't easy to decipher what they meant.

Those cabinets are still hanging in our old house. Next time I'm there, all I need to do is pull up my phone and translate that text and get a kick out of what the original intention was for the sailors and what my mom is storing in it!

I can only imagine the conditions his "workers" worked in back then given how poor the conditions still are today.

I think scenes from ship breaking, electronics recycling, and other recycling efforts sent overseas could fit in, as-is, to a film like Blade Runner.

Those industries don't pay well to anyone involved but are a global benefit. Such a strange world we live in.

Is there a word for this specific kind of ambivalence where you label a pitiable, miserable set of circumstances "strange"? As if it's on the same level as the strong nuclear force? Maybe "motivated ambivalence".

There's nothing strange about it just as there's nothing strange about cobalt mining conditions in Democratic Republic of Congo: exploitative trade agreements, political corruption, and apathy.

Just because you don't think its strange doesn't mean others don't. Strange is subjective. If he feels its odd we willfully ignore it, then its strange.

Using "strange" instead of "bad" to me indicates someone has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature, which is gnarly and creates bad things like humans setting up incentives without having to necessarily classify humans or the universe as bad.

Is it bad when a lion kills another animal? In a way yes, it's extra death that could be preventable, in another way it's what it is. Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average? What about if a human is born more narcissistic than average and does bad things?

It leaves open the possibility of you the writer also being wrong, so it comes across as humbly sharing an opinion.

> Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average?

And by definition, 50% of babies are.

> has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature

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

I literally didnt define it as good. Maybe read again. I said it isnt good or bad, its nature, its what it is. Ironic that while explaining why using "bad" to qualify nature is not appropriate you think im saying its good.

i'm sorry that you don't have the patience to read a wikipedia article

> Some people use the phrase, naturalistic fallacy or appeal to nature, in a different sense, to characterize inferences of the form "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable"

Again, it is what it is, there's no moral attachment to my comment. I give up, you just want me to be wrong. It's just frustrating you don't recognize that was the argument I was making.

what exactly do you think the difference is between

> Again, it is what it is, there's no moral attachment to my comment.

and

> "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable"

Why is that strange? At no time in history have jobs paid according to their benefit.

It's not actually strange - GP is just using that word to emotionally manipulate readers.

To manipulate readers into realizing that industry doesn't pay their workers well?

basically. To manipulating the reader into thinking that workers being paid well or according to their "benefit" is the natural, logistical, or otherwise expected outcome.

It is an attempt to switch the roles between what the conventional, familiar, and safe what is unconventional, weird, and strange.

Paying workers according to "benefit" is not tried and true. It has real challenges and problems.

I don't think it's wrong to pay workers according to the value they provide. It's just not normal (again, not necessarily a good thing), so use of the word "strange" is inaccurate - in addition to being a manipulative use of the word (it's pretty clear that the writer doesn't actually think it's strange, and is using the word to tug on heart strings).

HN is not an advocacy platform, so manipulative comments, like boringg's, and yours, are not appreciated.

Your are out to lunch. I'm not sure what you think I'm advocating for or what I'm trying to be manipulative based on my short comment but you need to take a minute and think about how other people come to the conversation and that they don't come with some embedded agenda.

> Those industries don't pay well to anyone involved but are a global benefit. Such a strange world we live in.

It's pretty clear that are are trying to manipulate readers through your suggestive use of "strange". You're not actually confused by it - you're trying to suggest something about labor laws or pay or something without actually making a point, through the use of suggestive language. People do not talk like that unless they're adding a subtext.

Its pretty clear to you because you seem to think the world is black and white and you are very self assured. However I can tell you, whether you believe me or not, that was most certainly not intended or implied (either knowingly or unknowingly). Any way please continue to speak my intentions with your self proclaimed authority.

"Paying well" is relative. There are lots of industries that are rightly considered exploitative from the western eye, but people who are working these jobs would otherwise be starving or relying on meager government handouts if they went away.

This is plainly true. But there is a middle ground between "the least amount of money workers will accept before choosing to starve instead" and "so much money it's no longer economical to pay workers to do."

I have no idea what the case was in this specific industry in India. But in many developing countries, first world companies collaborate with government and pay off private muscle to make it impossible for workers to organize and earn anything in that middle ground.

(I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

> (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

Reminds me of the Libertarian Police Department (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...):

> "Do we have any leads?”

> “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

> “Easy, chief,” I said. “-Any- rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

> He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

> This is plainly true. But there is a middle ground between "the least amount of money workers will accept before choosing to starve instead" and "so much money it's no longer economical to pay workers to do."

That's what labour market competition between employers (or employment opportunities, because people can strike out on their own) is for.

More and stiffer competition is better.

> (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

I don't know what definition of 'fair' you want to use here. It's taken voluntarily in some sense. But so is the choice between starving vs cannibalism, if you have no other options. So that's not a very useful distinction.

If you want to help people, you not to improve their options, make sure that better options can be provided. That's very different from outlawing bad options, and just the opposite. (Ie giving the would-be cannibal access to some bread is actually helpful. Just banning cannibalism on the lifeboat only leads to starvation, if there are no other options.)

Conditions in the ship breaking industry will improve as other industries compete for workers with them.

For comparison, have a look at the working conditions of eg nannies in England today vs 800 years ago. They do essentially the same job, but get paid so much more in real terms. And not out of any generosity by their employers.

(You can pick many other professions, too.)

> but people who are working these jobs would otherwise be starving

That's extortion...

I don’t think you understand what that word means. Extortion isn’t simply any negative consequence.

A dentist requiring payment before preforming surgery didn’t cause your tooth decay and they have no obligation to help you. Same deal here, someone offering a job is offering the possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship, but that’s as far as it goes.

What about when someone invents the concept of private property ownership, claims all the food as his own, hires a bunch of people by paying them with the food he has declared he owns to guard that food, and then demands payment for you to eat that food to survive?

Maybe extortion isn't the right word, but it's certainly not voluntary exchange either.

In nature help isn’t freely available. Private property is the default, a crow picks up a stick and it’s theirs. Ants defend their nests etc. Plants will break out chemical warfare to defend themselves. Walk into a lion’s den asking for help and your going to get eaten.

So what food do you expect to be freely available?

Anyway a voluntary exchange doesn’t mean equal leverage for all parties. I’m not going to negotiate a windows license with Microsoft it’s take it or leave it. Which is the hart of a voluntary exchange, either party can walk away without one party forcing their will on the other.

you throw so much of the real world out, in this simplistic rationalization. Economic niches could be related to ecological niches. Many ordinary animals have more than enough to eat for at least a season and a half, in so many places. What is the limitation? competition with your own burgeoning species for the physical space to occupy and, predation. Not everything is on the brink of starvation.

Predators evolve to exploit and kill those with abundance, and humans are expert predators. A vast portion of the civilized world it seems, was built directly from slavery and warfare. Slavery is very profitable, and wage slavery is alive today.

The simplistic example of food-scarcity is Reductio ad absurdum, to use the language of a top-line predator tribe from long ago.

First humans aren’t predators we’re omnivores which explains our teeth, intestines, etc. Most animals even things like horses will chow down on other animals given the opportunity, but plants don’t run away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6dvgo25Z8

Nature is brutal. Starvation is one of the most common ways for animals to die, though still behind being eaten. Humanity has largely improved upon this natural state as even being enslaved beats being consumed alive.

By that logic it's up to you to die or not from being shot in the face. That's like 18th-19th century or earlier model of world.

> A dentist ... have no obligation to help you.

btw, this is region dependent. Medical services are just businesses in the US, but doctors are obligated to provide emergency cares by law in many regions.

> By that logic it's up to you to die or not from being shot in the face.

No that’s an issue directly caused by a 3rd party. Hunger is imposed not by an individual but by biology.

> doctors are obligated to provide emergency cares by law in many regions.

There’s some confusion around what is the responsibility of an emergency room and individuals, but UK, USA, Canada, Singapore, etc don’t require doctors to act in an emergency. The US requires emergency rooms to protect treatment in an actual emergency but not everything qualifies. https://www.acep.org/life-as-a-physician/ethics--legal/emtal....

Every country is different but few require doctors to act in an Emergency and non for general care, it’s basically a handful of European countries and Australia. Even then it’s a minimal level of treatment.

What were the people of Alang doing before shipbreaking? Were they starving?

We know from the history of enclosure that the starvation was an intentional strategy to compel people into wage work. There were guides to how to do enclosure that advised lords against planting fruit trees, because the peasants would eat the fruit from the trees and therefore not want to engage in work.

Only because we let 1% take from us and are easily distracted by petty race, sexuality, gender, immigration squabbles.

The rich often pay 0% tax but we're still doing nothing about it. We'll never do anything about it.

Not trying to defend this kind of practices, it just reminds me of something I watched recently about the working conditions in the Victorian era in a UK cotton mill… Atrocious and exploitative by all current standards, and yet people chose this over more traditional agricultural occupations because it paid better, weekly, and there was no uncertainty that you’ll lose an entire season of wages because the harvest was bad. And yet they were working 72h a week, had indentured child labour, average life expectancy was something like 40 years old, injuries and loss of fingers or limbs were regularly occurring.

One of my previous (job) tasks was to monitor larger vessels, and analyze where they'd end up getting torn apart.

Turns out western shipping companies don't like paying western prices for that kind of work, and try to sneak the vessels down to India, Bangladesh, etc. where that kind of work is much cheaper. But with cheaper prices comes a host of issues, from the environmental effects, to human workers actually performing the dangerous work.

Sometimes these things can fail spectacularly - like when they try to sail or tow the vessel, end up drifting to land, and create huge oil spills.

Well, West should stop dumping their garbage to the rest of the world.

It is easy to have strict environmental regulations, if they are not enforced, and negative externalities are exported.

> Well, West should stop dumping their garbage to the rest of the world.

Actually the export of ships to be wrecked in Asia already is banned under EU law and international treaties - and sometimes, even company owners can and do land in jail for violating them, as it happened to Georg Eide [1].

The difficulty lies in the fact that many ships aren't registered in the EU countries, but in small countries like Antigua who don't have any incentive to help out European countries enforce their laws, and by many ships being legally hidden between layers of shell companies. It can go as far as there being a dedicated LLC in yet another tax haven per ship, and once the ship is to be wrecked, it isn't the ship itself that's being sold for wrecking (because that would be openly illegal and easy to catch and prove for authorities), but the LLC is being sold, and the lax attitude towards audit and public records requirements in the tax havens makes it very difficult to prove illegal intent.

[1] https://www.freitag.de/autoren/julia-lauter/reedereien-lasse...

We could require that ships they dock in EU harbours are owned by countries that are party to some international anti-ship breaking agreement.

But it's a lot of paperwork :)

Still would not prevent just selling the LLC at the end of the ship's useful life.

And I'm not sure how to effectively police that.

Find the names of the people involved, get a warrant and use the full power of that impressive global surveillance system that we've created to fight the global war on terror to surveil them and find evidence of other crimes that they've surely committed and prosecute the fuck out of them for that.

Seems like a lot of work to prevent India from breaking ships it wants to break.

Meaningless statement. You can say the exact same thing about any law.

Not every law tries to regulate the behavior of people in other jurisdictions.

How is this law like that?

Europeans don't like the working conditions of shipbreakers in India, and don't like the pollution it creates in India. Europeans can't directly tell the Indians what they can and cannot do.

Instead, the parent post is proposing to use the state surveillance app aratus to go after and prosecute the f** out of people that sell ships to India.

I said it seems like a lot of work to try to stop someone in another country from doing something in their own country.

I prefer the more hands off approach where you let people in other countries decide what they want to do as long as they aren't hurting you. If India wants to ban ship breaking or impose harsh restrictions, they can do that themselves. I think it's arrogant and dehumanizing for Outsiders to try to control what happens in India.

Yes. What you are describing is very similar to people always asking for federal laws, when states or counties could handle problems as well. Out of a fear that those savages down in state X could vote for the 'wrong' policy.

I don't disagree on the overall principle of avoiding the establishment of de-facto extraterritoriality, but it should be said that environmental pollution is not a localized problem. The Earth is a connected system, and what happens in India or China will eventually affect Europe and America (in the form of polluted air/water making its way here, or climate change provoked by emissions), and viceversa.

Environmental issues are inevitably global, and countries should talk about them and find global agreements that are fair and enforced by everyone. We can't just hide behind "my backyard, my rules".

Perhaps in some cases that is true, but I dont think that this is a good example of it.

But you know that it's a law to stop people doing something domestically which is exporting a ship.

You know this.

Yes, as a best effort to restrict behavior abroad.

dude it's all a casual web.

They're regulating the behavior of their citizens in their domain to prevent them from doing actions that will lead to detrimental outcomes for their citizens.

We do live in a world where it's basically impossible to live without violating one law at one time or another (often unknowingly and without malice)

Like the Jones Act [0], it's easy to create unintended consequences.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#...

That's a good point, or you could make a new cookie law.

Or kill all the logistics companies in the EU.

But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules.

I mean they do, see cookie banners/GDPR, Apple, etc, but still. I'm of the unsubstantiated opinion that all the laws make the EU a less desireable market. But that's a policy based on morals instead of economics / relentless capitalism.

> But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules.

Actually, it will. RoHS and the push for standardizing phone connectors ended up influencing the whole world and making it a better place for everyone.

The EU is a sizable market, and unlike the US with its constant elections and government shutdowns, it's politically relatively stable. No one, as said not even Apple, can ignore the demands of the European Union.

The EU has consent elections, it's just a proportional representation forces people to work together to get anything done, so you end up with a lot of relatively uncontroversial work happening. There's also little point in trying to score points as you will never have a majority

> The EU has consent elections

The EU parliament is elected every five years, and while most of the member countries elect during the EU parliament term and so it's election year somewhere in the EU every year, national elections usually have negligible impact on the European level (outside of dramatic swings like in Poland or Slovakia between dedicated notorious pro-EU and anti-EU parties).

In contrast, the US re-elects the whole House and 1/3rd of the Senate every two years which means that the House is basically only at peace to work for a year at a time (first half year is spent on getting the newbies up to speed, last half year is filled with campaigning), and if changing control over the Senate is even possible depends on if the states whose seats are up for reelection are considered swing states or not. The entire way the US Congress works is not incentivizing bipartisan legislation, and it's outright hostile to the idea that there could be more than two political parties.

> [...] the push for standardizing phone connectors ended up [...] making it a better place for everyone.

What's your evidence for that?

By default, we should assume that the engineers building phones and the consumers buying phones are the best placed to evaluate what connectors they want. And it would take considerable evidence to convince us that some unrelated third party bureaucrats know better.

Especially since even the best case benefits are so minuscule: it's already very easy to get charging cables that have multiple heads, for that people that own multiple phones with different connectors, but only want a single cable. (And everyone else can just buy one cable or the other.)

> What's your evidence for that?

Living in a world where I don't have a host of different power bricks in my travel bag any more, where one single Anker dual-port charger is enough to bring with me on vacation and get my stuff charged, and where when I lose my cable I can just walk into any random store and buy one for cheap.

> it's already very easy to get charging cables that have multiple heads, for that people that own multiple phones with different connectors

These multi-head cables almost all don't pass through the D+/D- pins of USB which means no way to get more than 500 mA charging current from them.

> Living in a world where I don't have a host of different power bricks in my travel bag any more, [...]

Huh? I don't have to do that, either. I only have different cables, but the power brick is the same.

Yeah because by now it's all USB. I'm old enough to 'member the times where literally everyone had different plugs and voltages.

Yes, but that standardisation on USB that we have already witnessed came about without any legal mandates, or did it? So it undermines the argument for them.

Standardization was an option, but it took laws to actually force the inevitable refuseniks (like Apple) to the table.

Huh? I could already charge Apple via USB before that forced standardisation, I just needed a different cable, but it worked via the same power brick.

And, again, I don't see much benefit in the forced conversion of the refuseniks. Their refusal only hurts _them_; I mostly have Android devices, and I don't care one what chargers other people want to use. And evidently, they had made up their mind. And who are we to second-guess their choices?

What's next? Forcing people for their own good to accept the Divine Authority of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

> Yes, but that standardisation on USB that we have already witnessed came about without any legal mandates, or did it?

The EU said "hey guys, make up your mind on a standard" to the industry at large, which led to the consolidation to Mini-USB and, later on, Micro-USB, and as Apple hadn't even moved an inch towards standardization and USB-C was validated enough to be supporting literally everything, the EU said "okay, Apple doesn't want to listen, so we bring down the hammer".

And I'm suggesting that bringing down the hammer was unnecessary overreach.

It's certainly not without risk.

And like I said, it's a lot of paperwork.

Maybe, one day, or maybe in small increments.

To make matters worse, when these ships come under attack or get hijacked, suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces. Strange they don't call on Panema or Antigua's military forces, since that's where they are registered.

> [...], suddenly they want the full backing of Western military forces.

Who is 'they'? Do you have records of the 'ships' (I assume their owners?), asking for that full backing directly?

Yes, I do.

Reminds me of when I lived on a sailboat. I just bought the LLC that owned it, which always operated at a loss just to keep the ship in working order, which was a tax write off. It even came with accountants who knew how to keep everything in the books “correct.”

The maritime industry, more than "the West", is a prime culprit there. Let's also mention how they skirt taxation, the use of flags of convenience, the lack of protection for crews, the matrioshka shell companies...

Also the clothes industry!

The clothes brands claim to recycle cotton, but use 3rd party "recycling companies" to ship the textiles to Africa, where they just burn it in huge waste heaps. With huge environmental issues.

https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/blog/54589/how-fast-fas...

Computer "recycling" in Lagos/Nigeria is another topic.

A follow up

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet added a airtags in clothes "recycled" by H&M. Guess where they ended up?

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/jlME1e/aftonbladet-inve...

I’m a bit confused as to how this investigation worked - how can they tell if clothes were ground for fiber with just airtags?

FWIW This is one of the sources, in Swedish though.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/0QxkyA/modets-morker-5-...

At the end there they list the fate of 10 different garments they returned to H&M.

You can evaluate yourself if you find this environmentally friendly or not.

(This comment was not meant to be snarky although I realize it may look like it. I just did not have time to write a proper comment/translate to the article earlier. See my later answer in the sibling)

Not sure if they did this, but they could fly over a reporter to last place they observed the AirTag and have them look around.

TL;DR

1. They travelled to the location (in Togo).

2. They found the guy who imported the jeans. He was about to try to resell them (along with huge bales of clothes), but most of the clothes are not sold. I dont think recycling was at the top of his mind.

3. The last signal was from a place where they use to make a fire of the clothes.

4. Most of the garments travel around the world as waste - not exactly good for the environment.

The person from H&M responded with whataboutisms. Which is not exactly legit since they use this in marketing.

Edit:formatting

> He was about to try to resell them (along with huge bales of clothes), [...]

Regardless of what else is happening, reselling the clothes as is seems to be the best form of 'recycling' to me. Or rather 'reuse'.

> 4. Most of the garments travel around the world as waste - not exactly good for the environment.

As long as they travel by boat, the cost for that is minuscule. Both in terms of dollars and in terms of emissions.

(Yes, the ocean shipping industry burns a lot in absolute terms, but per kg of moved goods it is very, very efficient.)

The point is that you can say the same thing about the ships they sail to Bangladesh for breaking up.

Sail them to Bangladesh, they are responsible for "recycling", problem solved.

The problem is that the place they end up looks like a huge dump where clothes end up to die. And with huge environmental problems. And health problems.

I am aware that shipping has less environmental impact, but was it really the intention that the clothes should have the same transportation impact when being "recycled" as when they were first manufactured? I'll let you come up with the numbers.

> I am aware that shipping has less environmental impact, but was it really the intention that the clothes should have the same transportation impact when being "recycled" as when they were first manufactured?

The transportation impact is minuscule either way, so I don't think it matters which side is slightly bigger or smaller?

Yeah. I guess you attacked the point that was easiest to refute. (Without adding any actual numbers though.)

For the sake of the discussion, it was a mistake to include it.

> Also the clothes industry!

Compare Bangladesh: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Bangladesh has seen enormous economic growth in the past few decades, largely on the back of textile 'sweatshops' and also ship breaking. Real average Bangladeshis are better off as a result.

Granted, they went from 'dirt poor' to 'poor'. But that's still an enormous improvement. And more of a (relative) improvement than most other countries during the same time; and more of an improvement than in almost all other places throughout history.

And “magic pipes”!

"The West". LOL. What makes you think rich countries in the Middle East or East/South East Asia are any different? They are not.

The trajectory of the last French air carriers - the Foch and the Clémenceau - is a good illustration of the mess it can be, even for former military flagships.

Those military ships are of course full of asbestos - more than usual - and heavy metals.

The Clémenceau was supposed to be dismantled in Spain, but when the marine nationale saw it being towed to Turkey, they cancelled the contract and got it back.

Then another consortium offered to dismantle it in Alang but with special precautions. The boat left, was blocked by NGOs, was blocked by Egypt when it tried to cross Suez, then India refused to accept it. It came back to France after rounding all of Africa.

It was eventually dismantled in the UK, after a few more protests (the river Tess had to be deepened, and the hull had to be cleaned up of any invasive organism)

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9mant%C3%A8lement_du_p...

The Foch was sold to Brazil, and after much of the same drama, was eventually sunk in the Atlantic.

Merci for sharing this tragic part of French history. I wished budgets on such project included the dismantling of it at the end.

Alang is an interesting place to look at in Google maps. Make sure to check the street views.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Alang,+Gujarat,+India/@21....

Very interesting. I spotted quite a lot of totally enclosed lifeboats along the main street, including what looked like a business selling enclosed lifeboats. I didn't imagine there was a used market for enclosed lifeboats but a google lead me to Alibaba and they go for hundreds to 10s or 1000s of dollars.

I wonder how different each of the wikipedias are between languages. There's barely any info about the dismantling of the Clémenceau in the English wikipedia. I occasionally read the Spanish language wikipedia for South American history as it is more complete. As a someone fluent in both languages I feel like I have access to more knowledge.

How much knowledge is "hidden" in other languages on Wikipedia?

Would be cool for translators to copy portions between languages. They must do this already, right?

For this kind of stuff there is usually much more in the language of origin. I’d suspect the French article have more details on this since it was the French navy.

It is already the case. I've seen several French Wikipedia articles with a banner warning the content was merely lifted from the English article.

> I wonder how different each of the wikipedias are between languages.

> As a someone fluent in both languages I feel like I have access to more knowledge.

Computers, like Google Translate, are pretty good these days for something like Wikipedia articles.

These are probably taken at the Alang (India) and Chittagong (Bangladesh) Ship Breaking Yards, where they run the ships aground at high tide. Both visible on Google Maps satelite view:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/21%C2%B023'21.9%22N+72%C2%...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/22%C2%B027'24.5%22N+91%C2%...

>where they run the ships aground at high tide.

Probably a dumb question but what do they do on the next high tide? Wouldn't it interfere with their work?

They just take a break from the work? The hull of the ship that came in on the last high tide is now broken, it's not going to float away.

A ship running to shore at full speed has quite a lot of inertia. And then they winch it further. So pretty much only the end is dealing with tides.

Ahhh, ok. So they ram it in and then winch it up closer to work on it. That makes sense. These things are huge and it would seem to take a bit of time to safely break them down.

Safely?! Ha ha, unless you mean safe for the ship ...

They start with superstructures etc, making the ships lighter. Then they pull them further up the coast as needed.

Ekaros answer is definitive, but if you didn't have those facilities and wanted to buy more time, you could beach the boat during a high spring tide (which is when the solar tides and lunar tides are in line), which would only occurs twice each lunar month

I've seen the video. They drop an anchor and attach it to shore with a chain.

Some photos show the work continuing even with a ship surrounded by a little water.

I'm not in a position to look right now, but I'm pretty sure there's video of this happening out on YouTube. It's pretty fearsome seeing these big vessels coming in under power and crashing into the shore. Tons of inertia.

I doubt it's the video you were referring to, but it reminded me of when YouTuber bald and bankrupt was in Bangladesh: https://youtu.be/iq_76McFVLo?t=1260&si=WT-yCAefa1vIHXli

There are a number of shipbreaking videos and documentaries on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kDbwE7mFck

I'm sure you mean this one. There are probably others though.

This video gave me chills...

Thanks for that, some pretty cool street view panoramas at that location

> where they run the ships aground at high tide.

Read an article about this years ago. It seems they had special pilots to do this. Like wetting the bed on purpose, trained ships captains had a very hard time intentionally running ships aground.

If anyone is interested in a game themed shipbreaking/dismantling things, check out Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Instead of oceanic ships one gets to take apart spaceships and sort the salvages like garbage-recycle-compost.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbre...

I really like the gameplay of it, but the story actively makes it a worse product, somehow.

What is it about the story that puts you off? I might agree it’s not a masterpiece of interactive storytelling, but given the subject matter I’m hard press to find a different kind of story you could tell with it.

How forced and in your face it is, only to then remove the "working yourself out of debt" part at the end and just destroying most of the reason to keep playing, at least for me. And everything being unskippable while you are stuck inside the small room unable to do anything but listen to it.

I wanted to love that game. I gave it a good go, but just could not bring myself to want to play it.

I think the story and narrative just put me right off of it from the very outset for some reason. I don't know why but it was a total turn-off.

Also the zero-G thing made sense from a setting-perspective, but the slowly-slowly-drifting-around with limited control was just frustrating and infuriating in equal measure. I am sure it is "realistic" but then this is a game about being in space tearing space ships apart so who cares about realism? If I was able to do things faster and with more "arcade" style movement then I am sure it would have been a blast, but slowly drifting about in treacle was not fun.

I'm a big fan. For me a lot of the fun was mastering that movement system. The way the game is set up it incentives you to be fast and take risks. To get around faster you have to treat yourself the same as the chunks of the ship, using the tether to pull yourself in. You can also magnetize yourself to the hull and spider around like that. With upgrades and practice I was able to get most of the smallest level of ships done in one in game day.

What in particular turned you off, the capitalistic nature of the story?

From the Steam page, this is how the game publisher describes the game:

> We offer you the privilege of helping turn humanity’s past into its future by salvaging ships in zero-g. Each one is a puzzle, and how you solve it is up to you! Carve your way in, salvage everything, and maximize your profit.

Seems relatively vanilla, besides the capitalism part but most people are relatively accepting of that edge nowadays I feel like.

Sounds interesting. I really liked (and like) Homeworld, not only because of the really captivating setting and gameplay, but also because of the stories. They really add meaning to a game: it wasn't just a few ships skirmishing, it was (if I remember correctly?) a civilization searching for their home and fighting for survival, while facing various challenges and contact with other civilizations (or were they other species?).

Story and setting makes a ton of difference to how much I enjoy a game...

I am not sure really - I think there was a lot of strongly-accented "yee haw cowboy" type stuff from the NPC voices? Kinda wildwest in space? That is where my mind goes when I think of it, and I remember a distinct feeling of dislike.

Do you really have such a strong aversion towards regional American accents?

I think you're thinking of Breathedge, not Hardspace: Shipbreaker.

No, the foreman like character in Hardspace has a heavy Southern accent and the soundtrack has a western tone

Unashamed capitalism is a bit of a trope in sci-fi, reminiscent of Starship Troopers (the film) and Helldivers (spreading Democracy in space!); it being over the top is its own kind of criticism.

It wastes a fair amount of your time blabbing on about this cartoonishly evil company, but that evil company has no real effect on the gameplay, so it's just distracting and irritating. And it's not some sly or evocative social commentary; it's ham-fisted and over-the-top. It almost feels like listening to the caricatured horribleness of this company is an extra price you have to pay to play the underlying game.

The gameplay itself is just great though.

Which, BTW, is a parable about labor rights and how debt is used to control workers.

I've played through this game twice I loved it so much. It's a great podcast game, too.

Wow Ed Burtynsky on the front page of Hacker News! I worked on his film Anthropocene (https://theanthropocene.org/film/). Also recommend the film Manufactured Landscapes by him, which he also gave a TED talk about (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Dd4k63-zM&t=930s).

I adore this movie as well as his other movie "Watermark"! Any anecdotes you are willing to share from the set?

Just that his entire team is truly passionate about the work.

Manufactured Landscapes was incredible.

A few comments here mentioned that old ships being broken up have a lot of asbestos. I would have assumed this would have been an issue on very old ships, but some cursory web searching suggests that it's still prevalent even in relatively new ships.

IMO rules (https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Safety/Pages/Asbestos.aspx ) say roughly that:

- Ships built before 2002 may contain asbestos, but it should be "managed properly".

- Ships built after 2002 can contain asbestos in a few specific applications.

- Ships built after 2011 can't contain any asbestos, period.

Unfortunately, it seems reality fails to follow even these modest regulations. One can assume that "managed properly" doesn't include having workers with no PPE ripping out asbestos insulation and then just leaving it lying around on the beach, as seems to be the norm in 3rd world ship breaking. And not only in breaking up ships, even newly built ships can contain asbestos. E.g. from https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/more-than-65-of-...

> John Rendi, General Manager, Environmental Services, Maritec, said: “Although newbuild ships are delivered with an asbestos free declaration, in many cases asbestos has been found onboard during subsequent surveys, or port state inspections."

Maritime regulation is hard when it operates in the space between states.

Asbestos in particular is such a temptation in manufacturing because it's just so useful and cheap. An argument can probably be made that handled properly it saves more lives than it harms just because it's such a good fire resistant insulator.

This might be true in fact, if asbestos use is limited to applications where it's the obvious best choice.

But it's uncomfortable to run a simple utilitarian calculus when, as in this case, the groups it benefits (sailors) and those it harms (shipbreakers) are disjoint. Leads one to want to find a solution which is more straightforwardly positive-sum.

I don't think those building/owning the ships care much about the benefit to sailors, just that the ships are less likely to be severely damaged by fire.

It wasn't a comment about motivations, but rather, benefit. Sailors fairly clearly benefit from not being on a ship which catches fire. If you'd like to add the financial balance of owners and builders to the benefit side, feel free.

Agreed. I'm not advocating for use of asbestos given its tendency to end up in places humans breathe.

While I don't have any insider info on the behind the scenes wrangling wrt IMO regulations, I would assume that asbestos wouldn't have been prohibited unless satisfactory alternatives weren't available. E.g. mineral wool, glass wool, and Zetex fabric are AFAIU widely used as fireproof insulation materials all over the world, presumably also in 'asbestos-free' ships.

Shipbreaking is an absurdly dangerous job, and the "Brothers" sequence in Workingman's Death covers this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workingman%27s_Death

I have not keeping track of this anymore, but, from the last time I read on this:

A LOT of people go disabled, amputee from freak accidents, on a regular basis, and receive NO support from the owners, and life expectancy go really, really low.

The whole business is controlled by a group of people, who have no ethical sense, and environmental concern, and these people are so powerful, no one can do anything to them.

There's no pollution control here, so all the harmful chemicals go into the sea, and land, which basically have made the whole seaside area unusable for crops, which mean, people who were farmers can't farm anymore, and have to work in these yards. And die pretty fast. And obviously, as the chemicals are getting mixed in the land, it is affecting the people too. But again these people are so powerful, no one can say anything about it.

Is it an inherently dangerous job or is it dangerous because of how it is managed?

Both. With western automation, rules and PPE it would be no worse than building the things in the first place

It's probably worse than building them. When building a ship, we have a pretty good idea of how brand new materials for construction behave and have an exact plan for putting them together. Shipbreaking, on the other hand, involves chopping up enormous chunks of rusty steel of unknown but generally terrible condition (that's why they're getting broken up), meaning they can fail in unexpected ways at any time, plus you're basically flying blind because you don't have the original plans etc.

I went to my hometown in Pakistan a couple years ago and made my way to one of these yards and recorded this. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/C8VZfLzWYTc?si=0bXNEQDlqj6J4bKn

Amazing footage. I very much enjoyed! I will share this with my kids as well.

Someone posted this hour long documentary on shipbreaking in the comments a while back. Both mortifying and fascinating to see this industry up close.

https://youtu.be/5jdEG_ACXLw

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.

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?

>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.

VICE made a nice video on the shipbreaking here a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU0DXdAhdsA

That is wild. Could not believe how many people were wearing sandals or completely barefoot.

Bare feet are the least of your problems when somebody drops a couple of tons of rusty steel on your head.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that using basic protective gear, like every heavy industry worker in developed countries, wouldn't reduce other kinds of injuries.

The threat of metal dropping on top of one employee doesn't remove the need for foot protection for the rest.

The entire industry is wild. Old ships have a lot of asbestos, plastic is burnt in heaps right next to working people. Life expectancy in Alang et al. isn't great.

That’s most of the world. The idea of worker safety and protection is the exception, not the rule.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel “Ship Breaker” deserves a mention here. It’s set in Paolo’s dystopian solarpunk universe, where old tankers are cut up to extract the last tons of fossil fuels from their hold, and it really emphasises how dangerous and unrewarding of a job it is.

Yep. It's Alang-style shipbreaking, but on the beaches of a near-future Louisiana.

A harrowing near-future dystopian tale, definitely worth a read. His "Windup Girl" is better; "Ship Breaker" is like a YA version of Windup Girl, IMHO. His "Water Knife" is also quite interesting, imagining a future where climate change has dried up water supply to the southwestern US, and the states have militarized against each other.

I lived near Alang (India) and visited the shipbreaking operations a lot. For me as a kid, the best part was these ships had olives (in brine) and we could only get them from Alang.

Happy to answer any questions you guys might have.

Do you mean there was food still on board when the ships arrived?

There is a ton of food on board when ships arrive. Remember, the ships have crews and they are working when they arrive. In fact you could find all sorts of food items and kitchen equipments that you would find in a professional kitchen (a lot of restaurants in our area just got the kitchen equipment for cheap).

I've watched a few shipbreaking documentaries, they show that near the breaking operations there are large flea markets or bazaars where you can buy pretty much anything of any value that has been salvaged from the ships.

- I've heard these breaking yards are very toxic. Do you have any memory of this?

- olives in brine? Like leftover food supplies and somehow that was a staple?

- What was the visit like? Stand on a platform and watch? Guided tour? Freedom to run amok & don't get in the way/yourself killed?

- What were the local opinions on the industry?

- There are all sorts of toxins on the ships. Crude oil which drives the ship is one component but the government asks to get rid of it first as long as the ship arrives. Next big one is asbestos which is abundant and not removed by the government. It lies around. I am sure there would be more of them

- Yeah olives in brine in a sealed food tin. We did not eat a lot of fish back then but there were food tins of all sorts on those ships. I personally only picked olives.

- A visit could be arranged if you knew anyone who managed the shipbreaking. If the ship is not broken yet, they show you how to climb the ship (mostly vertical steel ladders). If the breaking has started, they don't allow you to climb the ship but then you can roam around the site and inspect all the goods removed from the ship and buy it at whatever price u feel.

- Local population was not that educated. People did not take the businesses as badly as we treat them online. They feel it's a normal industry like anything else and gives employment so they are mostly fine with it. If some worker loses their life (a few do every year) the families are compensated to the tune of $1000 to $2000 and life goes on. (sad I know)

> People did not take the businesses as badly as we treat them online. They feel it's a normal industry like anything else and gives employment so they are mostly fine with it.

Same as many jobs in the last century in the west: coal mining, steel mills and other large industrial operations, much heavy construction. Not that it was OK or should be acceptable but it does seem to be the way these things go.

I met a captain whose job was to drive these kinds of vessels up onto the strand at Cox's bazaar. He said it was the saddest job he'd ever had. A lifetime of avoiding irretrievable beaching and then.. get a good line, and ram it up a beach to a final, terminal stop.

Reminds me of the "Cash for Clunkers" program:

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

They would destroy the engine by replacing the oil with sodium silicate, and then running it until it seized. I watched a video of this, and it was so sad watching a completely working car be killed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IcIxhd8ks

Steve McCurry also has a bunch of shots on this. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a link that conveniently has them all in one placed.

https://www.peterfetterman.com/artists/146-steve-mccurry/wor...

https://x.com/McCurryStudios/status/575680978997354496/photo...

https://www.sundaramtagore.com/exhibitions/steve-mccurry2/se...

There is a building being torn down in Austin that reminds me of shipbreaking every time I drive past it. Specifically it reminds me of the game Hardspace: Shipbreakers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKX31xawWQk

https://www.statesman.com/picture-gallery/news/2024/03/05/fr...

“The original idea for the shipbreaking started a long time ago. About four years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill I heard a radio program where they were talking about the danger of single-hulled ships. The insurance companies were refusing to cover them after 2004, which would force all these ships to be decommissioned. Only double-hulled ships would be allowed on the open sea to prevent that kind of catastrophe from happening again.

What went off in my mind was, wouldn’t it be interesting to see where these massive vessels will be taken apart. It would be a study of humanity and the skill it takes to dismantle these things. I looked upon the shipbreaking as the ultimate in recycling, in this case of the largest vessels ever made. It turned out that most of the dismantling was happening in India and Bangladesh so that's where I went.” — Edward Burtynsky

When you look at it, it’s just him. It could be totally different for someone else but it. Yes, these facts are true, but this is only his point of view.

I think there's some pretty sublime shots of shipbreaking in Burtynsky's manufactured landscapes. Reminds of that scene of Kirk riding his motorcycle in Star Trek 2009 with the foggy silhouette of a titanic starship in the background of middle America ship yard. I love the vibes of seeing the absurd scale of human construction.

I feel like the music marries well with the somewhat depressingly industrial hardcore work on display in the ship-breaking clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVm8G0ipETc

(El Rodeo by Kyuss)

On the topic of music, I first learned of shipbreaking from Mark Knopfler's song, 'So Far from the Clyde.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9OIucgb_4Q

To stray further off topic (because I like this tangent), both of my parents were fans of Dire Straits and I was too young to really get it, but I've been reminded of Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler three or four times in the last couple of weeks, and the more of his body of work I come across the more obvious the consistency of the quality in both music and poetry.

With a strong risk of hyperbole: The sound of a guitar string plucked by Mark Knopfler can't be mistaken for any other guitarist.

> The sound of a guitar string plucked by Mark Knopfler can't be mistaken for any other guitarist.

I'd say there's only a mild risk of hyperbole; he really does have a unique sound.

Lots of companies do not want to deal with the cleanup of capital-intensive projects that have outlived their usefulness. For example, windmills for power. Now governments are starting to require bonds for disassembly and removal before approving these items for construction. I am not an economist but this seems like a reasonable light regulation solution to me. And since ships have to come from somewhere, maybe the right place to assess these is with the shipbuilders. Them the financial responsibility of the last owner is only to get the ship to its agreed on decommissioning location rather than having to pay the breaker or just abandon it.

There was an AlJazeera docu about in the series of "Workingman's Death" that had amazing footage on a ship recycling yard in Pakistan.

They've since put it on private, sadly. See it being private here:

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/working-mans-death/2012/1/...

If you are interested in this, you may want to ask them to make it public again as the quality was absolutely stunning. Good interviews. Really getting into the skin of the workers lives there.

If you haven't played Hardspace Shipbreakers yet, you should. I honestly wish they would make it a required play for high schoolers learning about workers rights. Its a similar story just set in space.

These could be Battlefield 2042 screenshots of the "Discarded" map

Reminded me of BF:BC2 Atacama Desert

Same here. At first I genuinely thought it’s some screenshots from that map.

Says much about how advanced games have become graphics-wise. If only everything else didn’t become completely enshittified.

> ―it is as if the vastness of their perspective somehow opens onto the longer view of things.

I got some odd feeling of talasaphobia from seeing them, maybe that's just me. I'm also curious how much money India makes in their part for the deconstruction of theses.

> You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to www.edwardburtynsky.com

I wrote a poem inspired by these images when I was 17 (over a decade ago!) which won second prize in a national competition. Seeing them again here takes me back.

Manufactured Landscapes is one of the most impactful things I’ve ever watched. Strong recommend.

Eerie, striking, and dystopian like a post-apocalyptic aquatic junkyard. Must be incredible in person.

I would feel very anxious there. The ships are so huge, it's terrifying.

Glad to see many comments recognize what a bad thing this is. The photographer is sadly insouciant of how many poor people it kills and the terrible ecosystem damage it creates. Read more about it at https://shipbreakingplatform.org/

Given how much of Burtynsky's work centers on the effects of human beings on each other and our world, I don't think it's fair to describe him as being indifferent to human suffering. Instead, I think he maintains an almost journalistic distance from it, and lets his work speak for itself.

https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/the-anthropocene-pr...

https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/in-the-wake-of-prog...

https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/urban-m...

That's helpful. On first look through the website, I found no mention of the tragic human and environmental cost.

My understanding is that any recycling advantage is dwarfed by the environmental impact of the ship breaking process.

This presumably inspired some of the scenes in the Star Wars series Andor.

Perhaps also BR 2047

The last two pictures are the most impactful.

Shipbreaking, not to be confused with Shipwrecking which was the legendary practice of costal piracy where ships were lured to the rocks by fake lighthouses as depicted by Alfred Hitchcock in the 1939 classic Jamaica Inn.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0031505/?ref_=nm_flmg_c_40_dr

These pics are 2000 (Chittagong, Bangladesh) posted around 2009 as you can see from the low rez. The photographer has a doco - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0832903/

As others are posting there are better videos / pics out.

Good book, not too long, easy read - "Ship Breaker" by "Paolo Bacigalupi" - https://booko.us/9780316056199/Ship-Breaker I think cyberpunk, Amazon says dystopian romance.

Have read Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife[1], Tool of War[2], and The Tangled Lands[3]. Recommended!

[1]: https://booko.us/w/7764514/The-Water-Knife_by_Paolo-Bacigalu...

[2]: https://booko.us/w/9720770/Tool-of-War_by_Paolo-Bacigalupi

[3]: https://booko.us/w/9323748/The-Tangled-Lands_by_Paolo-Baciga...*

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