99% Invisible - 441- Abandoned Ships

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

If you look around you right now, about 90% of what you’re looking at came to you onboard a cargo ship—your television, your sofa, most of the stuff in your kitchen. But as the number of these cargo ships has increased, so has a problem: workers stuck on ships that have been completely abandoned by the owners, leaving them stranded out at sea without basic supplies like food. In some cases, seafarers (that's the industry term for cargo ship workers) have been stuck on these abandoned vessels without enough supplies for months, or even years.Abandoned ShipsThis episode was produced in collaboration with the podcast Kerning Cultures, a podcast that makes audio stories - like this one - from the Middle East and North Africa.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Just on the horizon, you probably can't quite make it out in Shasha. This is Andy Baharman, recording himself with his phone as he stands on a cargo ship off the coast of Shasha, a city in the United Arab Emirates. It's in some ways an adelic setting. It's 40 odd degrees, sea is calm, the sky is blue. Andy is the regional director at an organization called Mission to Sea Fairs. In part of his job is to deliver things like rice, blankets, water, and sim cards to workers who are trapped on abandoned cargo ships. It is literally me and typically one of the member of our team on a small speedboat, pulling up alongside and climbing up a 15 foot rope ladder to get to the ship.

In some cases, the people that Andy tries to help have been stuck on these abandoned vessels without enough supplies for months or even years. And we're loading provisions yet again onto this vessel that's been here now for more than two years. Yeah, we've all been unlocked down around different parts of the world. Just multiply that by, you know, ten and you'll get a sense of what these guys are facing all the time. I mean, I would sometimes say it's like prison, but you don't know how long

the sentence is. Right now, there are about 50 of these situations on the International Transport Federation's official database. But a lot of these cases go unreported, and so the real number is probably much higher. That's producer Alex Etaq, who brought us this story from the podcast, Croning Cultures. Andy works mostly in the United Arab Emirates,

but there are abandon ships all over the world, particularly in the Middle East. And the people on them do describe feeling like they're in prison, surrounded on all sides by water and unable to leave because of the strange legal nomads land that exist for workers on these ships. This is Mehmet Galshin. He spoke to us in Turkish and we had an actor

voice his lines in English. On December 17th, 2019, I joined the ship. The ship that I stayed on as prisoner. When the Met first boarded a cargo ship called the Keenan Metae in 2019, he thought he was signing up for a pretty standard seven-month contract. Then he'd be back home with his four-year-old daughter and his dog. The Keenan Mettae employed 24 other seafarers. That's the industry term for these cargo ship workers. And Mehmet was third in command just below the captain and the first officer.

At first everything was good. I had everybody's support as my crew. Everybody followed me. hierarchies are actually a crucial part of what keeps work running smoothly on a ship. The crew is in a constant battle to keep seawater from eroding the vessel, and they work in a grueling schedule, cleaning, painting, and de-rusting everything, and then doing it all again. My Met had no idea the calamity that was in store for him, but in retrospect, there were a few red flags, like sometimes the workers didn't get paid on time, and the ship, which was built in 1990, was a little rundown. It was an old ship, it wasn't a very well kept ship from the beginning.

It was in bad shape. And then on what was supposed to be the last leg of Momet's trip, the ship pulled into a port at the mouth of the Suez Canal in Egypt, with around 7,000 tons of cement to deliver. But when they arrived at the port, they were told by the staff manager that the owner of their ship, a Turkish company called Bloodwind Marine SA, didn't have the money to pay their salaries or the port fees, and that they'd have to wait. Momet hadn't been paid since January, and now it was June. So he and some other crew members decided to protest by stopping a lot of the basic maintenance work

that they were doing to keep the ship in reasonable shape. They told us, look, this will bankrupt us. What you're doing, the owners in a situation where he can't pay his debts, don't do this. Mehmet says that the owners made various threats in text messages to the crew. They said these things aren't easy, you'll be left in a very bad situation in there, of course they threatened. Also they did a lot of ganging up, they set the Egyptian port officials on us, they told us if you stop work, they cleared the captain, the second officer and the head engineer,

as terrorists, we'll charge you with terrorism and throw you in jail. Eventually though, the owners just went silent. They stopped communicating with the ship entirely. They started not answering our calls, so they left us, they abandoned us. They become abandoned because that word, abandoned actually takes on its real meaning, nobody cares about them,

and they are truly abandoned by their state, by everybody else. This is Laleh Halili, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University in London. She just finished writing a book about the shipping industry in the Gulf called Synos of War and Trade. I mean, this is kind of like a very basic, maybe stupid question, but like, why can't they kind of just get off the ship at the port? It's not a stupid question at all.

So there are several things. One is the international treaty obligations, requires affairs to stay with a ship for safety reasons, etc. etc. And if they get off the ship, they actually forfeit their wages. So in many instances, CFERRs end up having to stay on the ship if they want to be able to get paid. Ship abandonment tends to happen with smaller companies operating on really tight profit margins. They run into financial trouble and suddenly they can't come up with the money to pay the costs involved in running a ship, fuel, port fees and seafarers salaries.

Generally, seafarers can make anywhere from $50,000 to $6,000 a month. It's more than most of them feel they can make in their home countries, which is why they're willing to put up with a job where they won't see their families from on end. And a lot of sea fairers take out loans against the money they expect to earn working on ships. So in some cases, they start these contracts already in debt. Beyond wanting to wait on the ship to hopefully eventually get paid, LaLay says that a lot of countries just won't allow these abandoned seafarers to come on to land. If they've not been paid their wages, and if they don't have a ticket home,

that means that essentially these are going to be people that are abandoned indigents in a state that doesn't probably want to support them. Essentially, no one wants to claim responsibility for these abandoned crews. And when the owners disappear, it can be hard to figure out what higher entity to appeal to, because the ships are often flying what's called flags of convenience. I mean, it's a terrible thing, but essentially what it is intended to do is to avoid regulation and to avoid any kind of good service or virtuous treatment of the environment or the workers. Until the 1920s, ships generally had to follow the regulations on working conditions and pay and taxes

according to their country of origin. So a British ship flying a British flag, they'd follow UK laws, American ship, American laws. But in the American prohibition in the 1920s, ship flying a British flag, they'd follow UK laws, American ship, American laws. But in the American prohibition in the 1920s, ship owners started to realize that they could evade US laws against transporting alcohol if they registered their ships in Panama. And by doing it this way,

they also avoided a bunch of US taxes and minimum wage requirements. More and more ships started to do the same, and so flags of convenience became a thing. Today, around three quarters of ships worldwide fly a flag of convenience. It isn't illegal to do this. It's not even really a loophole. It's just a norm in the shipping industry. The only ships that don't do it are the ones that do most of their business in the US and Europe where there are stricter rules. in Europe where there are stricter rules. In Mehmet's case, his ship, the Khenon Mette, was owned by a Turkish company but was registered

under a Panamanian flag. Bloodwind Marine SA, the owner of Mehmet's ship, doesn't have a website. They aren't listed in directories, so they're basically unreachable. And by the middle of June of 2020, they'd completely stopped communicating with the crew. But Mehmet thought surely the owners aren't just going to walk away from their ship. At the end of the day, the ship was worth around $2.5 million. And what we were owed was about $120,000. So we were thinking they will give us our money.

Then when the company stopped answering, we thought they were bluffing the first month. The crew sat on the ship and waited, hoping for some kind of resolution. As June rolled into July, things got harder and the weather got hotter. The time wouldn't pass on the ship. It was really hard. It was unbelievably hard because you can't go out. You're always on the same quarters. And then even if you got out, it was unbelievably hard because you can't go out, you're always on the same quarters.

And then even if you got out, it was really hot. I mean, really, we experienced summer heat waves there. So the humidity, the dents, the filth. The crew couldn't go onto land, but they could see the shore of Egypt shimmering on the horizon. Where we stopped, there was the desert, what can I tell you? I mean, there was nothing beautiful about it. Nearby, there was a soil that has the raw material of cement.

There's a lot of that in Egypt, so they were mining that in the mountains. And they were always doing some explosions with dynamite. Like sometimes when the wind blew, the dust would get really bad. We would be all be covered in dirt. The crew kept trying to contact the ship owners to no avail. They also contacted the company that had ordered the 7,000 tons of cement on their ship to see if there was anything they could do.

But that didn't help either. Eventually, they also reached out to some of their own consulates in Egypt. For my mate, that was the Turkish consulate, but no one would help. As he kept on dragging on, we started to understand this series and this sort of didn't matter. The crew didn't realize it at the time, but they were entering into a kind of sunk-cost black hole. The more time that passed, the more they felt, like, all that time would be wasted if they got off the ship now

without being paid. If they could wait, there was a good chance the insurance company would pay out or the owners would be taken to court and forced to pay their salaries. This had happened in abandoned shipcases before, but it's impossible to know how long it might take and whether waiting is the right decision. And it can quickly escalate to go beyond three to six months, to 12 months, two years. And it's absolutely incredible how often that seems to happen. That's Andy Bowman again from Mission to See Ferris. Andy wasn't involved with Mehmet's ship

because it wasn't in the geographic area where he works. But he's seen these cases go on for a very long time. Once it becomes a stalemate, the crew say, well, I can't go home with nothing because I've now waited 12 months, 24 months. Besides delivering basic supplies to abandoned ships, Andy also tries to track down the owners of these vessels to get them to take responsibility for their crews. But he doesn't have a ton of tools at his disposal, just the phone and emails, so it can be a very

slow process. What do they say? What is their defence? I have definitely had cases where I've sat in a meeting with an owner. This was one specific case that happened last year with an owner in the United Arab Emirates. And he has made it absolutely clear that the seafarers are the last thing he's thinking about. He is worried about the mortgage that he has, other creditors that he has to pay, and he almost said, and he didn't quite say these, but almost, the seafarers are just a commodity, with everything else that needs to be sorted out. By August of 2020, things had gotten more dire on Momet Ship.

They couldn't pull into port to restart provisions without paying the port fees, which they didn't have. And they were running out of food. The crew was rationing. So we were distributing the food by one by one. And you get three apples, you get three apples, you get two pairs, I get one cucumber, it came to that level. I mean, in the end, there's a saying, all problems on the ship start from the kitchen.

It's really true. A hunger, as you know, is the beginning of everything. I mean, people were at their boiling point. Fights were starting to come up even from... Why did you look at me that way? Why did you look at me this way? Mehmet said eventually the official hierarchies on the ship broke down.

It didn't matter who had been in charge before, there was a new order beginning to form. The superior subordinate relationship, it was, we lost that. And then racial grouping started. Everybody was hanging out with their own nationalities. And at the end there were groupings in between Everybody was hanging out with their own nationalities and at the end there were groupings in between those racial groups. I mean the Indians had different groups

amongst each other. The Turks had different groups amongst each other. The Ukrainians had had the same so on. So we kept on being more divided. By this point Mehmet did want to leave the ship. He was like, I don't care what happens to my salary. I just want to be off. But no one would join him, and he was scared he might be put in jail. He couldn't face going through that alone. I didn't want to do anything alone because I didn't know what would happen to me if I was alone.

I mean, I couldn't take the risk. Still, he constantly and obsessively thought about getting off the ship and concocted some irrational plans. It will get bad. You get so suffocated on the ship, you start not being able to think logically because your psychology deteriorates so much. You're thinking, what can I do? There was a beach about three miles away that he thought about swimming too, or when other Turkish ships came by,

he thought about somehow jumping onto one of those and stirring away, but he didn't. I was talking to my family, my sister, she was stopping me. And my friends were like, there was no need just to hang on a bit longer, this two shell pass kind of thing. And they supported me, my friends, and my family.

Thanks to them. I mean, that's how I hung on. The crew of the abandoned Kenan Nette did also have support from one organization, who first heard about their case shortly after they were abandoned. Let me switch off my mobile. Switch off this mobile because it never stops. It never stops. Wait, why? What's going on on it? There's messages, messages, there's requests from seafares for assistance. it. This is Muhammad Arachedi. He's the Arab world and Iran coordinator at the International Transport Workers Federation, the ITF, which is basically a labour organisation that offers

help where it can to abandon seafarers. While Andy is often on board with crews offering supplies and moral support, Muhammad is more focused on the bureaucratic end of the problem. He spends his days in an office, doggedly phoning and emailing ship owners and organizing legal cases against them. Honestly, every day I've got a good and big list to tackle. When we spoke, he just got back from dropping his kids at school.

And part of his routine each morning is to sift through all of these messages, abandon ship cases where he's been asked to help, and figure out what he can do. But obviously he can't deal with all of them at once. Like Andy, Mohamed tries to reach out to the owners of these ships. And when he can't, he'll start putting pressure

on whatever country the ship's flag represents. But he hits a lot of dead ends or people saying that they'll look into it, but nothing happens. You insist that these people, this seafarers have no water. This is emergency, and you still receive that we are looking at it

and that someone will be in touch with you. So who's the sponsor of it is this? When Muhammad first heard about Mehmet's ship, the Keenan Mete, and all of the crew abandoned on it, it was June of 2020. He reached out to Bloodwind Marine SA, which owned the ship, and he said that initially they were somewhat responsive.

Eventually, though, they completely dropped off the radar, and Muhammad didn't hear from them again. Luckily, the ship had insurance, and Mohamed started lobbying them to help. ITF put pressure. By putting pressure on the insurance company, they got us four months of pay. ITF did that. Mohamed got the insurance to cover basic supplies for the ZFIRESTUCK on board, and four months of lost wages for the crew, around $120,000 in total.

But when he began to arrange for the seafarers to go home, he ran into a wall of complications from the Egyptian port authorities. They didn't want to risk the ship being left in the port unmanned and totally abandoned, because then it'd become their problem. Ultimately, Mehmet's ship's case went to court in Egypt. Muhammad's organization,

the ITF, appointed and paid for their lawyer. And then, after seven months of Muhammad and the crew trudging through this bureaucracy, hundreds of phone calls and WhatsApp messages, court dates and dead ends and a few false starts, it was decided that most of the seafarers should be allowed to leave in phases. Mehmet gives a ton of credit to Muhammad and the ITF for finally getting them off of the ship. I mean, if it wasn't for ITF, you would probably have been doomed. Maybe I'll still be there.

Maybe you would have to stay for another six months. In the last week of December, right before Christmas, Mehmet finally stepped off the Keenan-Methae in Egypt and got on a flight home to surprise his family. I didn't want to get their hopes up, so not to destroy their hopes, I didn't tell them. I made it to surprise. Eventually, all but one of the crew members onboard the Keenan Meta were repatriated to

their various home countries. But the situation still hasn't been totally resolved. Because of the rules in Egypt, the captain is still there, but he has been moved to a hotel near the port. Muhammad told me that the captain won't be able to go home until the ship has been auctioned off to a new owner, a process that could take several more months. These days, Mahmet is trying to figure out how to earn a living in Odessa, Ukraine, where he lives. If he can possibly avoid it, he never wants to set foot on another cargo ship again.

After all this happened, I'm going to do whatever I have to do as far as I can. I'm not thinking of going back to ships. I have aged three or five years. I mean, I feel that. I know that, too. Before I joined the ship, I was really good. My appearance, stuff was good. But after I went through like this, I feel like I got old when I look in the mirror. The Met's case was actually not as drawn out as other people I spoke to for this story.

There was Vikash who spent nearly three years on a ship off the coast of the United Arab Emirates before he could get off. And Samik, whose crew was stuck off the coast of the United Arab Emirates before he could get off, and Samik, whose crew were stuck off the coast of Beirut for over a year, and in their case, they were living on a ship that most of the time had no electricity. Andy from Mission to Sea Ferris told me that one reason all of this takes so long to resolve is that the owners are trying to get the best price possible when they sell their ship, because they owe so many different people money. What sometimes happens is they say, well, the market is depressed at the moment, but markets

do fluctuate, so if we wait another six months, perhaps the market will improve and therefore we can get more for our ship And they tend to not think about the crew who will have to sit on the ship floating during that period of time Andy's working on a new law in the United Arab Emirates that would give port authorities power to take ownership of a vessel 60 days after abandonment That way they could auction it off and the seafarers could go home much quicker abandonment, that way they could auction it off and the seafarers could go home much quicker. If countries can enact regulations that ban things like flags of convenience and strengthen labor unions, that will also help ship abandonment cases go down. These are the

kinds of things that have already made abandonment relatively rare in Europe and the US. But until more of those bigger structural changes occur, the work for people like Muhammad and Andy will happen one ship at a time. Here we are, just a few miles out on yet another abandoned vessel. And we're just going to meet a couple of the crew. We're going to have a cup of tea with them

or drink some coffee or glass of cold water and just remind them that people are still thinking about them. This episode was produced by Alex Aitak and edited by Katie Mingle, owner, Akma Met, voiced from a Met's interview, started thanks to Charles Mainz and Delora Chellock. This episode was made in collaboration with Karning Cultures, that's Karning with a K. It's a podcast that makes audio stories like this one from the Middle East and North Africa.

When we come back, an abandoned ship starts a chain of events that ends in a huge tragedy. So producer Alex A.Tac is back and he's going to tell us how the massive explosion in a port in BeRoot in August of 2020 was connected to an abandoned ship. Yeah, so in November 2013, an old rusty worn out ship called the MV Rosas arrived at the port in downtown BeRoot carrying about 2,750 tons of this highly explosive fertilizer called ammonium nitrate. Yeah. So, not long after it arrived at the Port in Beirut, the ship was impounded by the Lebanese port authorities because basically it had quite a lot of things wrong with it.

A few crew members had to stay on board because, as you know, as we mentioned in the story, it's not legal for seafarers to just get off these ships and leave whatever is it on the ship, like unattended or unmanned as they call it in the port. Right. And so eventually the ship's owner, this Russian guy called Igo Gorkushkin, he went dark, stopped replying to emails, didn't answer phone calls.

Yeah, that's they do. Yeah, that's they do. His la lai chalili, who you heard in the story. Actually, the seafarers end up sitting on that ship for something like 10 months with all of that ammonium nitrate, essentially on a floating bomb. Oh my god. Yeah, and then after a court case, the ship's crew were eventually allowed to leave and they flew back home to Ukraine, which basically left the Lebanese authorities in charge of the dangerous cargo, and it was moved into a hangar in the port.

So the cargo was moved, but what happened to the actual ship itself? Yeah, so the ship just fell into disrepair, like it stayed where it was in the port and sank. Because as we mentioned in the story, like ships need this, you know, they need this kind of round the clock labor force, you know, constantly maintaining it to keep them in good shape.

And if they don't have that, they'll sink really quickly. That's amazing. I didn't know that the war on entropy was so constant and unrelenting. I mean, you mentioned it, but really, it just takes a few years and a ship just goes straight down. Yeah, I had no idea about that either. So the ship is at the bottom of the port, but all the explosive ammonium nitrate is in a hanger.

Yeah, just kept in a hanger in the port. It sat there basically for seven years unattended, and I mean, pretty much forgotten about, except for a small number of port officials and port staff. And there were warnings that it wasn't safe for it to just be sitting there in the state that it was in, and those warnings were constantly ignored by the authorities. Yeah, and it was not safe at all. Much of Beirut is shattered this morning by one of the most powerful peacetime explosions ever.

Look closely and you can see what happened. This is the port as a fire rages popping and sparking. The flames swell to a noisy roar until the second blast. Other angles show the blast. Yeah, August 4th, 2020, a small fire broke out in a hangar nearby where the ammonium nitrate was being stored. It made its way into the hangar and the ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded. It was an incredibly powerful blast. About 200 people died and thousands more were injured.

It basically leveled the whole part of the city near the port. There were reports that the blast tremors were felt as far away as cypress, which is about 150 miles away from Beirut. Wow. I mean, it's incredibly awful. And I was, I guess I didn't really know that it started with an abandon ship. I, you know, I, I'd heard about the Amonium Nitrate being stored. I knew that that was unsafe, but I didn't know why.

Yeah, I mean, obviously this is like a worst-case scenario, but I think it really does like illustrate why Port Authority's don't want the crew to leave these ships unmanned because Then the ship and everything on it really does become their responsibility to deal with and I mean in this case Like obviously they did an awful job dealing with it But it was their responsibility nonetheless after the crew left. Yeah, I mean, it has a whole new element to the consequence of this abandoned ship story that what's on the ship, you know, could be really dangerous and has to be dealt with with those countries. And so you kind of understand their position a little bit more as to why they can't just take on whatever is left for them

by some unscrupulous ship owner. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So after this mirrored explosion, did that change a little the dynamics of the abandoned ships? It definitely brought a lot more attention to the plight of like other crews who are abandoned on ships and also just like the issue of abandoned ships in general. From what I can tell it hasn't led to any like material changes in legislation,

in Lebanon or elsewhere in the Middle East, to kind of help stop abandoned shipcases before they happen. Thank you for bringing this story to us, Alex, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Roman. 99% of us were produced this week by Alex A. Tech, edited by Katie Mingle, mixed by Amita Ganatra, music by our director of Sound Sean Rial. Delaney Hall is the executive producer, Kurt Colstead is the digital director, the rest of the team, is Emmett Fitzgerald, Joe Rosenberg, Christopher Johnson, Lashemadon, Chris Baroube, Vivian Le, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a part of this Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north.

In beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show in Dorn Discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars on the show at 999PI Orc. We're on Instagram and ready to. You can find other shows I love from Stitcher on our website, 9iNiPI.org, including the Atlas Obscura podcast, a short daily celebration of the world's strange and wondrous places. Finally, to it, in every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org. They still haven't gotten me that proper audio logo, so... Tududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududududud