[HN Gopher] 'Ghost ship' washes up on Irish coast
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'Ghost ship' washes up on Irish coast
Author : RijilV
Score : 62 points
Date : 2020-02-18 07:09 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| iamthebot wrote:
| Can't they just ask the crew who the owner is?
| lb1lf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Pretty common for most employees to have no idea.
| jessaustin wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| _So what 's the story behind this mysterious ship without a
| crew?_
|
| This is actually the meaning of the term "ghost ship".
| pvaldes wrote:
| Saving dismantling expenses like a pro. Trow it into the nature
| and now is problem of another people.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Dismantling expenses should be a negative number for any mostly
| metal structure other than a nuclear reactor. All that steel is
| worth something.
| growlist wrote:
| Ships are often full of asbestos, hydraulic fluid, poisonous
| bilge etc., not to mention this one has been floating around
| without upkeep so might be structurally dubious. It's not as
| simple as
|
| 1. Climb onto ship 2. Fire up blowtorch 3. Profit
| iguy wrote:
| Sure, but there's an industry which does this. Although
| whether their price would pay for towing it from Ireland to
| Bangladesh or wherever, I have no idea.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Should only need to tow it to Turkey, maybe Libya.
| There's plenty of more local (than the far east) places
| to scrap a ship.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Fair good point. Maybe is not recyclable for some reason
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| 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.
| core-questions wrote:
| It might make the cost of doing / entering business too high,
| to the point where things can't actually proceed.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Right, that's the feature. If you can't afford to go into
| business without polluting (or otherwise externalizing
| costs), you can't afford to go into business. If we want to
| keep the barrier to entrepreneurship low, we can subsidize
| it, but we don't get to pretend that pollution/etc is free.
| It feels more expensive because we either raise the barrier
| to entrepreneurship or we raise taxes, but the reality is
| that we've been subsidized by a whole bunch of
| environmental debt.
| mindcrime wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
|
| [Interviewer:] So what do you do to protect the environment in
| cases like this?
|
| [Senator Collins:] Well, the ship was towed outside the
| environment.
|
| [Interviewer:] Into another environment....
|
| [Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it's been towed beyond the
| environment, it's not in the environment
|
| [Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another
| environment.
|
| [Senator Collins:] No, it's beyond the environment, it's not in
| an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.
|
| [Interviewer:] Well, what's out there?
|
| [Senator Collins:] Nothing's out there...
|
| [Interviewer:] Well there must be something out there
|
| [Senator Collins:] There is nothing out there... all there is
| .... is sea ...and birds ....and fish
|
| [Interviewer:] And?
|
| [Senator Collins:] And 20,000 tons of crude oil
|
| [Interviewer:] And what else?
|
| [Senator Collins:] And a fire
|
| [Interviewer:] And anything else?
|
| [Senator Collins:] And the part of the ship that the front fell
| off, but there's nothing else out there.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| If that's what they would rather, they should have scuttled it
| before now...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| willvarfar wrote:
| The US and Russian navies have maritime surveillance
| satellites; for them, it has presumably never been "lost".
|
| The Chinese have some too, but I guess they only bother with
| their back yard. ESA were doing something commercial too, but
| I haven't been following details.
| luckydata wrote:
| A lot of things can be done, the problem is getting countries
| to be responsible about it and implement sane laws. This is not
| a technological problem.
| mywacaday wrote:
| This came ashore only a few miles from where I live, apparently
| there is a lot of confusion over who even owns the boat, media
| is saying it was stolen twice, US coast guard tried to identify
| owner when the crew was initially rescued.
| smoyer wrote:
| Adding an AIS transponder to that kit would also be a great way
| to enhance safety -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
| rtkwe wrote:
| AIS transmits much more frequently usually between 3 minutes
| and 2 seconds depending on speed. [0] AIS is also
| supplemental and basically every large vessel will have radar
| available that will spot these kinds of dead drifting ships.
|
| [0] Large 300 ton+ ships are type A:
| https://help.marinetraffic.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/217631867-H...
| smoyer wrote:
| True ... but there are thousands of us that sail (sailed)
| small yachts which have a more limited range if they have
| radar at all (power consumption and antenna height cause
| certain restrictions). AIS on the other hand works great
| and also integrates with chart plotters for collision alarm
| with relatively small amounts of power. Small yacht sailors
| generally assume that cargo vessels will _NOT_ try to avoid
| them, so having the ship continue on its (drifting) course
| wouldn 't be too surprising.
| drcross wrote:
| I had a small AIS transponder on my 30 foot boat. All
| smart and prudent skippers will have one now that the
| tech is so cheap.
| ultimoo wrote:
| Yep, exactly what I was thinking. Add a small solar panel and
| it could probably function for a decade.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the harsh nature of the ocean.
| Few things last for a decade on the ocean without frequent
| maintenance, high up-front costs, or both - and often not
| even then.
|
| There's very little intersection between hardware that would
| last in those conditions and would be cheap enough that coast
| guards would be willing to just leave it on a ship. Or maybe
| I'm underestimating the budget of the Coast Guard, but
| leaving this thing adrift in the first place seems to
| indicate otherwise...
| Seenso wrote:
| > 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.
|
| >> Yep, exactly what I was thinking. Add a small solar
| panel and it could probably function for a decade.
|
| > I think you're underestimating the harsh nature of the
| ocean. Few things last for a decade on the ocean without
| frequent maintenance, high up-front costs, or both - and
| often not even then.
|
| A solar powered GPS beacon may be an exception to that
| rule.
|
| Couldn't you just encase the beacon electronics and the
| solar panel in a hunk of clear epoxy potting [1], and then
| secure the thing to the deck with stainless steel screws?
| For an application like this, it's probably sufficient that
| the beacon only operate during daylight hours, so you
| probably don't even need a battery.
|
| I don't imagine the electronics would cost much more than
| that for a PLB [2], so we're talking somewhere in the
| ballpark of $500. The main expense would be the receiving
| satellite and sending a helicopter to the ship for
| installation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potting_(electronics)
|
| [2] https://www.rei.com/c/personal-locator-beacons
| Animats wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So there's no value in the ship itself that makes the salvage a
| profitable operation?
| tialaramex wrote:
| Probably not, if it made commercial sense the law of salvage
| already makes that option available.
|
| It might conceivably matter that the wreck is now in a
| somewhat more convenient place rather than the middle of the
| ocean, but probably it's just too low value for it to be
| economic to volunteer. Somebody will have to get paid
| explicitly to tidy this up.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| 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 [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_labor_arbitrage
| PostOnce wrote:
| 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
|
| 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://www.economist.com/the-americas/2015/05/09/beaches-of...
| dgemm wrote:
| They still have a navy, too:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_Navy
| brundolf wrote:
| > 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.
| NwmG wrote:
| 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
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