Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Ghost Fleet of the Recession

Kind of sad and creepy:

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore



They are all out there alone. I bet they don't like the location being printed in the paper. If I was a pirate...



At night they light them all up, and from the shoreline it looks like a city on the water.

From the article:

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year

...

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.
Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'


Kind of depressing. I guess it costs too much money to keep them on a dock. I can only imagine how pissed the owners are that this article gets printed. Sphere: Related Content

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