BOW WAVE 367

Bow Wave Issue 367--Sans Merger Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2006 WavyLine.com	Issue No 367 04 Dec 06
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Quarterpoints
3. Swedish Club and Skuld Club End Honeymoon
4. Book Review
5. Tysers P&I Report hits the Spot
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

The Rites of Manhood

It's snowing hard enough that the taxis aren't running. I'm walking home, my night's work finished,
long after midnight, with the whole city to myself, when across the street I see a very young American sailor standing over a girl who's kneeling on the sidewalk and refuses to get up although he's yelling at her to tell him where she lives so he can take her there before they both freeze. The pair of them are drunk and my guess is he picked her up in a bar
and later they got separated from his buddies
and at first it was great fun to play at being
an old salt at liberty in a port full of women with hinges on their heels, but by now he wants only to find a solution to the infinitely complex
problem of what to do about her before he falls into the hands of the police or the shore patrol
--and what keeps this from being squalid is
what's happening to him inside:
if there were other sailors here
it would be possible for him
to abandon her where she is and joke about it
later, but he's alone and the guilt can't be
divided into small forgettable pieces;
he's finding out what it means
to be a man and how different it is
from the way that only hours ago he imagined it.

Alden Nowlan from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread

New Readers this week include:-

Matt Flynn
Sally Azarmi of Solicitors Birketts
Fr Simon Thomson in Portsmouth

News of Readers

Simon Sloane of Holman Fenwick & Willan has moved from London to bolster the firm’s presence in Singapore. Simon, a South African trained lawyer, is a Partner in the firm’s Insurance & Reinsurance Group.

Vincent Egon has joined ITS at BML.

Contact him at:-

Vincent.Egon@BritishMarine.com

Barton Philips is now the manager of liability underwriting at Associated Marine Insurers in Brisbane.

Contact him at:-

barton.phillips@associatedmarine.com.au

David Martin Clark has become an Associate Member of Stone Chambers, Gray's Inn, practising as a barrister (advocate) in England and Wales.

He will continue to be available for arbitration and mediation work and he will also offer a general commercial advisory practice, specialising in shipping, transport and insurance - particularly mutual insurance.

see the announcement at

http://www.onlinedmc.co.uk/dmc_as_barrister.htm

Readers Write

From Bob Morrison:-

It is usually good to get some real knowledgable comment from BowWave, as an antidote to the lazy Editors and teenage contributors to daily press (general or maritime!) who seem to glean their "news" items from emailed press releases and draft hyperboleic scripts which are edited to nonsensical snippets for publication. Then comes "And Finally" "A bumper collection of whadayaknows..." - all but one untrue! - probably written by a ten-year-old and no doubt multiplied for years on the internet, but still untrue. Crocodiles don't have tongues, shrimps don't have heads, "Bless you" reputedly comes from the Plague Years but probably predates it, similarly a "match" was a bearer of flame long before cigarettes were invented...

Where is the "joke" other than on the gullible reader?

bobmorrisonuk@yahoo.com

From Patrick Neylan

Good to see the tired old factoid doing the rounds still. I know it was part of a joke, but you and Paul Dixon might be interested in the following debunking of it. The fact that the article is four years old serves to emphasise the point even more.

http://shirky.com/writings/half_the_world.html

patrick.neylan@fairplay.co.uk

AfterOfficeHours News

The latest edition of the Maritime Advocate online (Issue 281) can be accessed by clicking on the link below.

http://afterofficehours.com/news.php

Readers who would like to subscribe to this highly readable fraternal publication--which is edited by Chris Hewer and published free to Readers--should send an e-mail to:-

contactus@afterofficehours.com

Note from the Editor

The week past has seen the collapse of a mooted merger between two Scandinavian P&I Clubs, a pity for an industry too fragmented for its own good. (see item 3). It all goes to show how peculiarly stable is the organisation founded upon mutuality, how difficult to take over and merge and how resistant are its representatives to the siren calls of synergy

Enjoy!

2. Quarterpoints

Your editor's recent column in Lloyd's List examined the some what obscure world of K+R

Kidnap and Ransom

DURING the past week or so news has reached me of the launch of new products in the marine insurance market called ProSecure and CrewSecure.

They are offered by the broking firm of Seacurus and they fill a gap in the Kidnap and Ransom market for crews and marine professionals visiting the sorts of places where such risks are a regrettable fact of life.

There is a race of men, especially on the superintendency and surveying side, who know all too well how hard they earn their money in risky destinations where law and order on the waterfront is not guaranteed. Some jobs requiring surveyors are handed around the market like unwanted relatives, and when taken at all they are done on a favours traded basis.

Which of the middle-aged ex master mariners on whom we rely for expertise is anxious to take off to Nigeria these days to attend some marine incident involving the oil industry? Who wants to fly into Somalia to free an arrest? Where is the devil may care ex-mariner, thirsty for adventure in the ports of Columbia?

The people that do such work on a regular basis are few and far between. Peter Astbury, a former colleague from my days working in P&I, a mild and unassuming man by the look of him, has made a specialty of going to hard places and giving owners and their insurers a result they can live with.

The work seems to require a voice of moderation, considerable guile, an understanding of the mentalities of the bandit and of the banker.

The list of lawless places in the world where ships and cargos get into trouble is possibly longer than it has been in recent times. People on the insurance side of life are generally known for their habitual caution in all things. If a trip which takes in Papua New Guinea comes up, the queue to visit the place is less long than say for Brisbane or Melbourne. One way of dividing up the earth between areas of settled mercantile routine and an atmosphere of barely contained daily crisis is to plot the shipping infrastructure. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a container port is incompatible with civil unrest, poor law and order and uneven governance.

And yet the need to cover the world will not go away. I wonder where the next generation of trouble shooters will come from.

The insurance market still relies on people with a history in the shipping industry, many of them who worked on ships during the pre-containerised era. They may be called marine professionals but many of them earn considerably less per annum than the average high street optician.

And perhaps the new products on the market from Seacurus may help to make the work a little more attractive to people minded to do it. K+R is the insurance that dare not say its name -- you are not supposed to mention it in firms, even when you are a named assured. The black arts of K+R claims are the specialist domain of firms like Control Risk and Krolls. When an assured goes missing, a person will present himself to advise on how to proceed. It must be a strange way to earn a living and not the best peek into the secrets of the blacker kind of human heart.

Something tells me that we will be hearing more about these kinds of products, which are rather new in the marine market and at least at the moment difficult to accommodate in the P&I Clubs which have difficulties seeing this as a family of risks that will commonly arise in the course of ordinary shipping operations.

Whenever a master is taken by ordinary civil authorities in the aftermath of a casualty or problem there are difficulties enough squaring the funds of the Clubs with the demands of the authorities. Let alone with those of cut-throats and bandits.

3. Swedish Club and Skuld Club End Honeymoon

We have received the following item from the house of Aon:-

The news that the board of directors of the Swedish Club has decided against the merger with SKULD, does not come as a great surprise to us. SKULD's understanding is that the Swedish Club's board decision was, reportedly, influenced by a sense of inequality between the parties. It is quite amazing to observe that the merger process has been going on for many months without apparent realisation of the differing strengths of the two associations.

SKULD was in a substantially stronger position than the Swedish Club and ought to have been considered prior to embarking on this merger journey.

So where does this leave the two associations?

SKULD have, for several years, maintained their view that they need to expand further, either through mergers or by broadening their product range. We do, in principle, agree that the future of P&I will require larger units. Therefore, we are anxious to know the respective association's contingency plans. With SKULD's Membership Committee meeting in Munich yesterday and today, we expect that the time scheduled to discuss the merger plans further will now be used to debrief on the internal processes and formulate further strategies. Are board and management prepared and able to carry an alternative strategy, given the need for expansion, will the Norwegian Hull Club discussions be reopened, what is the reaction from the membership?

As far as the Swedish Club is concerned, it does appear that they, through the process with SKULD, may have realised the need to further review their strategic position; this possibly could result in them seeking a more compatible partner.

4. Book Review

DANGEROUS WATERS
Modern Piracy And Terror On The High Seas
John R. Burnett
Plume Publishing, 2003 328 pages (soft cover edition)

During my seagoing days in the 1950's as second mate on a cargo ship, I made several trips through the Malacca Straits and South China Sea. My overriding recollection of the Straits is the perfume of tropical flowers and wood smoke as we got closer to the Indonesian and Malaysian coasts. In recent years, though, the area has been the subject of numerous press and magazine articles, books and at least two television documentaries, all concentrating on the rise of piracy throughout the world. In the ‘50's, there were occasional reports and rumors of pirate attacks but they were invariably attacks on coastal traders or other pirates. None that I ever heard of involved armed takeovers of large ships.

Dangerous Waters was inspired by the author’s experience when his small sloop was boarded by three pirates a few miles east of Singapore...a frightening experience which he survived in part because he spoke Indonesian and was familiar with the culture. As an experienced journalist and author, he decided that, after further investigation, he had the basis for a book on the subject of pirates, piracy and what shipowners and governments are doing to counter the attacks. The author was able to arrange for a trip on the fictitiously named VLCC Montrose where he was able to observe the security precautions (or lack thereof) taken as the ship proceeded into the Straits on the way to a Singapore refinery. There seemed to be a sense that a ship this large was invulnerable even though, fully loaded, she had only 14 feet of freeboard at the stern, the preferred point of attack by pirates. The security arrangements consisted of tying two human-looking dummies to the rail and running two fire hoses over the stern, safeguards easily thwarted as pirates overtake the ship through the radar shadow of the smoke stack. This seemed to be a fairly common set of preventive measures taken by ships transiting the Straits. Indeed, judging by the author’s comments, there seems to be a sense of complacency and invincibility among many captains and owners even though it would be relatively easy for determined terrorists to take over a VLCC and run it aground or cause a collision with another vessel at one of the narrower points , thus causing havoc with the world’s commerce. A terrorist takeover of one of the many cruise ships passing by would also be disastrous.

Not all owners and masters are indifferent to the threat. Some will hire companies like Maritime and Security Consultants in London which provides professional pirate fighters, former Special Air Services and Special Forces personnel. The book recounts how a small team from MUSC was assigned to a cable layer operating off Nigeria when pirates attempted to board and were repulsed without loss of life.

A passive tool available to shipowners is a satellite tracking device similar to "Lo-Jack" for cars. It automatically broadcasts a ship’s position. In fact, the usefulness of the device was demonstrated during a conference on piracy prevention measures. A small coastal tanker equipped with the device was highjacked during the conference and attendees were able to watch its progress for several days until it was recaptured by the Indonesian navy.

The International Maritime Bureau, an affiliate of the International Chamber of Commerce, maintains an office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in order to track piracy attacks and report them to the world. Their website contains maps of pirate attacks throughout the world for each year since 2001. While the Straits of Malacca experience the most attacks, they are also common in East and West Africa and the Caribbean.

The book reads like a crime novel. It is highly recommended for those who are interested in the subject of piracy and attempts to control it.

(This column first appeared in the author's regular column in WWS/World Wide Shipping )

Dave Letteney

dletteney@verizon.net

5. Tysers P&I Report hits the Spot

We received this week, courtesy of Martin Hubbard a copy of the firm's report on P&I. It is a fascinating read, rather sardonic and we think indicative of a change of sentiment surrounding the Clubs, the suggestion being the larger members of P&I Clubs are not paying enough each year, leaving the rank and file to pick up the tab and pay too much. Not exactly implicit in the report is the question whether there is too close an identity of interest between these large member-directors and the managers of their Clubs.

To obtain the report, send an e-mail to:-

martin.hubbard@tysers.com

6. And Finally...

Thanks to Frazer Hunt for this list of Important Questions

Can you cry under water?

How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

Why do you have to "put your two cents in".. . but it's only a "penny for your thoughts"? Where's that extra penny going to?

Why does a round pizza come in a square box?

What disease did cured ham actually have?

How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?

Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up like every two hours?

If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?

Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you naked anyway.

Why is "bra" singular and "panties" plural?

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?

Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?

If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?

Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!

If Wiley E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME stuff, why didn't he just buy dinner?

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?

Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?

Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

Why do they call it an asteroid when it's outside the hemisphere, but call it a hemorrhoid when it's in your bottom?

P.S.

Thanks to Paul Dixon for these 24 feline propositions

1. "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will pee on your computer." --Bruce Graham

2. "There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast." -- Unknown

3. "Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this." -- Anonymous

4. "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." --Jeff Valdez

5. "In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats."
-- English proverb

6. "As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat." -- Ellen Perry Berkeley

7. "One cat just leads to another." -- Ernest Hemingway

8. "Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message - and get back to you later." - Mary Bly

9. "Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

10. "People that hate cats will come back as mice in their next life." - Faith Resnick

11. "There are many intelligent species in the universe. They are all owned by cats." -Anonymous

12. "I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior." -- Hippolyte Taine

13. "No heaven will not ever Heaven be; Unless my cats are there to welcome me." -- Unknown

14. "There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats" -- Albert Schweitzer

15. "The cat has too much spirit to have no heart." -- Ernest Menaul

16. "Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God."

17. "Time spent with cats is never wasted." -- Colette

18. "Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well." -- Missy Dizick

19. "You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats." -- Colonial American proverb

20. "Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

21. "I got rid of my husband. The cat was allergic."

22. "My husband said it was him or the cat ... I miss him sometimes."

23. "Cats aren't clean, they're just covered with cat spit."

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