BOW WAVE 493

Bow Wave Issue 493--Current and Historical Edition

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2009 WavyLine.com	Issue No 493 27 Apr 09
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Book Review
3. Many Captured Pirates Released
4. Italian Ship Thwarts Pirate Attack
5. LSLC planning special seminar
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Poem of the Week

Commuters

It's that vague feeling of panic
That sweeps over you
Stepping out of the #7 train
At dusk, thinking, This isn't me
Crossing a platform with the other
Commuters in the worried half-light
Of evening, that must be

Someone else with a newspaper
Rolled tightly under his arm
Crossing the stiff, iron tracks
Behind the train, thinking, This
Can't be me stepping over the tracks
With the other commuters, slowly crossing
The parking lot at the deepest
Moment of the day, wishing

That I were someone else, wishing
I were anyone else but a man
Looking out at himself as if
From a great distance,
Turning the key in his car, starting
His car and swinging it out of the lot,

Watching himself grinding uphill
In a slow fog, climbing past the other
Cars parked on the side of the road,
The cars which seem ominously empty
And strange,
and suddenly thinking
With a new wave of nausea
This isn't me sitting in this car
Feeling as if I were about to drown

In the blue air, that must be
Someone else driving home to his

Wife and children on an ordinary day
Which ends, like other days,
With a man buckled into a steel box,
Steering himself home and trying
Not to panic

In the last moments of nightfall
When the trees and the red-brick houses
Seem to float under green water
And the streets fill up with sea lights.

Edward Hirsch, from Wild Gratitude (1985)

New Readers this week include:-

Rolf Nilsson, editor of Shipgaz
James Shannon of AJ Gallagher
Rick Bercier of Aon Reed Stenhouse in Ottowa
R Luna of DSI Insurance
Terry Stoltz of Nicoletti Hornig & Sweeney in New York Pete Johansen of Great American Lines Inc
Min Yong of Asia Insurance Review

News of Readers

Loic Beuzit has left Informa in Sydney

Peter Rogers, David Diamond and the staff of ITMU have given notice to Aon-owned underwriting managment company AUM. It is understood they are destined for the Kiln syndicate in Lloyd's. ITMU, founded in 2004, has over the years been a formidable competitor in the market with very keen prices.

Andrew Farrant has moved from the TT Club to the Travellers Insurance Company

AfterOfficeHours News

Our sister publication, the Archive of the Maritime Advocate on line contains a new case note by Pauline Barrett on the decision of the New Zealand Court of Appeal on the Tasman Pioneer, upholding the decision of the court of first instance which barred the owners from relying on the error of navigation defence.

http://www.avoarchive.com/display.php?id=1268

Note from the Editor

Greetings from a sunny Isle of Wight, a day of glorious weather on which has kept us outdoors. Hence the comparative lateness of this edition which contains many items of current and historical concern

Enjoy!

2. Book Review

Alan Bott (ed), British Box Business-A History of OCL (2009), Published by SCARA, ISBN-13 978-0-9559227-0-1

Hot off the press this week comes a very interesting history of OCL, a work of considerable memory and affection, compiled and written by people who used to work for the company.

This reviewer entered the container-related world of work in mid 1985, a time by which many of the grand names related in this book were about to enter a kind of corporate limbo within the house of P&O. This part of the book could just as easily be entitled the strange death of British liner shipping.

The best part of this work describes the conception of the company on the back of a Club dinner menu, its rather aristocratic origins and formation as the best hope of four leading conventional shipowners in Britain who were facing an uncertain world of containerised, mainly American competition, fading conventional shipping, the tradition of Conferences and Imperial preference and the huge past of the shipping industry in Britain.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, OCL was a powerhouse of innovation and adaptation. The invention of all the basic building blocks of the industry, the ships, the terminals, the landside, the documentary needs and the computerisation were all put into the flow of commerce by an exceptionally gifted group of individuals tasked with making the company a leading player in this new fangled industry. They did rather well, enjoying many of the benefits which flow to the early adopters of new technology and they led an emerging industry.

It was all far from plain sailing. The barriers to success were many, some were peculiarly British, others came from changes in the way the world of international trade and production flowed away from the west and towards the east.

For instance, there were strikes and paralysis in the pre Thatcher era docks and harbours--the company's first year was spent feedering cargo to Holland. There was the inability of British yards to deliver even one ship--the Jervis Bay--on time and on cost. There was the want of plunging in money and long term development capital which over time condemned the company to serve as a milch cow to the founding partner companies--great names like Furness Withy and British & Commonwealth as well as Ocean and Holts all of which would eventually join the Valhalla of shipping.

The book describes well the rise and the crucial turning points which led all OCL's work and comparative success to the terminus called Maersk. There is the point when OOCL acquires Furness Withy, but the OCL partners decide the Hong Kong company cannot join the OCL club. There is the day that dawns when the partners brief to the company changes from market leadership to making jolly profitable returns to the founders.

The story and the history of the book begins to flag as these turning points are reached and the financial men in the public companies take control. The 1980s and 1990s were not dull in the through transport world as this reviewer well recalls but they charted the rise of the really big battalions and the shift of the centre of shipping and transport gravity to the Asia Pacific.

Containerisation is a rare example of a successful 20th century revolution. The great traditions of liner shipping like the age of steam and marxian thought came from the 19th century. However as the container industry reached its maturity the revolution proceeded to devour its children in a process which is still far from over.

This book is a considerable achievement, quirky and rather eccentric, full of photographs inserted in a way which sometimes elucidates a point, carefully footnoted and informed with a great deal of contemporary archive material. Much of the closely argued material has been ably presented by Michael and Patricia Graham but there are contributions from many old OCL stagers.

It can be safely and warmly commended to any Reader who takes an interest in how we got from there to here.

Readers can obtain a copy by contacting Geoff Sharman at:

mailto:g-c-sharman@supanet.net

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Box-Business-Overseas-Containers/dp/0955922704

3. Many Captured Pirates Released

This item appears in the Daily Collection of Maritime Press Clippings e-zine:-

Pirates have stepped up their attacks on vessels off the coast of Somalia.

The internationally recognized definition of piracy is found in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"Article 101 of the (U.N.) Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as illegal violence or detention, depredation by the crew or passengers of a private ship or aircraft against other such ship or aircraft on the high seas or outside the jurisdiction of a state," said J. Peter Pham, a maritime security expert with James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

According to the London-based International Maritime Bureau, an organization that tracks crimes on the high seas, the waters off Somalia, including the Gulf of Aden, are the most dangerous in the world for international shipping. The International Maritime Bureau says last year was the most successful ever for the pirates. Based on figures for the first three months of this year 2009 will be even better for them - 61 ships were attacked in that region as compared to six in the first quarter of 2008.

In an effort to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, in the past few years, the international community has deployed navy ships to patrol the area. The task force includes vessels from the United States and the European Union. Russia, China and India have also ships in the area. Analysts such as Roger Middleton, with the London-based Chatham House, say complications arise when the pirates are captured.

"In most cases, to be honest, when pirates are picked up by navies, their guns are taken away, their boats may be taken away and then generally, they are released. Because the legal situation is a little bit unclear about when is it possible to prosecute the pirates, and how effectively that will happen. The real worry is that you capture some pirates, you send them back to Paris, for example, the case is thrown out of court and then the pirates have a free ride to Europe," he said.

RAND Corporation maritime expert Peter Chalk says letting pirates go poses difficulties. "If you return them to Somalia, for instance, on the one hand you could be essentially just freeing them because if they are returned to coastal communities, those communities have a vested interest in these people and they protect them. But if you also return them to areas, say, where Islamist entities are in power, the chances are they will be executed and so that raises human-rights concerns. So they will probably be set adrift in a boat close to the shoreline - and then they go wherever they want after that," he said.

Chalk and others say the main reasons pirates are let go are that many countries are either unwilling to prosecute them or do not have specific national legislation penalizing piracy.

In an effort to remedy that, analysts say a number of countries such as the United States and members of the European Union have signed an agreement with Kenya, the closest country to Somalia that has a judiciary capable of prosecuting pirates. Pham says the Kenyan parliament in February passed a new merchant shipping law updating the country's statutes under which pirates can be prosecuted.

"However that law, although passed by parliament, has yet to be signed by President Mwai Kibaki who, for reasons of internal domestic politics has left the bill sit on his desk unsigned. So as a result, Kenya certainly has agreements with the United States, the European Union and other parties to try such people as they might drop off. It is trying them under a relatively antiquated statute and so Kenya really needs to move and enact the updated statute," he said.

Middleton says on paper, Kenya has all the tools to deal with pirates. "But it does lack something in capacity - there are about three judges in Kenya who are qualified to hear these cases. The Kenyan legal system is already very stretched in terms of space in court, lawyers and also space in prisons. So there are some really serious capacity constraints for Kenya to deal with these," he said. Source : VOA News com

http://www.maasmondmaritime.com/Inschrijven.aspx

4. Italian Ship Thwarts Pirate Attack

Just in from the Wista UK Digest e-zine, edited by the energetic Maria Dixon:-

A captain of an Italian cruise ship has given the BBC a dramatic account of how his crew fended off a pirate attack near the coast of Somalia.

Capt Ciro Pinto said six pirates in a speedboat approached his MSC Melody ship and opened fire, but then fled after security men fired in the air.

He said his crew also sprayed water on the gunmen when they tried to climb aboard using a ladder.

No-one was hurt in Saturday's incident. Some 1,500 people were on the vessel.

Lots of passengers were on deck watching it unfold and they even took action themselves by throwing chairs overboard, trying to hit the pirates.

Listen to a telephone interview with the Captain and the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8019084.stm

http://www.wista.net

5. LSLC planning special seminar

Our friends over at the LSLC have sent in word of their up coming Shipping & Energy Seminar to be held on Thursday, 14th May 2009, starting at 3:30 pm.

The seminar is to be hosted by the firm of : Lawrence Graham, 4 More London Riverside, London SE1 2AU. It is organised jointly by the London Shipping Law Centre (LSLC) and the Norwegian-British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC)

There are three panel discussions, all very timely:-

on Gas Supply and Transportation Issues;
on Ship Managment Issues and Marpol Annex VI; and on Ship Finance and Shipbuilding--What is the Future

For further details and registration please click on the link below:-

http://www.london-shipping-law.com

6. And Finally...

Nothing wrong with these ones, courtesy of the House of Frazer Hunt:-

A blonde woman was speeding down the road in her little red sports car and was pulled over by a woman police officer, who was also a blonde.

The cop asked to see the blonde's driver's license. She dug through her purse and was getting progressively more agitated. "What does it look like?" she finally asked.

The policewoman replied, "It's square and it has your picture on it.."

The driver finally found a square mirror, looked at it and handed it to the policewoman.

"Here it is," she said.

The blonde officer looked at the mirror, then handed it back saying, "Okay, you can go. I didn't realize you were a cop.

This incident took place in Dublin a while ago and although it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock take, it's true according to local town's people.

John Bradford, a Dublin University student, was walking on the side of the road hitchhiking on a dark and stormy night. The rain and fog was so severe he could only see a few feet ahead of him. There were no cars in sight and John was beginning to panic.

Suddenly, he saw headlights approaching. The car was travelling very slowly and came to a stop in front of him. Desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, John got into the car and closed the door.

Only then did he realize there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't running. The car started moving forward slowly. John looked at the road ahead and knew the car was approaching a sharp curve. Scared that the car would go over the embankment, John started to pray for his life.

Just before the car hit the curve a hand appeared through the driver's side window and turned the wheel. John was paralyzed with fear and terror as he watched the hand repeatedly come through the window though it never touched or harmed him.

Shortly thereafter, John saw the lights of a pub ahead. Gathering all his strength, he opened the car door, jumped out, and ran towards the pub. Soaking wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everyone about the horrible experience he just had. A silence enveloped the pub when everyone realized he was crying.......and wasn't drunk.

Suddenly, the pub door opened and two men walked in to escape the stormy night. They, like John, were soaking wet and out of breath. Looking around, and seeing John Bradford sobbing at the bar, one said to the other, 'Look Paddy, there's that f***ing idiot that got in our car while we were pushin it.'

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