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| William Langewiesche, 2007 Internaz via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
I came to know Langewiesche's work through his 16 years with The Atlantic. He wrote subsequently for Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His long-form journalism, including nine books, is legendary. He tackled big, complex, and notorious subjects, such as ocean piracy and nuclear proliferation, helping readers to make sense of the world through concise and compelling prose.
Upon his passing, commentators have rushed to recommend their favorite Langewiesche works. Mine has been little mentioned, so I want to put it on the record.
For a quarter century, I have been haunted by Langewiesche's remarkable cover story for the August 2000 Atlantic, "The Shipbreakers." As The Atlantic teased:
On a six-mile stretch of beach at a place called Alang, in India, some 200 ships stand side by side in progressive stages of dissection, spilling their black innards onto the tidal flats. Here is where half the world's ships come to die—ripped apart by hand into scrap metal. Alang is a foul, desperate, and dangerous place, and a wonder of the world.
Typical of Langewiesche's work, the story sits at the intersection of many important subjects: contemporary colonialism, social and economic development, environmental protection, labor regulation, and accountability, or lack thereof, for transnational corporations. I can't board an ocean-going vessel today without feeling haunted by Langewiesche's narrative and worrying that I'm contributing to an ongoing human rights tragedy.
Horrifying conditions Langewiesche described in 2000 unfortunately continue today, human rights abuses having been abated only modestly and more in some jurisdictions than in others. Langewiesche focused on India, and Indian enforcement only pushed the most hazardous and ill regulated ship-breaking practices further into Bangladesh and Pakistan.
There have been much needed regulatory innovations in recent years that mean to effect reform. The European Union adopted a Ship Recycling Regulation in 2013. The NGO Shipbreaking Platform wrote:
From 31 December 2018, EU-flagged commercial vessels above 500 GT must be recycled in safe and environmentally sound ship recycling facilities that are included on the European List of approved ship recycling facilities. The List was first established on 19 December 2016 and is periodically updated to add additional compliant facilities, or, alternatively, to remove facilities which have ceased to comply. Currently, the List comprises facilities operating in the EU, Turkey and US.
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| Ship-breakers, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2005 Adam Cohn via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
However, neither the EU regulation nor the overarching Hong Kong Convention solves the problem of jurisdictional reach to ships under flags of convenience. The shipping industry has long relied on re-flagging vessels to circumvent regulations of all kinds, and the problem remains intractable. Newly articulated standards will only work insofar as nations refuse to provide a haven for illicit ship-breaking and for its concealment by re-flagging.
Meanwhile, the cruise industry continues to burn through generations of ships in never-ending pursuit of size and extravagance.
"The Shipbreakers" was long posted in full text at Longform, but recently became unavailable there, apparently upon a change of ownership of an underlying ISP. (But archived at the time of this writing.)
Rest in peace, William Langewiesche.
