Post card from india: Death rites

[Doc Vernon]

Alang1.jpg

They come down from the nearby hillsto demolish ships -- and earn $1-2 a day. Alang in India is the busiestscrap yard for ships, old and these days some not so old, anywhere. China, Pakistan & Turkey also have a piece of this business.

But India is crammed -- over 400ships just last year. Small teams of Indian scrap merchants, often insuits & ties and wearing gold watches & toting leather cases, travel all over the world and negotiate the purchase of unwanted ships. And these days, with vast changes in international shipping, ships of ten andfifteen years are being decommissioned and then broken-up.

Pricing: A medium-sized cruiseship might go for $5 million, but then the scrap metal/recycling marketfluctuates.

The ships are deliberately run ontothe beaches, secured and then invaded by armies of torch and ax and hammerwielding workers. These days, a good-sized, say 50,000-ton container shipcan be gone in three months.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Having lived in Pakistan for a number of years and having visited Gadani Beach scrapping facility many times (and having visited Alang which is similar to Gadani) I can assure you that they do not 'come down from the hills' Gadani like Alang is a township with houses (not as we know them, but houses never-the-less) with defined streets, shops, pharmacies and other traders. The scrap traders each specialise in equipment and fittings taken from the vessels, some bathroom fittings, others kitchen equipment, others generator parts, others navigation equipment and so on, you get the idea, there are numerous traders dealing in the same products which they bid for on the vessels arrival, they take the items off, clean them up and sell worldwide. As for the shipbreaking personnel on the vessel they are highly skilled at what they do in their own particular trade, be it burning, welding, furniture and fitting recovery and live in the township, just because they don't wear boiler suits, boots, hard hats and high-vis waistcoats does not mean that they are not skilled and competent. Yes there are fatalities but considering the amount of ships and the thousands employed it is unfortunately inevitable, but like us when at sea they have their own form of tarpaulin muster for those affected. Children from the township go to school everyday in uniform with spotless white shirts and their parents, like all parents work hard to give their children a better start in life than they had, but a lot of children want to follow in their father's footsteps as some families make good money even though the wages are low, but everything is relative, housing and food is cheap, but 'come down from the hills' forget it!

[dave moore]

400ships a year scrapped in India alone ,how many have had the same fate during the last few decades and many of them I believe have had such short lives excuse my ignorance but what is the reason for so many .Must be the advent of these massive container ships ,do bulk carriers meet the same fate ?

[Red Lead Ted]

400ships a year scrapped in India alone ,how many have had the same fate during the last few decades and many of them I believe have had such short lives excuse my ignorance but what is the reason for so many .Must be the advent of these massive container ships ,do bulk carriers meet the same fate ?

Dave, Could it be that most scrapped in India have asbestos pipe structures, Modern day slavery. Terry.

[Ivan Cloherty]

400ships a year scrapped in India alone ,how many have had the same fate during the last few decades and many of them I believe have had such short lives excuse my ignorance but what is the reason for so many .Must be the advent of these massive container ships ,do bulk carriers meet the same fate ?

Dave there is still a lot of the old traditional type ships that we knew still sailing around the Far East, Phillipines etc where the larger ships cannot go, in fact they are still building general cargo ships and loggers/bulkers in Indonesia,(you willstill see many of these in NZ ports as well as Chile and Phillipines, Taiwan etc) and of course there are hundreds of ferries in the islands services which are being replaced. Even the large (or what were considered large 5-7000 TEU vessels) are being scrapped even though only 10 -15 years old, also new tanker rules means very many (if not all) singled hull tankers cannot trade any more, although some are still used as storage facilities. Paradoxically although we have the advent of ever larger container vessels being in service, currently 21000 TEU circ a capacity, Chinese yards have orders for 23,000 TEU vessels on the books, these vessels can only be loaded and discharged at certain ports worldwide because of crane outreach ability, so many more smaller container (2000 -4000 TEU) vessels are being ordered for feeder services to and from these large ports to service the smaller ports. China over the last five years has instituted a replacement programme for the 17,000 vessels serving the river, coastal and international trades under its flag, but these would be probably scrapped in their own yards. Many marine insurers and underwriters are not happy about the ever increasing size of container vessels as their liabilities in the event of an incident will bankrupt many underwriters, so we may see the advent of the smaller vessels returning to the scene. Also as there are few ports that can handle these larger ships they can increase their port dues etc and the operators will have no option but to pay them, as they know other ports cannot handle their vessels, many alternative smaller ports do not have the financial means to invest in large outreach cranes and all the necessary supporting services. 400 vessels is a small amount when you consider there are currently over 50,000 commercial vessels (excluding cruise ships and naval vessels) trading around the world with a workforce of 1.5 million seafarers manning them, moving billions of tonnes of freight around the world, but of course to the average man in the street they are invisible.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Modern day slavery. Terry.

Whilst it may appear so, to stop it would put thousands out of work, with no chance of finding any other work, thus ensuring they starve and their children denied education to better their lives that their parents want for them. It is easy to refer to it as slavery as many do, but unless you have been there and seen what precautions are in place, how well organised they are both on the work site and the townships built up around the sites then it is easy to paint a picture that bears no resemblance to the reality of the situation. In my experience they were always cheerful, helpful to each other and to strangers and although western! people are horrified at their pay rates it is foolish to equate them to those of Europe, they are two different worlds with different standards as well as different prices in the shops, reality is reality

[j.sabourn]

On the subject of deep drafted vessels and their access ability to various ports. To those living in Canada do they still have the much restricted draft of the Welland canal of years ago. The freightage for grain coming out of the lakes was extremely more expensive than ports in the St. Lawrence. Under the same conditions of yesteryear the huge ships of today would have no chance of transitting the lakes even without a cargo. JWS

[j.sabourn]

#5... Ivan during my term of sufferance working on reconditioned fishing vessels, the first one I joined went two or 3 days when finally said to the mate alright I give up where have you got it. Got what he said.? The master gyro I said. We don't have one he said,then how is this repeater working I said. That's a read out from the standard compass. She didn't have auto steering either you were expected to do 6 hours a part of your watch steering, which I soon got round when got used to the job as putting one of the ABs as. Watckeeping officer and helmsman. As usually had 4 as were there to man the frc which required 3, they spun a coin and the fourth one found himself as the second mate. McHales navy had nothing on us. Everyone seems to think that there are only ships of the future at sea, do you think the media have.something to do with this? Cheers JWS

[robpage]

I think we forget , that ike cars ships have a designed life , when I came ashore thirty years ago ships were being built with a 12 year life span , after that their efficiency , cost to run , wear and tear make them scrap . As nostalgic as we want to be , remembering that the old Queens ran for thirty years , the end of the dsign life is the scrapyard

[Ivan Cloherty]

Dave further #3 and #5 bit more information for a pub quiz! there are over 900 dedicated vehicle carriers operating around the worlds oceans with capacities from 600 to 8000 vehicles, vehicle-carrier capacities are based solely on what cars of an average 4.5m length they can carry, this capacity reduces when carrying trucks and other equipment, thought you may like to know that