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The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
The open ocean--that vast expanse of international waters--spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free.
With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.
This is the outlaw sea that Langewiesche brings startlingly into view. The ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild.
With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.
This is the outlaw sea that Langewiesche brings startlingly into view. The ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild.
239 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 2002
60 people are currently reading
1433 people want to read
About the author
William Langewiesche
25 books159 followersWilliam Archibald Langewiesche was an American author and journalist who was also a professional airplane pilot for many years. From 2019, he was a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, he was a correspondent for The Atlantic and Vanity Fair magazines for twenty-nine years. He was the author of nine books and the winner of two National Magazine Awards.
He wrote articles covering a wide range of topics from shipbreaking, wine critics, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, modern ocean piracy, nuclear proliferation, and the World Trade Center cleanup.
He wrote articles covering a wide range of topics from shipbreaking, wine critics, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, modern ocean piracy, nuclear proliferation, and the World Trade Center cleanup.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
August 17, 2014
"The Outlaw Sea" is a real page-turner about a wild, lawless frontier that affects all of us. With so much of the raw materials of civilization shipped by freighter -- machinery, vehicles, food, oil -- you'd think shipping would be more closely regulated and better protected. But the author shows us how it's in the best interests of those who own the shipping lanes for there NOT to be much regulation. Ships, crews, and cargos are all, ultimately, expendable. It's more profitable to lose a ship here and there than for the navies and marine authorities of the world to get serious about policing the waves. Hence, we learn that inspections, even in ports where the authorities are relatively uncorrupt (which is rare) mean very little, and piracy is surprisingly common in the 21st century. You also get a look at the lives of mercantile sailors, which are not at all romantic or glamorous, but dirty, dangerous, grueling, and underpaid.
You'll be particularly appalled at how easily a ship can be taken, and the possibilities for terrorism are chilling as well...
This isn't really a single book, though, or at least it doesn't read like one. It's a collection of several different marine-related themes. First, Langewiesche talks about the law of the sea, or rather, the lack thereof. He covers regulation, naval enforcement, the shadowy, mutable world of ship owners and registries, and why the world depends on shipping and why shipping remains "a world of freedom, chaos, and crime."
Then he spends a huge chunk of the book talking about a single disaster, the sinking of the ferry Estonia. This is practically a minute-by-minute account, complete with descriptions of crew and passengers, survivors and non-survivors, and plenty of after-the-fact analysis of exactly what went wrong and the legal and political ramifications.
Finally, Langewiesche describes the ship-breaking yards in India, "hell on Earth," where the poorest of the poor break apart condemned vessels for low pay, crawling over shards of metal and puddles of toxic waste.
This book started out as several different essays, but each one holds up on its own, and the complete work is an eye-opening expose of both life on the high seas and the people who work to keep the world's shipping afloat.
You'll be particularly appalled at how easily a ship can be taken, and the possibilities for terrorism are chilling as well...
This isn't really a single book, though, or at least it doesn't read like one. It's a collection of several different marine-related themes. First, Langewiesche talks about the law of the sea, or rather, the lack thereof. He covers regulation, naval enforcement, the shadowy, mutable world of ship owners and registries, and why the world depends on shipping and why shipping remains "a world of freedom, chaos, and crime."
Then he spends a huge chunk of the book talking about a single disaster, the sinking of the ferry Estonia. This is practically a minute-by-minute account, complete with descriptions of crew and passengers, survivors and non-survivors, and plenty of after-the-fact analysis of exactly what went wrong and the legal and political ramifications.
Finally, Langewiesche describes the ship-breaking yards in India, "hell on Earth," where the poorest of the poor break apart condemned vessels for low pay, crawling over shards of metal and puddles of toxic waste.
This book started out as several different essays, but each one holds up on its own, and the complete work is an eye-opening expose of both life on the high seas and the people who work to keep the world's shipping afloat.
June 3, 2023
The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime, originally published as a serial report in The Atlantic Monthly, is fundamentally a victim of its journalistic origins. It is a series of chapters, each well told, but inadequately crafted into a unified whole. I felt as though I were reading a product assembled specifically for addicts of Reader’s Digest true-disaster mini-thrillers. Nearly every chapter is highlighted by a dramatically told tale of the sinking or disappearance of a modern ship. To be sure, Langewiesche’s vivid accounts of the disasters and the varying degrees of heroism, villainy, or raw indifference that accompanied each are nothing short of captivating. But what appears to be the main message of the book-- a discussion of the social, economic, legal, and ultimately physical realities of the ocean that make meaningful government of the world’s oceans patently impossible-- is given a relatively cursory treatment, and center stage is given over to a series of exciting but disjointed tales of piracy, environmental disaster, and human tragedy.
It is a short book, six chapters long, with Chapter One being primarily an introduction. But it feels more like four completely separate subjects than one six-chapter book.
Chapters Two is dedicated to piracy on the high seas. There are no puffy shirts, peglegs, or gentleman pirates to be found here. Today’s pirates are not much different from the crews of the legitimate ships-- they are hired on a venture-by-venture basis by anonymous financial interests via equally anonymous hiring agents from the flotsam and jetsam of the poorest nations on earth. Their dirty work consists of seizing millions of dollars’ worth of cargo, sometimes killing the crew of the captured ship, and disappearing into the vastness of the ocean toward a new buyer who probably has no idea the commodities in question are stolen property. Here Langewiesche highlights the impossibility of meaningfully policing the ocean due to its sheer physical size, and the utter uselessness of laws enacted by land-based nations designed to ferret out evil-doers.
Chapter Three focuses (briefly- the entire chapter is barely more than 10 pages long) on the culture of oil spills, and the attempts of the world’s wealthier nations to combat the fundamental anarchy of the sea by merely pushing it as far from their shores as possible. This closing of ranks merely ensures that oil spills from old, poorly maintained single-hulled tankers will occur in the waters of poorer nations who cannot afford to insist on more stringent standards. The NIMBY dynamic described here is certainly not unique to the oil-shipping industry-- it is a fundamental fact of the international marketplace that a rich man’s trash is a poor man’s treasure. So its inclusion in a book on the ocean seems almost incidental. Langewiesche also touches on the possibility, more immediate since September 11, 2001, of ship-based terrorist attacks and the near-impossibility of guarding America’s shores against them.
The real meat of the book is Chapters Three and Four, which tell in graphic detail of the tragic sinking of the passenger ferry Estonia in 1994 with nearly 1,000 casualties, and the five-year controversy that ensued. As gripping as the story of the Estonia is, I couldn’t help wondering what it was doing in this book. Although the investigation following the accident is discussed in detail, Langewiesche doesn’t take much of a stand as to the real causes of the accident. Was it fundamentally poor ship design? Was it poor maintenance and the bull-ahead attitude of its Soviet-trained crew? Was it an act of terrorism? Langewiesche considers the advocates of all three views, but doesn’t put much effort into linking the Estonia to his own earlier premise that the anarchy of the modern high seas is fundamentally a race to the bottom which ensures that dangerous ships will inevitably continue to sail, and low-paid crews who are willing to take the most risks with their cargoes, their own lives, and the lives of their passengers will continue to be hired to sail them, while those who benefit financially will remain comfortably anonymous behind layers of corporate shadows.
The book ends in Chapter Six with a discussion of the modern shipbreaking industry, its environmental and health hazards, and the race to the bottom which ensures it will always remain dirty and dangerous. This chapter felt even more out of place than the Estonia chapters, being primarily a tug-of-war between Greenpeace and the environmentally conscious western European public on the one hand, and the poor workers of India and Indonesia on the other, who consider the dangerous, low-paying work of low-budget shipbreaking to be an upwardly mobile career. Like Chapter Three, it feels more closely tied to the dynamics of land-based international politics and economics than any realities of the ocean.
While The Outlaw Sea was an intensely fascinating read that kept me up late, it left me feeling as though I had eaten a meal consisting of nothing but salad and dessert.
It is a short book, six chapters long, with Chapter One being primarily an introduction. But it feels more like four completely separate subjects than one six-chapter book.
Chapters Two is dedicated to piracy on the high seas. There are no puffy shirts, peglegs, or gentleman pirates to be found here. Today’s pirates are not much different from the crews of the legitimate ships-- they are hired on a venture-by-venture basis by anonymous financial interests via equally anonymous hiring agents from the flotsam and jetsam of the poorest nations on earth. Their dirty work consists of seizing millions of dollars’ worth of cargo, sometimes killing the crew of the captured ship, and disappearing into the vastness of the ocean toward a new buyer who probably has no idea the commodities in question are stolen property. Here Langewiesche highlights the impossibility of meaningfully policing the ocean due to its sheer physical size, and the utter uselessness of laws enacted by land-based nations designed to ferret out evil-doers.
Chapter Three focuses (briefly- the entire chapter is barely more than 10 pages long) on the culture of oil spills, and the attempts of the world’s wealthier nations to combat the fundamental anarchy of the sea by merely pushing it as far from their shores as possible. This closing of ranks merely ensures that oil spills from old, poorly maintained single-hulled tankers will occur in the waters of poorer nations who cannot afford to insist on more stringent standards. The NIMBY dynamic described here is certainly not unique to the oil-shipping industry-- it is a fundamental fact of the international marketplace that a rich man’s trash is a poor man’s treasure. So its inclusion in a book on the ocean seems almost incidental. Langewiesche also touches on the possibility, more immediate since September 11, 2001, of ship-based terrorist attacks and the near-impossibility of guarding America’s shores against them.
The real meat of the book is Chapters Three and Four, which tell in graphic detail of the tragic sinking of the passenger ferry Estonia in 1994 with nearly 1,000 casualties, and the five-year controversy that ensued. As gripping as the story of the Estonia is, I couldn’t help wondering what it was doing in this book. Although the investigation following the accident is discussed in detail, Langewiesche doesn’t take much of a stand as to the real causes of the accident. Was it fundamentally poor ship design? Was it poor maintenance and the bull-ahead attitude of its Soviet-trained crew? Was it an act of terrorism? Langewiesche considers the advocates of all three views, but doesn’t put much effort into linking the Estonia to his own earlier premise that the anarchy of the modern high seas is fundamentally a race to the bottom which ensures that dangerous ships will inevitably continue to sail, and low-paid crews who are willing to take the most risks with their cargoes, their own lives, and the lives of their passengers will continue to be hired to sail them, while those who benefit financially will remain comfortably anonymous behind layers of corporate shadows.
The book ends in Chapter Six with a discussion of the modern shipbreaking industry, its environmental and health hazards, and the race to the bottom which ensures it will always remain dirty and dangerous. This chapter felt even more out of place than the Estonia chapters, being primarily a tug-of-war between Greenpeace and the environmentally conscious western European public on the one hand, and the poor workers of India and Indonesia on the other, who consider the dangerous, low-paying work of low-budget shipbreaking to be an upwardly mobile career. Like Chapter Three, it feels more closely tied to the dynamics of land-based international politics and economics than any realities of the ocean.
While The Outlaw Sea was an intensely fascinating read that kept me up late, it left me feeling as though I had eaten a meal consisting of nothing but salad and dessert.
March 14, 2009
This is the first of my booklist to get a five star rating. I absolutely loved it. When I finished reading it, I immediately turned back to the front and began again, which I've done with precious few books over the years. Firstly I am a fan of the genre (maritime non-fiction), but more than that, Langewiesche is very adept at bringing large concepts down to terms any layman can understand. From haggard tankers and flags of convenience to the incredible tragedies of both land and sea, this book kept me riveted. It is on a shelf with my all-time favorites and will stay there unless I happen to wear it out with reading. Two big thumbs up for this one!
December 13, 2017
Interessantissimo, inquietante e appassionante come un thriller.
September 6, 2022
My toxic trait is reading everything this guy writes even though I’m now afraid of planes, boats, stampedes, avalanches, etc
January 16, 2023
Written with vivid imagery, judiciously placed wry humor, and incisive commentary, this book aims to discuss themes in globalization, maritime policy, and the fascinating seedy underbelly of ocean activity through a series of case studies on individual ships with nightmarish fates - but it ends up focusing too much on those individual accidents, with long stretches of pages just describing how a boat went down in detail, and the actual theorizing and policy exploration ended up feeling too few and far between.
June 11, 2023
Sooooo I read this because I thought it was The Outlaw Ocean. Awkward.
I almost DNFed it because I felt like the author's writing style was kind of boring and I didn't like the way he organized information, but I kept coming coming back to it because I wanted to know what happened, and I think the writing improved in the last half? I definitely appreciated that he dropped all the flowery descriptions because they weren't very helpful and they were taking a lot of time to read. I think the writing became more direct as the book went on which I appreciated. Like yeah, yeah, just slam with with the facts. I'd say the first 1/3 felt like two stars, the 2nd 1/3rd was maybe 3 stars, and the last 1/3rd was four stars. I don't know that I'd recommend it unless you're super into pirates or ships.
I almost DNFed it because I felt like the author's writing style was kind of boring and I didn't like the way he organized information, but I kept coming coming back to it because I wanted to know what happened, and I think the writing improved in the last half? I definitely appreciated that he dropped all the flowery descriptions because they weren't very helpful and they were taking a lot of time to read. I think the writing became more direct as the book went on which I appreciated. Like yeah, yeah, just slam with with the facts. I'd say the first 1/3 felt like two stars, the 2nd 1/3rd was maybe 3 stars, and the last 1/3rd was four stars. I don't know that I'd recommend it unless you're super into pirates or ships.
October 27, 2009
A riveting and revealing story about anarchy on the high seas. There is so much ocean, and no one is in control of it at all. The shipping industry is barely regulated. Piracy is just a small problem compared to the environmental and larger security concerns about the tens of thousands of boats carrying all the things we buy and sell. Langewiesche displays his usual mastery of showing the big picture by telling the small stories: pirates, captains, military men and regulators all get their turn to shine. The only disappointment is that the author spends so much time on one ferry, the Estonia, which killed 850+ people in the North Sea. While the carnage is incredible, especially given that it occurred in the last 10 years on a boat traveling between two of the most advanced countries in the world, it does seem that Langewiesche gets a bit obsessed with disproving some of the conspiracy theories surrounding it. But after this digression, the book finishes strongly on the shores of India, examining shipbreaking yards, where men and fire destroy what's left of the world's largest boats, revealing the problems and potential within.
A completely new way to look at the world; highly recommended. Unless the idea that a terrorist could easily put any sort of bomb on one of these freighters and slip it undetected into any port in the world is likely to frighten you.
A completely new way to look at the world; highly recommended. Unless the idea that a terrorist could easily put any sort of bomb on one of these freighters and slip it undetected into any port in the world is likely to frighten you.
April 18, 2009
Thought I would take another look at this review given all the pirate action recently. I wish the poobahs on TV would have read this book. The piracy in the Malacca Straits is perhaps more dangerous than that off Somalia.
If you have any interest in the actions of pirates and their effects on the shipping industry, this is the book for you. He doesn't spend much time on the Somali pirate actions; much more on the dangers to shipping around Indonesia and Malaysia. It's astonishing how easy it is for these huge ships to be taken and then held for ransom, or, the crew killed and the ship renamed and re-registered, the cargo then sold. Since most of the actions occur in international waters, little can be done. I suspect that as the hazard to shipping increases and insurance rises, the navies of the world will have to take some kind of concerted action, although large naval vessels themselves are notoriously defenseless against swarming attacks.
See my short blog article on the efficacy of swarming attacks with several references at http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid...
If you have any interest in the actions of pirates and their effects on the shipping industry, this is the book for you. He doesn't spend much time on the Somali pirate actions; much more on the dangers to shipping around Indonesia and Malaysia. It's astonishing how easy it is for these huge ships to be taken and then held for ransom, or, the crew killed and the ship renamed and re-registered, the cargo then sold. Since most of the actions occur in international waters, little can be done. I suspect that as the hazard to shipping increases and insurance rises, the navies of the world will have to take some kind of concerted action, although large naval vessels themselves are notoriously defenseless against swarming attacks.
See my short blog article on the efficacy of swarming attacks with several references at http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid...
June 19, 2019
I have a weird liking for disaster stories - shipwrecks, plane crashes, and other catastrophes - and this book really satisfied my craving. It powerfully describes the little-known world of the high seas, where nation-states and their laws are irrelevant and man is at the mercy of the elements. Langewiesche's writing is compelling and immerses you fully in the scene. I could really feel the rising horror as he described the sinking of the Estonia. I agree the stories seem more like linked vignettes than a coherent narrative, but it made for a fast-paced read. I could only wish the book were longer. What stories from the sea still remain untold?
November 20, 2007
For being entirely nonfiction and based on terrible, depressing events, this is a super trashy book, and kind of fun to read, particularly if you pretend that the deaths you are reading about didn't really happen. Basically the book follows the shady world of container ships, their sketchy ownership and lack of regulation, and the disasters that result from these failures. I hardly ever read books like this, but I will admit enjoying the meaty drama this book is full of.
May 8, 2016
I would gladly read anything written by William Langewiesche. His stuff is simultaneously visceral and enlightening.
February 2, 2021
Interesting book, with a grim and entrancing replay of the sinking in the Baltic Sea of the ferry "Estonia," sending almost 900 persons to the sea's floor. It is the kind of disaster story you want to avoid but instead eagerly, guiltily, indulge yourself with. But the best quote is not from that section, is not really nautical at all- "More important, the news of the sighting seems at first to have been contained entirely within the Indian military, which, like other militaries, is eager to use the equipment it has and to take action."
January 16, 2021
I' m not sure what to make of this book. It was rather disjointed and reads more as a series of unrelated long-form magazine articles, that were sometimes interesting but didn't link up. It touches on troubling security issues in the shipping industry, the potential for terrorism on the seas, piracy, shipbreaking in Asia, and oddly, half the book is about a tragic sinking of a ferry in the Baltic sea that took the lives of 850 people. It was pretty interesting, but even still didn't really follow an overarching theme, but a series of vignettes about the ocean.
June 20, 2020
Grande libro.
January 7, 2024
3.5, dated (not its fault) and interesting to read but also mildly disjointed. Not bad, not great. Fast read.
December 4, 2021
3 e 1/2 una panoramica sul perchè esistano le carrette del mare, navi che cambiano bandiera continuamente fino ad arrivare a rendere impossibile l'individuazione della responsabilità in caso di incidente. Alla fine è sempre l'economia e la politica che decidono, esempi eclatanti la spiaggia di Alang in India dove vengono "dismesse" senza alcun controllo le navi giunte a fine vita. L'ho trovato interessante e discontinuo, dopo un gran parlare di come la supremazia occidentale spinga i paesi meno industrializzati a farsi carico di rifiuti e a creare registri navali pieni di navi che non dovrebbero nemmeno navigare, la maggior parte del libro è dedicata all'affondamento dell'Estonia avvenuta nel Baltico.
January 27, 2014
Uomo libero sempre tu avrai caro il mare Uomo avvisato spesso tu temerai il mare. Langewiesche � un giornalista di vasto mestiere e per mestiere fa il giornalista. Le due cose felicemente in questo caso coincidono. . Abituato in un paese che autorizza a chiamarsi giornalisti coloro che leggono delle veline dietro un banco, WL ricorda ai pochi che in Italia ancora praticano il mestiere e ai molti che ne utilizzerebbero ancora volentieri i servizi, come si va a caccia di un'inchiesta e come si riporta da vero "reporter" il risultato indietro. . Vi farete un'idea vasta ed accurata dei rischi che la libert� - che da sempre appaia le cose di mare - quando si trasforma in licenza garantisce con certezza assoluta. L'equazione analizzata � risparmio->trascuratezza->caos->terrore. Sul mare ci gira di tutto sia come vettore che come carico. . Chi Come Dove Quando e Perch� di questo rischio accresciuto. Lo scopo naturalmente non � quello di aggiungere elementi critici e di preoccupazione alle vostre gi� tribolate e precarie esistenze, � quello di mettervi in guardia contro le facili minimizzazioni dei costi e delle bugiarde promesse di miglioramento, dei politici insomma.
December 21, 2020
Well written episodic exploration of the interstitial economic world of ocean trade. Langewiesche weaves together stories of well intentioned but largely ineffective policy, frightening individual encounters with piracy and torrential weather, and the orderly decomposition of enormous ships by small armies of individuals. I thought the book was going to focus primarily on the growth of maritime trade history and policy, and though I enjoyed the other two sections, I found myself wishing the first section had been substantially more fleshed out. Definitely recommended to anyone who is unfamiliar and curious (like myself) about oceanic commerce and the many forms it takes in the spaces between nations.
September 11, 2024
El mar és un món a part.
Un lloc tan immens que és incontrolable. Es reprodueixen delictes i desastres com els terrestres i sempre magnificats. La pirateria -molt romantitzada- al segle XXI és terrible, els delictes al medi ambient quan es legislen, paradoxalment, ajuden als delinquents perquè aquests troben la manera d'esquivar la llei.
El llibre ens parla de pirateria, de desastres ecològics, de naufragis. Tristament, el denominador comú de tots és que la pobresa accentua les desigualtats. El pobre sempre pateix més i els poderosos sempre guanyen.
La major part del llibre està dedicat al naufragi de l'Estonia. Veritablement et queden poques ganes d'agafar ferris.
Un llibre molt interessant, que busca les diferents versions de cada cas. He après moltíssim.
Un lloc tan immens que és incontrolable. Es reprodueixen delictes i desastres com els terrestres i sempre magnificats. La pirateria -molt romantitzada- al segle XXI és terrible, els delictes al medi ambient quan es legislen, paradoxalment, ajuden als delinquents perquè aquests troben la manera d'esquivar la llei.
El llibre ens parla de pirateria, de desastres ecològics, de naufragis. Tristament, el denominador comú de tots és que la pobresa accentua les desigualtats. El pobre sempre pateix més i els poderosos sempre guanyen.
La major part del llibre està dedicat al naufragi de l'Estonia. Veritablement et queden poques ganes d'agafar ferris.
Un llibre molt interessant, que busca les diferents versions de cada cas. He après moltíssim.
July 22, 2008
I'm hard to please when it comes to nonfiction. But this book paints a picture of a place that is two thirds of the world's surface and I and I think many others know nothing about, without realizing that we know nothing about it. And that it is kind of important for us to know more than nothing about it. I guess what I am saying is the sea - really shipping is what this book is speaking of - is an unknown to me, and so the information presented was fascinating. I also appreciate that he used many real event stories and interviews to represent and back up his interesting and refreshingly objective ideas. A great read
August 26, 2010
We may think that we control the se. Langewiesche shows that we don't. Given piracy, oil spills, terrorism, and the abuse of flags of convenience, it's a chilling read.
July 29, 2025
William Langewiesche recently passed away. I've been thinking about it for days, and returned to his writing as a result. His writing, for me, always had a quality that invoked a sort of obsessive need to read what he had to say, especially about flight. It started with my childhood intrigue and curiosity about aircraft flying at 30,000 feet above my nondescript midwestern town. Where's it going, who's in the plane, who's flying it, why are they in that plane, and so on. That fascination never waned, resulting in my discovery of Langewiesche's writing decades later in the library (Aloft) as a graduate student. When I read it, I was hooked by this factual, straight-shooting style and outrageously detailed research. I felt like this writer/journalist asked the right questions to get the best possible picture of whatever it was he was writing about. He must have been wicked smart.
Additionally, true to the non-fiction literary style, Langewiesche's writing is driven by an earnest desire to connect with the human element by describing who he has talked to and what they said. He somehow captured the essence of humanity, often in a single, economically built sentence with the absolute correct vocabulary to pack a punch. You can tell when he found someone off-putting or when he found someone interesting, but he has a way of putting it into the bigger picture.
I opted to listen to this book because the author narrated it (the only one he narrated).
The early chapters in the Outlaw Sea are sort of a chaos/pirates 101 introduction to the sea. Those stories are compelling in demonstrating the anarchy that seems to be the law of the sea and the difficulty of prosecuting criminals involved in piracy and maritime misdeeds. Like water itself, people and ships slip from one jurisdiction to another, never quite staying in one place. I won't call it an administrative set of chapters, but they are necessary to help the reader understand the inhabitants of the world of large ships.
The later chapters about the Estonia ferry disaster offer incredible, harrowing passages that leave you breathless, and also wondering, was this guy (the author) there? Was he literally on that sinking ship? Because he convinced me that he just might have been, simply through language.
But he wasn't there. He interviewed survivors, apparently, with the patience of Job. No angle, no agenda, but painstaking observation (smart), listening, research, culminating in an astounding synthesis of facts, events, and witness accounts. The details about the sinking, the way the ship moved, the weather, the utter futility. It's all captured in plain, clear language, but with those occasional, perfectly placed "smart-sounding" words that bring it all together.
The final section about shipbreaking was equally thoughtful, but in a completely different way. Shipbreaking's necessity and questionable practices reveal a story that explains the uneven global development patterns that continue to plague our world, affecting the environment, policy, politics, and human survival (even more so since this was written). I mean, look at this sentence, "The ships seemed to emerge from the earth, as if the peasants had found a way to farm them." Not even a fancy word in this one, yet he's juxtaposed the main themes so efficiently and imaginatively.
I'm gushing about the writing, but honestly, this sort of work amazes me because I'm reading something I know nothing about, and I keep coming back to it. It's not because I'm some ship nut, but only because these long vignettes contain suspense, action, truth, space, time, life, death, and injustices. Why would I read about a ship that I know is going to sink? I didn't even like Titanic (the movie). I keep reading because it's written well.
A great read. Thank you for leaving us with all this great stuff to read. RIP.
Additionally, true to the non-fiction literary style, Langewiesche's writing is driven by an earnest desire to connect with the human element by describing who he has talked to and what they said. He somehow captured the essence of humanity, often in a single, economically built sentence with the absolute correct vocabulary to pack a punch. You can tell when he found someone off-putting or when he found someone interesting, but he has a way of putting it into the bigger picture.
I opted to listen to this book because the author narrated it (the only one he narrated).
The early chapters in the Outlaw Sea are sort of a chaos/pirates 101 introduction to the sea. Those stories are compelling in demonstrating the anarchy that seems to be the law of the sea and the difficulty of prosecuting criminals involved in piracy and maritime misdeeds. Like water itself, people and ships slip from one jurisdiction to another, never quite staying in one place. I won't call it an administrative set of chapters, but they are necessary to help the reader understand the inhabitants of the world of large ships.
The later chapters about the Estonia ferry disaster offer incredible, harrowing passages that leave you breathless, and also wondering, was this guy (the author) there? Was he literally on that sinking ship? Because he convinced me that he just might have been, simply through language.
But he wasn't there. He interviewed survivors, apparently, with the patience of Job. No angle, no agenda, but painstaking observation (smart), listening, research, culminating in an astounding synthesis of facts, events, and witness accounts. The details about the sinking, the way the ship moved, the weather, the utter futility. It's all captured in plain, clear language, but with those occasional, perfectly placed "smart-sounding" words that bring it all together.
The final section about shipbreaking was equally thoughtful, but in a completely different way. Shipbreaking's necessity and questionable practices reveal a story that explains the uneven global development patterns that continue to plague our world, affecting the environment, policy, politics, and human survival (even more so since this was written). I mean, look at this sentence, "The ships seemed to emerge from the earth, as if the peasants had found a way to farm them." Not even a fancy word in this one, yet he's juxtaposed the main themes so efficiently and imaginatively.
I'm gushing about the writing, but honestly, this sort of work amazes me because I'm reading something I know nothing about, and I keep coming back to it. It's not because I'm some ship nut, but only because these long vignettes contain suspense, action, truth, space, time, life, death, and injustices. Why would I read about a ship that I know is going to sink? I didn't even like Titanic (the movie). I keep reading because it's written well.
A great read. Thank you for leaving us with all this great stuff to read. RIP.
September 21, 2024
Easy to read book.
As the title and subtitle suggests - the book highlights instances which underline the point that the oceans and ships and anything related to it is quite shady, chaotic and full of disorder underneath the seemingly normal looking industry and organizations that govern it.
Still true as in 2024 as to when it was written in 2004.
What I know now in ~2024, was apparently true 20 years ago as well that so many sailors came from South Asia due to lack of opportunities.
Panama is the largest maritime nation surprisingly. And I also learned about "flags of convenience".
Shipping industry has main problems - (1) Playing the poor against the poor. (2) Presence of huge fleets of dangerous ships (3) Pollution
Even though, UN imposed an order of having a genuine connection (link) between the ship and the flag on it - ownership of a ship remains a murky business.
I was a bit (not) surprised to learn the US has its own definition of territorial waters (in excess of the distance) instead of the IMO.
I liked the chapter around ship-breaking as it highlighted how due to environmental regulations - the Western world doesn't want to do it anymore and so it has moved to South Asia where there are non-existent regulations. Alang, India - is/was a key center and notoriously known for poor working and safety conditions. That was interesting to learn.
One criticism is I didn't understand why so much space was devoted to the sinking in MS Estonia. Perhaps, it was a big event when the book was published?
I agree with the other reviewers that the structure in the content seems disjointed - piracy, sinking, shipbreaking. It is also odd that copy I got from the library doesn't have an Acknowledgment either.
Atleast, I learned a few things through this book - notably the "Free surface effect" and that Valleta is the capital of Malta. Four stars hence!
As the title and subtitle suggests - the book highlights instances which underline the point that the oceans and ships and anything related to it is quite shady, chaotic and full of disorder underneath the seemingly normal looking industry and organizations that govern it.
Still true as in 2024 as to when it was written in 2004.
What I know now in ~2024, was apparently true 20 years ago as well that so many sailors came from South Asia due to lack of opportunities.
Panama is the largest maritime nation surprisingly. And I also learned about "flags of convenience".
Shipping industry has main problems - (1) Playing the poor against the poor. (2) Presence of huge fleets of dangerous ships (3) Pollution
Even though, UN imposed an order of having a genuine connection (link) between the ship and the flag on it - ownership of a ship remains a murky business.
I was a bit (not) surprised to learn the US has its own definition of territorial waters (in excess of the distance) instead of the IMO.
I liked the chapter around ship-breaking as it highlighted how due to environmental regulations - the Western world doesn't want to do it anymore and so it has moved to South Asia where there are non-existent regulations. Alang, India - is/was a key center and notoriously known for poor working and safety conditions. That was interesting to learn.
One criticism is I didn't understand why so much space was devoted to the sinking in MS Estonia. Perhaps, it was a big event when the book was published?
I agree with the other reviewers that the structure in the content seems disjointed - piracy, sinking, shipbreaking. It is also odd that copy I got from the library doesn't have an Acknowledgment either.
Atleast, I learned a few things through this book - notably the "Free surface effect" and that Valleta is the capital of Malta. Four stars hence!
August 6, 2019
Langwiesche’s account of some of what is happening on the oceans of the world is more than alarming. If true, and it appears to be; and if little has changed since he wrote the book almost two decades ago, it is not surprising that the United States remains a second rate maritime power, that piracy continues to exist, and that just about anything, legal or illegal can be transported by ocean going ships to almost any ocean accessible place on earth.
For the author, the sea is lawless, the Wild West of modern times. It is far too large to effectively police and most nations and their business concerns use the cheapest means they can find to transport goods. To skirt rules and laws, ships are registered through third parties, fourth parties and more. Trying to pin actual ownership of a ship and its cargo on any single entity can be a near impossible task. Many ships transit the oceans unaccounted for by anyone. Crews are often poorly educated, poorly paid, poorly trained and unable to communicate even with each other. Attempts to regulate and control this chaos rarely succeeds.
Two stories stuck out for me: the sinking of the ferry Estonia on the Baltic Sea in the mid-1990s; and the ship dismantling industry that operates in India.
As a reader, you will likely enjoy this book if you understand a bit about the open ocean and basic trade and commerce. The author is a solid writer, a good storyteller, and a revealer of the rottenness one may find among those that profit from the sea as an avenue of transportation and commerce.
For the author, the sea is lawless, the Wild West of modern times. It is far too large to effectively police and most nations and their business concerns use the cheapest means they can find to transport goods. To skirt rules and laws, ships are registered through third parties, fourth parties and more. Trying to pin actual ownership of a ship and its cargo on any single entity can be a near impossible task. Many ships transit the oceans unaccounted for by anyone. Crews are often poorly educated, poorly paid, poorly trained and unable to communicate even with each other. Attempts to regulate and control this chaos rarely succeeds.
Two stories stuck out for me: the sinking of the ferry Estonia on the Baltic Sea in the mid-1990s; and the ship dismantling industry that operates in India.
As a reader, you will likely enjoy this book if you understand a bit about the open ocean and basic trade and commerce. The author is a solid writer, a good storyteller, and a revealer of the rottenness one may find among those that profit from the sea as an avenue of transportation and commerce.
June 8, 2022
This book—really a collection of essays—reveals the world’s oceans in all their terrible power and lawlessness, despite nation-state efforts to subdue or at least effectively manage them. Langewiesche brings an immaculate reporter’s detail to these accounts, and adds a storytelling flair that made this book a quick, enjoyable read for me.
I’ve long been fascinated by the immense majesty of earth’s oceans, and the ships and stories its waters have borne across time. Even as modern technology has brought some mastery to man’s seafaring ways, the sea remains unconquerable. The world’s oceans do not yield to man in the same way that the elements do on land.
The first account is a primer on the international shipping regime and the efforts by nations and their navies to better manage its complexities and dangers. How does a country protect its coasts and ports? How does it manage the personnel and cargo coming and going in such unmanageable numbers and ways?
The shipping industry is largely an uncontainable shell game of multi-national, trans-national, and extra-national operators, moving furtively in the shadows and enormity of the space in pursuit of slim profits. Piracy is real, and large container ships are not immune. In a second story, Langewiesche tells the story of one such hijacking in Southeast Asia.
In a third and final story, we learn about the Indian ship breakers with welding torches who speed up the decomposition of decommissioned ships on the backs of poor laborers (who prefer this work over abject poverty) on the beaches of India in the face of international campaigns to stop them. The reality of this work is more complex than Greenpeace would suggest.
Langewiesche’s books have a poetic realism to them, where facts and characters are grittier than fiction. For those who love the mysteries of the ocean, and who want an introduction to the complexities and hazards of the global shipping industry, this is a fluid, eye-opening primer.
—-
I found this book in Pioneer Bookstore in Provo, Utah after enjoying the author’s book Sahara Unveiled a few years ago.
I’ve long been fascinated by the immense majesty of earth’s oceans, and the ships and stories its waters have borne across time. Even as modern technology has brought some mastery to man’s seafaring ways, the sea remains unconquerable. The world’s oceans do not yield to man in the same way that the elements do on land.
The first account is a primer on the international shipping regime and the efforts by nations and their navies to better manage its complexities and dangers. How does a country protect its coasts and ports? How does it manage the personnel and cargo coming and going in such unmanageable numbers and ways?
The shipping industry is largely an uncontainable shell game of multi-national, trans-national, and extra-national operators, moving furtively in the shadows and enormity of the space in pursuit of slim profits. Piracy is real, and large container ships are not immune. In a second story, Langewiesche tells the story of one such hijacking in Southeast Asia.
In a third and final story, we learn about the Indian ship breakers with welding torches who speed up the decomposition of decommissioned ships on the backs of poor laborers (who prefer this work over abject poverty) on the beaches of India in the face of international campaigns to stop them. The reality of this work is more complex than Greenpeace would suggest.
Langewiesche’s books have a poetic realism to them, where facts and characters are grittier than fiction. For those who love the mysteries of the ocean, and who want an introduction to the complexities and hazards of the global shipping industry, this is a fluid, eye-opening primer.
—-
I found this book in Pioneer Bookstore in Provo, Utah after enjoying the author’s book Sahara Unveiled a few years ago.
June 20, 2023
Ho amato poco questo saggio (forse più una raccolta di reportage giornalistici) sulla navigazione. I temi trattati sono principalmente tre: la situazione anarchica della navigazione commerciale, in cui ogni elemento di sicurezza e trattamento dei lavoratori viene ignorato per perseguire il massimo profitto; il naufragio della nave "Estonia" nel mar Baltico dove son morte 800 persone; la questione dello smantellamento delle navi di tutto il mondo in India, fatto in condizioni tremende per lavoratori ed ambiente. Quello che più mi ha infastidito è il tono rinunciatario con cui l'autore racconta le cose: è tutto un "è così, cosa ci vuoi fare? Ci sarà sempre uno più furbo!", un enunciare con mollezza tentativi di risolvere problemi suggerendo che non servirà a niente. Nella seconda sezione, poi, pur interessante e approfondita, spesso scivola nella morbosità narrando dei mille modi diversi in cui la gente è morta in quel naufragio. Il libro, inoltre, è del 2004, e in questi quasi vent'anni è probabile che molte cose siano cambiate. Ho la sensazione, ad esempio, che ci siano meno incidenti di petroliere, e che lo smantellamento delle navi non avvenga più in paesi meno controllati (la Costa Concordia è stata smantellata a Genova, per dire). Infine, una nota di biasimo persino per Adelphi, per l'assurdo titolo italiano per un libro il cui titolo originale è " The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime". Si son fatti prestare un titolista da quelli dei film?
July 1, 2020
This is a fascinating if flawed book about what goes on in the roughly two-thirds of the world that is made of water -- or rather what's happening atop it, in terms of shipping. William Langewiesche employs the cool narrative voice of a New Yorker writer to tell about the mostly unregulated commercial shipping trade, the evolution of piracy, the investigation of shipwrecks and the cruel and nasty world of shipbreaking.
For the most part I found it spellbinding, particularly the part about piracy and the lawlessness of the lightly regulated world of commercial shipping. He's got a deft way of telling a tale, particularly the ones involving a disaster at sea.
But there's a looooooong section in the middle in which the author takes a deep dive (pun intended) on an Estonian ferry accident that killed hundreds of people, and while at first it's pretty amazing, after about 50 pages you start to think: How much longer until we get to the next topic? Because he tells the story of the ship's sinking, then the investigaiton afterward, and then he GOES OVER IT ALL AGAIN IN MORE DETAIL. I really had to push myself to get through that part and finally reach the section on shipbreaking, which was mercifully short.
This was the first book of his that I've read. I want to find some more -- maybe the one about the cleanup of 9/11 -- and see how he handles those topics.
For the most part I found it spellbinding, particularly the part about piracy and the lawlessness of the lightly regulated world of commercial shipping. He's got a deft way of telling a tale, particularly the ones involving a disaster at sea.
But there's a looooooong section in the middle in which the author takes a deep dive (pun intended) on an Estonian ferry accident that killed hundreds of people, and while at first it's pretty amazing, after about 50 pages you start to think: How much longer until we get to the next topic? Because he tells the story of the ship's sinking, then the investigaiton afterward, and then he GOES OVER IT ALL AGAIN IN MORE DETAIL. I really had to push myself to get through that part and finally reach the section on shipbreaking, which was mercifully short.
This was the first book of his that I've read. I want to find some more -- maybe the one about the cleanup of 9/11 -- and see how he handles those topics.
April 28, 2025
I did enjoy this book although it took me some time to get through. More than any book for a long time, this opened my eyes to things going on in the world that I would never have been aware of otherwise. The book starts well, he takes a chapter to address each issue, and it feels like it moves well. Later in the book I felt like it slowed down--there was an account of a ferry that went down in a storm, and I felt like it was too much detail and even a bit confusing, for example: some diagrams/ship maps?, as well as even shipwreck photos or diagrams would have been helpful. He also spends a longer time in the end of the book talking about "shipbreaking" practices but I found that a bit more interesting, especially when dealing with "idealistic" organizations that want things to be better but seem to do little but talk about it, without addressing not only the poor conditions in the shipbreaking business but the jaw-dropping poverty conditions in certain countries in general. The writer clearly did a lot of research--much of it "hands on", in the countries and talking personally with involved parties. His writing style is interesting, a bit journalistic but also conversational (and informational of course). I would recommend this, I feel like the more aware we can be about the world, the more we can try to be part of solutions to issues locally and globally.
June 21, 2020
I thought this book very well put together, even though it's written by yet another journalist who tend to pretend they know what they are talking about.
Langewiesche begins by describing few marine incidents that have resulted in loss of lives through re-enactment. It is gripping and intense, not far from what would have been like at the scene of the incident. Having read many marine incident investigation reports, I appreciate Langewiesche's honesty and usage of proper terminologies. He speaks very critically of the disillusions of the maritime regulations and enforcement. I cannot agree with him more myself.
Langewiesche also touches on the hypocrisy and total ignorance of people (politicians, activists, etc.) who try to change various practices in the shipping industry. He ends the book with showcasing Greenpeace's evil crusade in ending ship breaking industry in India. I particularly enjoy this section of the book.
Overall, it is a really good book for anyone who wishes to learn more about the industry in general. I give it 4 stars.
Langewiesche begins by describing few marine incidents that have resulted in loss of lives through re-enactment. It is gripping and intense, not far from what would have been like at the scene of the incident. Having read many marine incident investigation reports, I appreciate Langewiesche's honesty and usage of proper terminologies. He speaks very critically of the disillusions of the maritime regulations and enforcement. I cannot agree with him more myself.
Langewiesche also touches on the hypocrisy and total ignorance of people (politicians, activists, etc.) who try to change various practices in the shipping industry. He ends the book with showcasing Greenpeace's evil crusade in ending ship breaking industry in India. I particularly enjoy this section of the book.
Overall, it is a really good book for anyone who wishes to learn more about the industry in general. I give it 4 stars.
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