These ports offered variations of the same basic story over and over. Left in this liquid desert, the men were typically stuck on a ship that was officially in port, but in fact was only visible to but not reachable to shore, a couple miles from land. On the Falcon, for example, five men—from Sudan, Eritrea, and the Philippines—who were waiting to take diesel to Yemen were marooned when their ship was sold to a new owner who refused to pay them nine months of back wages.
