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Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

bbc.com

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Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#101

Post by goodpoint »

user3939382 wrote: post #53
eastbayjake wrote: post #38

The Egyptian legal system is not known for its fairness... the World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries, in last place out of 8 countries in the Middle East[1] Similarly (and tragically) the Syrian government is not known for its compassion towards its distressed citizens. [1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/Eg...

Most people may think I’m being pessimistic and jaded. But I think these rankings are hilarious (in a bad sense). Just like the corruption rankings that come out. The US gets a green square and a high rank, smaller countries are corrupt and unfair. I could fill up paragraphs about how corrupt and dysfunctional our (US) legal and political systems are. Meanwhile I spent a long time in Central Africa (a red square coun…

Choosing how to measure these parameters and what relative weight to give each of them is inherently very political.

US has been given a surprisingly high score while France and Italy are way below China!

There seems to be quite a lot of bias in this kind of scoring.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#102

Post by wahern »

aqme28 wrote: post #30
jandrese wrote: post #8

It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. If you think this would be unfair to the ships owners this is exactly the point. Force them to…

You're assuming that it's valuable to a scrapping company. Sometimes a grounded ship is more trouble than it's worth.

The ship looked quite large. I would imagine scrappers in Turkey or Pakistan would have paid well, considering the price of steel. But you'd need investors to pay for transport and any Egyptian fees. And to secure investors you'd need to resolve property rights, at least tentatively, to the point the ship could be released, likely requiring some experienced maritime lawyer able to work quickly to avoid getting bogged down in litigation.

I bet there would be significant profit in it, at least from the perspective of a handful of individuals, and especially if things could be arranged to make the sailor judgment proof--e.g. have his share of any proceeds go to family members--so free loaders (i.e. lazy ship owners, clients, and insurers) couldn't swoop in at the end to claim any proceeds. But it's not just a matter of profit; it's a matter of opportunity costs. All the parties most capable of pulling this off clearly felt there was more profit to be had by walking away and pursuing other opportunities.

Surely people on HN understand this phenomenon: there are an infinite number of profitable opportunities out there, but some are better than others, and there's only a finite amount of time and capital.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#103

Post by DanTheManPR »

biot wrote: post #65

> "And I can't find a single person on this planet - and I've tried - to replace him." I’ll do it for $10M/year, paid in advance of course due to the company’s financial situation. Oh, he probably means for whatever meager wages they were paying this guy. Yeah, no wonder.

Per the article, he was unpaid. Literally just a prisoner.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#104

Post by user3939382 »

FredPret wrote: post #90
hcurtiss wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I help put deals together with some experience in SE Asia. The ability to enforce contract and property rights in the US, with ready access to the courts and relatively clear rules, sets the US apart in terms of business efficiency and predictability. In my assessment, it's a large part of what's made the US so prosperous. In contrast, dealing with corrupt officials in smaller countries in SE Asia is just wild.

You’re right. The US has predictable rules and outcomes and very civilization-friendly laws. It also has the power to enforce law & order within its own borders. By contrast, especially in Central Africa, the borders on the map are largely aspirational on the part of the governments. Even the word “Democratic” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a bad joke. The dominant local power in most of that landmass is…

> The dominant local power in most of that landmass is more likely to be a warlord/crime boss than the government.

I would argue this is a false statement. There are pockets of instability there, especially near Goma and Virunga or very rural areas. The last few years especially have been unstable. But if you look at the country as a whole (which is the size of all Western Europe) over the last 15 years, the size of the territory not controlled by the internationally recognized legitimate government has been very small.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#105

Post by pulse7 »

jandrese wrote: post #8

It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If the court were serious about the situation they should have handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a scrapping company. If you think this would be unfair to the ships owners this is exactly the point. Force them to…

The problem was that this man >>signed<< a document where he agreed to be "legally bound to this ship"... So be careful before you are signing something...

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#106

Post by mrb »

His ship has been sitting still for so long that you can see it on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%86%D...

Edit: a few more story details here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/19/ever-giv... When he rows to shore to get supplies he can only stay for two hours at most as the area is a restricted military zone. Other crew members were repatriated in September 2019, so Mohammad was not alone for 2 years but only for 7 months (which is no less unacceptable). The only reason Mohammad was allowed to leave was thanks to a local union representative who agreed to take his place as the ship’s guardian.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#107

Post by Kye »

randyrand wrote: post #99
modeless wrote: post #9

Why would you write an article like this without a word describing the legal consequences of leaving the ship? What consequence would be worth four years of your life? Edit: a more useful video linked below explains that the authorities confiscated his passport. That would make it difficult to leave. Though I'd probably try anyway after a year of that.

But you are not stranded on Egyptian land. You're at sea. Why not just take some boat home? Or to the nearest non-Egypt country.

The article says the ship had no fuel.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#109

Post by francoisp »

maybe someone could have sent him a copy of this film? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Island_(film)

A bit of hacking, some solar panels, a few stereos, tents, some poker chips, a rock band's visit... how long before the authorities would force him off? How many bitcoins would have he raked? (OK this is thinking different in a slightly hollywoodesque way... still)

cheers!

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#110

Post by neither_color »

user3939382 wrote: post #53
eastbayjake wrote: post #38

The Egyptian legal system is not known for its fairness... the World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries, in last place out of 8 countries in the Middle East[1] Similarly (and tragically) the Syrian government is not known for its compassion towards its distressed citizens. [1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/Eg...

Most people may think I’m being pessimistic and jaded. But I think these rankings are hilarious (in a bad sense). Just like the corruption rankings that come out. The US gets a green square and a high rank, smaller countries are corrupt and unfair. I could fill up paragraphs about how corrupt and dysfunctional our (US) legal and political systems are. Meanwhile I spent a long time in Central Africa (a red square coun…

That's because, as a consequence of our own transparency, on every thread on a political topic, the resident anarchist trolls are free to give us a history lesson of everything wrong the US has ever done. There are many countries where such types of posters would get arrested on some real or made-up charge for being hyper critical of the state. Most Americans who feel that we're some hyper-corrupt, irreparable place(systemically dysfunctional, if you will) have no idea how far other governments go to cover up their dirty deeds. Our rule of law is still the envy of people who come from places that rule by law.
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