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Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

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141–150 of 426 posts

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not once, but multiple times I've had police simply steal cash from me in the states. Not civil forfeiture, but the cash in a wallet disappears on it's way to where it's held temporarily, no crimes involved. And from rich areas like Boulder, CO. I have not seen the lack of low level corruption in the states compared to other countries. Like in other countries they simply confine their corruption to those powerless to…

What are you doing in your life that you've had your wallet confiscated by the police multiple times? Not judging, just curious.

One example, at a large party during college, my wife's coat was stolen. The thieves took her credit cards, left the rest of the wallet, and dumped the coat on an unrelated house's front lawn. Unbenownst to the thieves, this house was owned by a professor who she was close with. He had searched the coat and found the cash in another pocket. When he was unable to reach her via cellphone, he took the coat to the police, ultimately concerned about my wife's physical safety who then confiscated the coat, the cash, and the wallet. He then came directly to our house from the police (for the second time, he tried our house before we arrived back home and before he went to the police), and after being extremely relieved that she wasn't dead in a ditch or something, informed us of both the coat's location (with the police, and the specific station and officer he talked with) and the contents he had discovered including the cash that my wife had not stored in her wallet but instead an inner pocket. When we went to the police they informed us that both the intake form for the property detailing what had been dropped off had gone missing, and that no cash was present nor had been turned in.

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

#144
post #135

Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing. When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a lot less, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they will not bother with 'end of life' for ships, or getting insurance, or worrying about the lives of people who are 'expendable'. Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour practices. If every piece of this puzzle from end-…

Nasty labour practices... It's just slavery. This poor gentleman was forced into slavery. You're right that this is what we're outsourcing. All of the corporate trade agreements - American manufacturing was shipped overseas, and American labor forced to compete with what is often a modern form of slave labor.

And it was forced to slavery by the same people who took that job out of seas. Greed has no bottom.

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

#145

Is there something that could be done by people otherwise uninvolved - like myself, or my fellow HN readers - to help the other ~250 people who are currently stuck in similar situations? I don’t even know how to go about enumerating who those people are, their ships, or where they are anchored. With that information a well-organized and/or funded group could at least get someone out to these people to check on them,…

From reading the article, they just for some legal reason need a person on board the ship. So maybe people could volunteer to replace them on a rolling schedule.

Sounds like a joke but turning them into airbnb would probably end up being pretty popular. Who wouldn't want an entire ship to themself for a night?

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

#146
post #75

Not to compare bad vs worse, but when I get bored for ten minutes I tend to remember that at least I'm not in Otokichi's crew: > The ship, without a mast or a rudder, was carried across the northern Pacific Ocean by currents. It drifted for 14 months, during which the crew lived on desalinated seawater and on the rice of their cargo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otokichi (from a recent-ish HN thread).

Fascinating story. It led me into a short Wikipedia bout reading about Japan's period of isolation.

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

#147

Is there something that could be done by people otherwise uninvolved - like myself, or my fellow HN readers - to help the other ~250 people who are currently stuck in similar situations? I don’t even know how to go about enumerating who those people are, their ships, or where they are anchored. With that information a well-organized and/or funded group could at least get someone out to these people to check on them,…

Ah, here’s the IMO database entry on the MV Aman. It provides much additional context. https://www.ilo.org/dyn/seafarers/seafarersbrowse.details?p_...

In particular, here’s a recent update that sheds some light on why Mr. Aisha remained aboard - in short, he refused to leave unless and until he was paid the wages due to him:

  Govt. of Bahrain (7 March 2021)
  From Registration of Ships & Seamen Affairs
  I would like to highlight few facts as below:
  1) Vessel is not abandoned, but under court arrest due to ongoing cases.
  2) Seafarer by the name Mohamed Aisha had accepted a court appointment to act as court representative onboard. As such, when the owner repatriated all other crew members he was not allowed to be repatriated by the courts. 
  3) We had intervened with owner several time and also arranged for the courts to allow his repatriation by appointing another representative, but he decided not to disembark due to outstanding wages.
  4) The owners have tried with all resources available to repatriate him but he was not willing to cooperate.

  If he is now ready to be repatriated, then the owners are willing to cover such costs of air passage and local charges as a show of our commitment towards him.

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

#148
post #105
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...

You are putting way to much stock in "signing a document". Anybody can document an injustice, and make it feel "justified" - but that doesn't make it justified. If I were to convince someone to sign a document saying they have to work for me for free, I'm still a slaveholder. Pick which one - morality or legality - there is no way that document should have been held as valid for longer than a few months, nor was there any way that document was morally ok

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not once, but multiple times I've had police simply steal cash from me in the states. Not civil forfeiture, but the cash in a wallet disappears on it's way to where it's held temporarily, no crimes involved. And from rich areas like Boulder, CO. I have not seen the lack of low level corruption in the states compared to other countries. Like in other countries they simply confine their corruption to those powerless to…

Did this happen at a traffic stop? Did you give them your wallet when they asked for your license? I don’t think I’ve ever given a cop my wallet. I take the ID out and hand that to them. If they asked me for the wallet, I would feel powerless to say no, I just have never been asked. I’m not defending the police here, this behavior is disgusting, just trying to understand the circumstances in which this occurred. Also…

It hasn't happened at a traffic stop. Cameras like dashcams seem to have an effect on police behavior.
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