Where boats go to die.

December 25, 2008 12:04 PM

This is a city of ShipBreakers.
posted by allkindsoftime (27 comments total)

.
posted by limeonaire at 12:13 PM on December 25, 2008

Video footage.
posted by gman at 12:15 PM on December 25, 2008

so the deviantart guy just copied pix from around the web?
posted by slater at 12:29 PM on December 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

Yeah, if you view the images, you'll see that he is just linking to other people's images. He could at least have copied them to his own server, and not stolen bandwidth.
posted by MythMaker at 12:30 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

William Langewiesche did a pretty good piece on shipbreaking a couple of years back in
posted by Duck_Lips at 12:31 PM on December 25, 2008

The Atlantic

sorry.. The Atlantic...
posted by Duck_Lips at 12:33 PM on December 25, 2008

Featured in a segment of Manufactured Landscapes, too.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 12:44 PM on December 25, 2008

This is not unlike The Jungle. Except that there's not much hope that anything will ever change in Bangladesh.
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:52 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

With no disrespect meant to these indomitable men, capitalism has made them into human dung beetles.

Merry Christmas, everyone.
posted by Joe Beese at 12:52 PM on December 25, 2008 [3 favorites]

Where is Joe the Shipbreaker to decry increasing government regulation and taxation something something...counterpoint?
posted by humanfont at 1:34 PM on December 25, 2008

What'sUp with the WeirdCapitalization? Has the formerly ObviousDistinction between EnglishWords and Programmers'VariableNames collapsedEntirely?
posted by RogerB at 1:41 PM on December 25, 2008 [2 favorites]

This was a National Geographic feature some time ago.
posted by The White Hat at 1:43 PM on December 25, 2008

I'd swear I saw this on Metafilter before, but search is failing me.
posted by dunkadunc at 2:03 PM on December 25, 2008

Here?
posted by gman at 2:08 PM on December 25, 2008

Amazing. There's an aircraft carrier in the Google Maps link, as well as some blurring where a ship was/is.
What's with that? I can speculate, but does anyone here know the reason for this?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 2:19 PM on December 25, 2008

Hmm.... Not all of these photos are from Alang. A lot of them are from the ship-breaking yards at Chittagong in Bangladesh. The original article and photos can be found here and here (click on ships on the left side column (stupid frames)).
posted by pwicks at 2:20 PM on December 25, 2008

I guess one of the consequences of having several billion people on the planet is that there is always someplace people will do whatever horrible thing you want done for less than the cost of building machine(s) to do it for you. Joe Beese said it better.
posted by maxwelton at 2:35 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

I feel almost guilty that this is helping me (with my horrendously non-visual analytical mind) visualise the city of Armada from China Miéville's The Scar, which I am currently reading...
posted by Dysk at 3:14 PM on December 25, 2008

The aircraft carrier is (was) the Brazilian NAeL Minas Gerais. I'm certain there's lot of people who know what boat Google censored, but most of them don't have internet.
posted by dunkadunc at 3:21 PM on December 25, 2008

Lots of cigarette smokers there.
posted by fuq at 3:25 PM on December 25, 2008

Lots of cigarette smokers there.

Filters out the other toxins.
posted by gman at 3:34 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

Man. I hope those dudes are up to date on their tetanus shots.

But somehow I suspect they aren't.
posted by greenie2600 at 5:27 PM on December 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

On the Google Maps link above I counted 59 vessels and hulk remnants visible between what apprears to be the northern and southern ends of the ship breaking area. It's a lot bigger operation than I expected to see. Far to the south there's a large oil slick in the water. Inland nearby it looks like there's significant farming going on.
posted by X4ster at 8:39 PM on December 25, 2008

Interesting and creepy. I wonder if this is what inspired the look of Hell in that film version of What Dreams May Come.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:48 PM on December 25, 2008

I think I can see why you might think that, but not everyone agrees. And why should they? Conditions for the shipbreakers are probably not much worse than conditions were for early-industrial Europeans, whose managers and plant owners also lived in big mansions.

I was engaging in a typical bit of DR-style misanthropy, but 200 years later compared to the European industrial revolution, or 100 years since The Jungle was published, when we've long-since established laws concerning child labor, working conditions, pay rates, etc. it would appear on the surface of it that in quite a few of the poorer nations on earth, nothing has changed for the average peasant since the dawn of time except the nature of the menial task they are obliged to perform.

If people are actually working on the dilemma, so much the better.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:41 AM on December 26, 2008

I don't get it - if the money is so good, how come none of them have shoes? You'd think it would be a worthwhile investment.
posted by GuyZero at 9:56 PM on December 26, 2008

The money is good compared to begging. They say it pays something like one dollar a day.
posted by Iax at 11:59 PM on December 26, 2008