Books and
Cooks West
October 2004
The Outlaw Sea by
William Langewiesche
The Outlaw Sea: A World
of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
by William Langewiesche
Sonia's place
Saturday, October 2 at 5:30 PM
Canape, spicy shrimp, pork roast with rice, carrot cake, red wine
From Publishers Weekly
"Our world
is an ocean world, and it is wild," Langewiesche writes. He then poses
a powerful question: have the industrialized nations of the world given
up control of the shipping industry to the demands of the free market?
And if this free market is indeed the most efficient and profitable
system, what price, socially, politically and environmentally will it
extract from the human beings who use it? From the panic-stricken
bridge of a sinking oil tanker to the filth-clogged beaches resulting
from a destroyed ship in India, Langewiesche (American Ground:
Unbuilding the World Trade Center) vividly describes a global cabal of
unscrupulous ship owners, well-intentioned but overmatched regulators,
and poorly trained and poorly paid seamen who risk their lives every
day to make this new global economy function. "It is not exactly a
criminal industry," Langewiesche explains, "but it is an amoral and
stubbornly anarchic one." Accidents happen with alarming regularity. A
sobering account of the 1994 sinking of the passenger ferry Estonia in
the Baltic is the centerpiece of this book. Brutally handled, poorly
maintained and perhaps fatally flawed in design, the ship capsized and
sank in a raging gale, taking 852 unsuspecting people to a watery
grave. Langewiesche painstakingly details the botched accident
investigation-complete with bureaucratic incompetence, backpedaling
elected officials and the persistent efforts of a German journalist
with conspiracy on her mind. In the end, no conclusion was drawn, and
the Estonia sits at the bottom of the Baltic, a silent monument to the
cost of a free market gone awry. Equal parts incisive political
harangue and lyrical reflection on the timelessness of the sea, this
book brilliantly illuminates a system the world economy depends upon,
but will not take responsibility for.
