Rating: 
Summary: Three for Coverage, Four for Detail
Review:
This is not the book I was expecting. Normally it would only have gotten three stars, for recycling three articles, only one of which was really of interest to me (on piracy), but the author is gifted, and his articulation of detail lifts the book to four stars and caused me to appreciate his final story on the poisonous deadly exportation of ship "break-up" by hand. It is a double-spaced book, stretched a bit, and not a research book per se.
Two high points for came early on. The author does a superb job of describing the vast expanse of the ungovernable ocean, three quarters of the globes surface, carrying 40,000 wandering merchant ships on any given day, and completely beyond the reach of sovereign states. The author does a fine job of demonstrating how most regulations and documentation are a complete facade, to the point of being both authentic, and irrelevant.
The author's second big point for me came early on as he explored the utility of the large ocean to both pirates and terrorists seeking to rest within its bosom, and I am quite convinced, based on this book, that one of the next several 9-11's will be a large merchant ship exploding toxically in a close in port situation--on page 43 he describes a French munitions ship colliding with a Norwegian freighter in Halifax. "Witnesses say that the sky erupted in a cubic mile of flame, and for the blink of an eye the harbor bottom went dry. More than 1,630 buildings were completely destroyed, another 12,000 were damaged, and more than 1,900 people died."
There is no question but that the maritime industry is much more threatening to Western ports than is the aviation industry in the aftermath of 9-11, and we appear to be substituting paperwork instead of profound changes in how we track ships--instead of another secret satellite, for example, we should redirect funds to a maritime security satellite, and demand that ships have both transponders and an easy to understand chain of ownership. There is no question that we are caught in a trap: on the one hand, a major maritime disaster will make 9-11 look like a tea party; on the other the costs--in all forms--of actually securing the oceans is formidable.
Having previously written about the urgent need for a 450-ship Navy that includes brown water and deep water intercept ships (at the Defense Daily site, under Reports, GONAVY), I secure the fourth star for the author, despite my disappointment over the middle of the book, by giving him credit for doing a tremendous job of defining the challenges that we face in the combination of a vast sea and ruthless individual stateless terrorists, pirates, and crime gangs collaborating without regard to any sovereign state.
I do have to say, as a reader of Atlantic Monthly, I am getting a little tired of finding their stuff recycled into books without any warning as to the origin. Certainly I am happy to buy Jim Fallows and Robert Kaplan, to name just two that I admire, but it may be that books which consist of articles thrown together, without any additional research or cohesive elements added (such as a bibliography or index), should come with a warning. I for one will be more alert to this prospect in the future.
Having said that, I will end with the third reason I went up to four stars: the third and final story, on the poisonous manner in which we export our dead ships to be taken apart by hand in South Asia, with hundreds of deaths and truly gruesome working conditions for all concerned, is not one of the stories I have seen in article form before, it is a very valuable story, and for this unanticipated benefit, I put the book down a happy reader, well satisfied with the over-all afternoon.
Rating: 
Summary: A Free Sea, and a Dangerous One
Review: As Melville knew, we look to the sea as a symbol for freedom, and "freedom of the seas" is proverbial. But freedom at sea can lead to such manifestations as piracy, and not just in the swashbuckling days of yore; it could also lead to corporate irresponsibility and malfeasance. William Langewiesche's _The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime_ (North Point Press) collects and expands upon his previous magazine articles on this theme. All of us are dependent upon international trade, and few of us understand how it works or in what ways it is working badly or dangerously, unless we hear about a capsizing or an oil spill. There are a lot more of those than we hear about, and a lot more crime on the sea than even governments acknowledge. Langewiesche's book is a fine way for lubbers to get to know how traditional maritime freedom is endangering them. Before World War II, ships were customarily built in a country, were registered in that country, flew the flag of that country, and sailed for the profit of businessmen in that country. Ironically, the United States began the current anarchical system in a pretense of neutrality during the pre-Pearl Harbor war, registering in Panama ships bringing needed supplies to Britain. The practice became widespread in the succeeding decades, with many ships now sailing under "flags of convenience." They might be registered in countries that have no navy and even no coastline, and the countries involved can get relatively small fees, which are actually almost pure profit. The countries don't pursue administrative niceties like taxes, labor laws, safety inspections, and so on, and the corporations which own the ships don't mind avoiding such things, either. Among the cases described here are a too-old ship (with full inspection documents) broken in half by stormy seas. Pirates can take advantage of the lax laws by making a ship disappear; capture, repaint, rename, and reflag the vessel, and it vanishes from the seas. Seas are big, ships leave no tracks, and patrol ships and aircraft can see only a tiny percentage of any hunting ground. Policing the oceans from such attacks is not now possible. The longest episode in the book tells of the _Estonia_, a giant luxury ferry that sank in the Baltic in 1994, with a loss of 852 of 989 passengers and crew. A victim of faulty design, poor maintenance, or even a bomb (none of the extensive investigations afterwards has satisfied everyone), the narrative here of well-chosen characters trying to escape from the swiftly-sinking ship is fast and terrifying. The book ends with a part of the maritime business that few people ever consider: what happens to the worn-out ships? Salvaging used to be a thriving business in our country and others; reclaiming the metal and reusing it was good for profits and good for the environment. However, showing the same pattern of lack of regulation and reduction of the job to the cheapest source available, shipwrecking has gone to places like India, where poorly equipped and poorly paid workers are glad of the job, even if it means almost constant danger from the unplanned movement of heavy objects or the inhalation of poisons. The shipping industry, Langewiesche writes, is "not exactly a criminal industry, but it is an amoral and stubbornly anarchic one." This is a deeply disturbing book, written with cool detachment. Technology and international organizations have not made improvements in the way the vital global trade is conducted. Profits are more important than anything, the sea promises the freest of trading, no one seems to be learning from the lessons described here, and no one should expect these dangerous situations to be changed anytime soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Outlaw Sea
Review: Disappointed. Title is great, but content is lacking. Mostly an excruciating recap of some notable maritime tragedies rather than a discussion of the issues associated with governance of the seas, UNCLOS, inability of coastal states to manage their coastlines, flags of convenience, etc.
Rating:
Summary: The Outlaw Sea
Review: Disappointing. Some fine prose, but the text occasionally was quite wooden. The topic is a great idea, but never fully developed. This short book focused a bit too much on several maritime horror stories and did not provide enough detail on the concept and ramifications of dealing with the raw maritime world. An ok read if you are looking for something quick or superficial, but frustrating if you want something more.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Langewiesche
Review: Exploring the edges of order in the modern age, Langewiesche again demonstrates that the world is getting larger, not smaller. In a recurring theme (compare the 'pencil whipping' ValuJet employees certifying the payload of flight 592), The Outlaw Sea highlights the contrast between the bureaucratic fictions of the regulators (in this case, the IMO) and the sobering vastness of the world's oceans and the consequent intrinsic unruliness of their traffic. With crisp, distilled, yet lyrical prose, and examples ranging from Spanish sailors to supranational pirates, from devastatingly impoverished shipbreakers of South Asia to paternalistic European environmentalists, Langewiesche uses the sea as a lens through which to focus on the unbridgeable gaps in perspective between rich and poor, East and West, order and chaos.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look at the lawlessness of the sea
Review: I picked up William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea after having read his compelling series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly that make the bulk of this book. The tale of modern-day piracy he explored in the Atlantic was amazing and something I had never thought possible before. In this book, Langewiesche expands on his thesis: that the sea is immune to the laws of man.
With the probing, empathic narrative of an investigative journalist, Langewiesche shows how modern shipping is almost completely unregulated, run by shadowy figures, and accountable to no one. The result is piracy on the open seas, official corruption, and environmental havoc. For instance, he explains how when megaships reach the end of their lives, they are rammed onto the coast of India where workers take apart the polluted hulls for scrap. Langewiesche notes the devastation to beach and the unsafe conditions the workers face. But he also points out that workers are far better off for having these jobs than they otherwise would be working at best in subsistence agriculture. He also poignantly recounts the stories of the Kristal and the Estonia, victims of legal unaccountability and the cold viciousness of the sea.
Langewiesche outlines the bureaucratic impotence, and sometimes obstructionism, of the international system regulating the oceans, but he offers no recommendations or solutions. It seems he doesn't think there is a solution, and he is sadly convincing in this pessimistic outlook.
If you read Langewiesche's Atlantic articles, you have already read much of this book, but it might be still worth getting it if only for the final chapter on India. Otherwise, this book is wonderfully written and very interesting.
Rating:
Summary: The 'restless ocean' becomes a hideout for terrorists
Review: If the attacks on the World Trade Center towers made you nervous, then this book will load you with solid reasons to be fully frightened about the potential for even more destructive terrorist attacks. "The challenge is daunting. The United States has ninety-five thousand miles of coastline and more than a hundred seaports capable of handling large ships. It is the most active sea-trading nation on earth, accounting for a large percentage of long-distance maritime traffic worldwide and annually accomodating more than sixty-thousand port calls by oceangoing ships, the great majority of which are foreign flagged, owned by offshore companies, and crewed by anonymous sailors -- almost all of whom come from troubled parts of the world where America is resented, corruption is rife, and authentic documentation can easily be bought," Langewiesche explains. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, focused attention on aircraft smashing into buildings. Ships are mostly ignored, except for "big bang" fantasies generated by Sept. 11, 2001. However, an equal or worse disruption of trade is possible simply by running a large oil tanker onto shore in a vulerable region -- think Exxon Valdez, and the impact of a larger spill on San Francisco, or Seattle, or Boston, or any other of those hundred US seaports. Can terrorists get a ship? Pirates already seize dozens of ships every year, and it often takes weeks before the ship is recovered. Al Qaeda already owns 20 ocean-going ships. Tankers have inflicted billions of dollars of damage on coastal regions for decades; now, think of this being done deliberately. The federal building in Oklahoma City was demolished by fertilizer and fuel oil -- in 1917, a French munitions ship blew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a blast so massive that it briefly bared the bottom of the harbour. Despite an impressive bureaucratic and paper facade, ocean shipping is virtually unregulated. The total chaos of trade is an open invitation to the greedy, the pirates, the terrorists and anyone else with modest means and massive hatreds. Ships are the world's best cargo carriers, they are the essence of globalization and low prices in the US; in the hands of the world's world terrorists, they are also awesome weapons. In brief, it leaves Americans and the industrial world with a choice: either live with the "Russian Roulette" of ocean-bound terrorism, or develop a system equivalent to NORAD that was created to provide aerial security during the Cold War. This book is awesome. Read it, and you'll weep with rage at the $200 billion War on Iraq while leaving the "cargo door entrance" to America as an open, unprotected and deadly invitation to each and every terrorist.
Rating:
Summary: Sea Worthy
Review: In William Langewiesche's "The Outlaw Sea", we learn about the politics, or lack there of, in the oceans that dominate our world. This is not a book that looks at the mysteries of the ocean like giant squids, tidal waves, perfect storms, etc. This is a book about how big, usally unnamed and European, capitalist squeeze out every dime of profit they can from the tanker trade.
Once his theme is established the books then braches off into three main problems of sea trafficking, the surprisly high number of still sinking vessels, modern pirates, and the enviromental problems associated with dismantling ships.
It's a fasinating report, all be it a tad dry at times, condensed into a brief 239 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Tragic Seas... Great Book
Review: Langewiesche is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and has written several books that combine hard reportage with the more ephemeral qualities of a travel writer. In this case, Langewiesche's goal is to illustrate with bold examples the ungovernability of the sea. For him, this is a law of nature, but it is also a consequence of the inability of the laws of men to deal with sea's expanses. His case studies, if you will, are many, but he spends the most time on a few memorable stories: the modern day pirate attack on the Alondra Rainbow in 1999; the post-apocalyptic landscape of the world's most heavily trafficked ship graveyard, the beaches of Alang, India; and the wreck of the ferry Estonia on which at least 852 people died when it went down in a storm in the Baltic Sea in 1994. The subtext in all of these stories is that the tragedies contained within are, at least partly, a result of the inability of modern societies to govern the seas. The greater implication, as Langewiesche makes clear, is that such lawlessness and statelessness make the sea fertile for the operations of lawless, stateless terrorists. The sea is everywhere, but it is nowhere in the eyes of the law. These timely concerns, and Langewiesche's sturdy prose elevate a book of riveting tales of disasters at sea to a book of more weighty importance.
Rating: 
Summary: Leaves a lot to be desired.
Review: The author is a good writer, BUT, where in this piece of nonfiction are the index, bibliography, and footnotes. There are other books on the same subject that one should spend money on, not this one.
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