Revealed: Ghost Fleet of the Recession....

[KoKo]

Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession

By Simon Parry

The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year



The 'ghost fleet' near Singapore

The 'ghost fleet' near Singapore. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies

The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing he needs.

His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an officer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which I can't immediately put my finger on.

Then I have it - his 750ft-long merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a destination between them.
Simon Parry among the ships in southern Malaysia

Simon Parry among the ships in southern Malaysia

My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them.

Navigating a precarious course around the hull of this Panama-registered hulk, I reach its bow and notice something else extraordinary. It is tied side by side to a container ship of almost the same size. The mighty sister ship sits empty, high in the water again, with apparently only the sailor and a few lengths of rope for company.

Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European officer peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world's biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the only other people on the ship.

'They are telling us to go away,' the boat driver explains. 'No one is supposed to be here. They are very frightened of pirates.'

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour.
Fisherman Ah Wat

'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board,' said local fisherman Ah Wat

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.

Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'

The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships' lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea, staring at a city of light.

Ah Wat says: 'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board. When we sail past them in our fishing boats we never see anyone. They are like real ghost ships and some people are scared of them. They believe they may bring a curse with them and that there may be bad spirits on the ships.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession.html#ixzz0R2Fs5qAf

[aquart]

1. Yah. Things are really picking up.

[hobbit709]

2. But everything is going just fine

[Ian David]

3. I want to buy one and open a sex club on it. n/t

[imdjh]

4. I've thought about that. A floating whorehouse outside the nine mile limit.

I always figured there must be a reason that no one has done it.

[Ian David]

5. Horny pirates. That's the problem. n/t

[imdjh]

7. That and cheap whores on craigslist. nt

[FarCenter]

6. It is a good thing -- our trade deficit is way down.

In July the merchandise trade balance was a deficit of $42.7 billion compared with a deficit of $77.2 billion a year ago.

So we are gradually weaning ourselves off of importing all kinds of cheap crap from Asia.

[KoKo]

9. Yep...folks don't have any money anymore to buy cheap Chinese Crap...but

what if the coffee pot or stove goes. Or, the refrigerator or HVAC?

Since we don't make things here anymore...what about when the inventories get so low we can't replace anything?

Well..good news is..there's always GOODWILL STORES and THRIFT STORES! We can buy the cast off Holiday, Birthday and other gifts and that will keep us going. There is some GOOD STUFF out there. As we "unwind our trade imbalance." Thing is...those Wall St. Cats are still living the high life. They can import their fine Coffee Pot Stove and other stuff when they are traveling to their many homes across the world.

Ain't life grand? I'd be happier with an old "boxed new" coffee pot cast off at Goodwill, though than the cheapened crap made since 2007 I see in the stores. When the economy goes down...the appliances get cheapened, too. So...let's hear it for STUFF MADE BEFORE 2005! That's the GOOD STUFF!

[Better Today]

8. Okay, I went and read the entire article. In the end, I fear they have a valid point

to attempting to hide these inactive ships. I don't know, but sooner or later people have to start spending again. I was thinking about a big purchase soon, though I don't celebrate Xmas so it can't be an xmas present exactly, its timing would've been similar. Now I think I'd better wait. Since that's my reaction, I can understand why they don't want folks like me to know.

It's a terrible catch-22, ain't it.

[KoKo]

10. Yes...and thanks for reading the whole article. There's been rumours of this for awhile.

glad someone finally dug into it. I know "Daily Mail" isn't a fave site here...but every once in awhile even our National Enquirer Tabloid get's a story correctly. Like John Edward's love child we were so heartbroken to read about.

Blind Squirrel...Nut... I guess.

[Ghost Dog]

15. That's called deflation. A deflationary spiral.

So, almost nothing will get manufactured for a while.

You know it makes sense.

[Better Today]

16. Duh, I know what it is, all I'm saying is that I can see their point to trying to keep it quiet,

in that the more economic depression is a constantly on the minds of consumers, the more likely they will avoid consumption, thereby assuring a longer and deeper depression, hopefully with some deflation or price stagnation; I'd hate to see a depression with inflation.

[FarCenter]

11. Singapore is about 1.25 degrees north latitude

Being so close to the equator, it is improbable that typhoons would occur there. So it is a safe place to anchor empty vessels in Southeast Asia.

[anigbrowl]

14. No! No! leave our beautiful boogeyman story alone!

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. kick

[anigbrowl]

13. Secretive my ass...why do so many DUers keep linking to stories from the RW Daily Fail?

You think because it's British it's somehow more true? It's no secret at all, anyone who reads the business pages int he alst couple of months knows about this because there was a massive backlog of cargo ships on order at the time the economy fell and now there's a glut of cargo capacity - more ships are coming out of shipyards than there is cargo for them to pull, because ship orders are booked 3-5 years ahead of delivery.

It doesn't mean squat over the long term, only that the increase in demand for cargo has temporarily halted. Back in the 1999/2000 dot com bust we got left with a glut of fiberoptic capacity and everyone wondered what we'd ever possibly do with all this unused bandwidth. Now we're laying fiber again because everyone demands broadband and we're streaming video all over the place.

Daily Fail is so much BS. Stop falling for the hype.

[Name removed]

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[formercia]

18. Prison Ships1111!!!111

Obama is collecting a fleet of ships as death camps for freedom-loving american patriots!! WAAAA!!!