this story deserve a documentary | Breaking Ships

Excellent feel for the subject | Breaking Ships | Roland Buerk

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	• Breaking Ships Roland Buerk Chamberlain Bros., 2006 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Well done and unusual

Buerk follows the "death" and dismemberment of the giant ship Asian Tiger from beaching to the sale of the last nut or bit of insulation, a process of some months. The story of how Bangladesh became a market for this type of work (which now supplies steel for domestic uses while the world price rises every day), the devastating impact on the environment, and the ambiguous cost/benefit to the workers are all dealt with. Buerk interviews all types of people involved in the industry and project, including the captain beaching the vessel, the business family running the project, various labor subcontractors, workers of varying skill (and pay) level, still poorer villagers in the north who desperately wish to get the backbreaking jobs on the beach, vendors on the roadside hawking products pulled off the boat, even steel mill operators taking in the steel and sending it on for recycled use as rebar in the cities. Throughout, the author is sympathetic to the men in each position, and recognizes that while the work is probably some of the worst in the world and pays terribly, still for the average Bangladeshi it appears to be preferably to no work and starvation. A number of b&w photos add significantly to the book. By the time the ship is largely gone, new ships have appeared on shore. For the workers it is a grinding life, but it seems to be the only life they have. Recommended read.

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this story deserve a documentary

I became interested in Ship Breaking when I watched some few images on the TV and from there I thought there was a documentary about it, but nothing. So I read this little book and it fulfilled my expectations. The whole process of shipbreaking is interesting, from the beaching of the ship, the dismantlement and the uses made of steel in Bangladesh.
The book also gave me a glimpse of Banglasdesh history, geography and people. How difficult is living in this poor country. Anyway, if you are interested in more images, here you have the coordinates to look it up using google earth: Longitude, 91º44'07E, Latitude, 22º25'54N.

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Excellent feel for the subject

This industry is an important component to the local economies, at the same time it is killing the local ecology and some people. It is interesting to see how the local populace and government have balanced these issues for themselves. While it is hard not to believe that richer and more ecologically circumspect nations are purposefully dumping this problem on this and other nations, it is at the same time insightful to see how the poorer nations involved in this trade are attempting to use it to their advantage. It is just not a black and white issue. For example, I don't think that this trade is causing some of the social issues surrounding it ("indentured" orphans, lack of social safety nets, poor environmental controls) in that they would and do exist without this trade, but the trade is being used to ameliorate the effects of these ingrained social attitudes and even improve conditions for many people.

The author does a great job at demonstrating these aspects of this problem, without explicitly stating all of them, and I think I got a good feel for the complexity of this issue and the fact that there is no easy resolution. Very well written, and would have made a great New Yorker serial.

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How Chopping Up a Ship Affects an Entire Economy

This book, while small in size, contains a lot of fascinating information about ship breaking, Bangladesh, and the economies of the world.

The author starts by following the breaking up of the Asian Tiger, a VLCC tanker. At 35,000 tons, it is one of the largest to be broken on the beach. From the time the ship is literally rammed into shore, until it is a pile of steel sheet, we follow the process of how the ship is disassembled in less time than it was constructed.

Woven in amongst the information about the ship is information about the workers, how poor they are and how important the ship breaking process is to the economics of this very poor country.

The book is well written, and contains important information on how the economy works on a world wide level. A good read all the way around.

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A Tale of Globalisation

Bangladesh today is the world's biggest scrapyard for ships. Here is where giant oil tankers and cargoships are dismantled on sandy beaches by scores of bare-footed labourers under primitive and dangerous conditions. Roland Buerk, BBC South Asia correspondent, describes vividly and with sense of detail how ships end their life and become again a mass of raw material, a source of meagre income for young men from the poorest areas and of wealth for the fortunate few. The grim story is told with poetic force and a fatalist note - maybe just a bit too much of that. But as a tale of how globalisation works in practice today it is more powerful than most.

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Asbestos, explosives, and chemical waste are only a few of the hazards involved in the meticulous work of destroying a giant ship. When new labor laws and environmental standards came to Europe, the ship-breaking industry moved to places like Chittagong on the coast of Bangladesh-places where the lives of workers seem expendable, and the environment is someone else's problem.

Breaking Ships follows the demise of the Asian Tiger, a ship destroyed at one of the twenty ship-breaking yards along the beaches of Chittagong. BBC Bangladesh correspondent Roland Buerk takes us through the process-from beaching the vessel to its final dissemination, from wealthy shipyard owners to poverty-stricken ship cutters, and from the economic benefits for Bangladesh to the pollution of its once pristine beaches.

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