The growth of the sanctions-busting “dark fleet,” if nothing else, ought to have alerted the world about the level of skullduggery that has never gone away in the shipping world.
One reads about the detention of one of these ships, full of Russian, Iranian or Venezuelan oil, which is apparently owned by Sea Blackguards, a company registered in Saint Kitts and Nevis, or some other accommodating micro-state, in an office with 250 brass plates on the door. Here, the trail may well go cold.
The ship is flagged under a registry that either does not exist, is not to be discovered in the most comprehensive gazetteer, or has no conceivable interest in ship registry. The ship’s IMO number, which is supposed to identify it from cradle to grave, may well mean very little, perhaps being even transferred from a ship that has already been demolished.
And there are more than a thousand such ships loose on the world’s oceans, mostly ageing, and often, we are told, carrying dubious insurance and classed, if at all, in some society nobody has ever heard of.
You might suggest that such outright criminality is a consequence of the gruesome geopolitical situation, but this louche attitude to ultimate responsibility for floating objects long pre-dates the current global instability.
Even the most respectable owners reserve the right, citing the need to limit their liabilities, to register their vessels as “one-ship” companies, and to use whatever flag might suit their convenience. It all seemed perfectly legitimate and above the board, until it isn’t, when the unscrupulous and criminal elements note the opportunity such freedoms offer to them.
There is now a substantial fleet of sanction busters, operating at the behest of pariah states.
The shipping industry, even the most respectable elements of it, have fought long and hard against any constraints on these freedoms, and in some respects, their objections do not appear unreasonable. They would doubtless protest that it would unfair to prevent them using whatever flag they want just because of a minority who abuse the system.
The trouble, however, is that it has become quite a large minority, and alongside the “traditional” money launderers and bottom-feeding owners, there is now a substantial fleet of sanction busters, operating at the behest of pariah states.
Should this not persuade every decent operator that the system finally needs reform?
It was some forty years ago that I attended a curious conference in Geneva at which there was the last serious effort to regularise the connection between flags and the beneficial ownership of vessels.
Led by international labour interests, who had been warning for years about the use of flags of convenience for both sub-standard shipping and sub-standard working conditions for seafarers, they argued for closer, tighter connection between the owner and the place where a ship was registered.
They cited famous accidents, such as the stranding of the tanker Torrey Canyon, which had ushered in the age of the super-spill, and the huge amount of publicity that had been given to the convoluted ownership, flag, management, and the like.
While open registers have many redeeming features, even the best of them are deficient when the chips are down.
Such incidents, it was suggested, just underlined the need for a more transparent, and regular system, and a visible linkage between the various responsible parties.
The conference dragged on for weeks in the Swiss sunshine, but was at the best a signal failure, with the freedoms so fiercely defended by shipowners virtually unscathed by the labour interests’ attacks.
Since then, of course, many good reforms have taken place, such as the rating of flag state capabilities and IMO’s efforts to mentor up-and-coming flags.
But there is no getting away from the old and logical argument that while open registers, properly run, have many redeeming features, even the best of them are deficient when the chips are down, when serious diplomacy, real pressure (perhaps even backed up with military might) is needed.
It might even be argued that the emergence of the dark fleet is the most perfect example of the inability of flag states that run ship registry as a business to effectively intervene on the side of the angels.
Perhaps the sheer nonsense of more than a thousand misguided missiles around the sea lanes might generate some activity to reform our lax systems. Perhaps the muscular example of President Donald Trump’s seizures of ships could stiffen the resolve of others to similar action.
When something is so obviously wrong, shouldn’t we be doing something right?