William L (as I will call him for the sake of convenience) has written a classic here, but be warned it is not a book with easy answers.
The author is not a left wing radical at all, he seems a very typical small c conservative if anything, and yet he finds the unregulated nature of the sea deeply concerning - in terms of piracy, rotten ships, poorly regulated passenger boats, terrorism, and pollution.
He's undoubtedly right. The accounts of shipwrecks (and the poor state and utter lack of control in most of the world's merchant ships) are chilling on both a personal and a social level. The book review I read before buying this said that the reviewer did not finish the chapter on the Estonia ferry disaster. Neither did I.
Having been sailing on small boats I have infinite respect for the sea, and this book certainly increased that - it also highlights the scale - it really is possibly for pirates to steal a massive container ship and never be caught, even in the modern world of radar and satellites.
The final chapter explores the ethical dilemmas of the famous ship-breaking yards of South Asia (where boats are simply run up on the beach to be dismantled by hand...this includes tanker sized vessels). Western efforts to regulate yards in more responsible countries like India, have, if anything, forced the trade elsewhere while ruining livelihoods. Having recently met someone who had visited the same breaking yard and said much the same thing, it is yet another reminder that little about the modern world is simple. The same can be said of many of the issues raised in this book. ( )

What I've read of Langewiesche's leads me to believe the man is a master of detail. He puts a lot of detail into his writing without ever seeming to burden his gripping naratives. In The Outlaw Sea he's interested in the anarchic nature of the world's oceans and seas. He doesn't comes off as a crusader condeming the multinational shipping corporations; he's simply relating the facts and savoring the ambiguities that dog human activity in the watery realm. ( )

http://coyotemercury.com/blog1/2006/0... ( )