Breaking Ships
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.11 (765 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1596090367 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-10-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Fascinating Look at Ship Graveyards! Mike O'Connor Some time ago I saw a brief segment on TV about super tankers being broken up by hand in the Far East. Ever since then, I've wanted more details on what's involved in what looked like a fascinating but horribly dangerous undertaking. Now, with Roland Buerk's fascinating BREAKING SHIPS in hand, I have more than enough details about the fate of th. Excellent Documentary! While I got the impression that the author wasn't all that familiar with ships, he atoned for this through research and a thorough investigation into his subject matter. I fully appreciated the step by step process info along with the juxtaposition of the dire poverty of the workers and the people in the region from where they come vs. the merci. Insightful, interesting and important. Mark W. Mckellar I thought this was an outstanding book. It's short, you can read it in a day if you try, but it sheds light on a little known and poorly understood industry. If you're interested in ships, third world economic development or environmental issues, it's well worth your time. I would have enjoyed more and color pictures, but that's just me.
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.. 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. Asbestos, explosives, and chemical waste are only a few of the hazards involved in the meticulous work of destroying a giant ship
Roland Buerk is a BBC reporter stationed in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He currently covers the news climate in Bangladesh for the BBC, following such issues as Islamic militancy, human rights, and the political and economic conditions of the country. . He has also written for The Times (London), the Economist, and the Financial Times. Buerk survived the 2004 tsunami, and broadcast the first eyewitness accounts, which were repeated on television stations
He's sympathetic toward workers' plights (the work, as readers are constantly reminded, is backbreaking, and the slums are wretched) and disdainful of the fatcats who, "even in the low season, do well." Each worker profiled is worse off than the previous, though all are ensnared in a relentless cycle of poverty, while wealthy merchants chuckle and talk on cell phones as they bid on materials salvaged from the ships (by bleeding, sweating workers who earn a dollar a day). From Publishers Weekly BBC correspondent Buerk takes the Upton Sinclair route to chronicling the six-month process of disassembling a 38,000-ton oil tanker on the beaches of Bangladesh. . Buerk's picked a fascinating subject, but readers may be put off by his soapboxing.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved