Dead man's coast bangladesh on google map. Shores of the Dead: How cutting up old ships became one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. How does it work

"...Allow shipbuilding and ship repair enterprises that dismantle submarines and surface ships to carry out, in accordance with the established procedure, sales abroad in accordance with allocated quotas and licenses of scrap metal, as well as other materials and products obtained as a result of cutting...
In 1992 - 1994, exempt those performing work on the experimental dismantling of submarines and surface ships from paying import and export duties related to the sale of products from the dismantlement of these ships..."

Twenty years have passed since the start of dismantling decommissioned ocean-going ships of the Soviet Navy at shipbreaking sites near the town of Alang, in the state of Gujarat on the northwestern coast of India. Today Alang is the world's largest shipbreaking site, as half of the planet's ships sent to the pins and needles annually find their final resting place at the local ship cemetery. The Indians did not “reinvent the wheel” and used a simple technology for dismantling and recycling ships and vessels - manual dismantling.

Ships in storage. Soviet-Gavanskaya naval base, Postovaya Bay, Pacific Fleet, 1991. Author's archive

For any modern shipyard, the possibilities of using this technology are limited only by the carrying capacity of the floating dock into which the ship to be dismantled will be delivered. Russian military, civilian officials and directors of ship repair enterprises were clearly disingenuous when they defended in all government authorities the need for significant subsidies for the disposal of ship cemeteries located along the maritime borders of the Fatherland. And they managed to secure in Resolution No. 514, under the pretext of ensuring the self-sufficiency of the shipbreaking industry, the right to attract foreign investors to the cutting of ships.

With the publication of the mentioned document signed by Yegor Gaidar, the sale of demilitarized (without weapons and secret equipment) ships of the Russian Navy abroad became possible, legalized by a government decision. In practice, sales abroad of decommissioned ships and those that had undergone conversion (welding of hull holes) occurred back in 1988. One of the first such ships were the Project 68 bis light artillery cruisers.

For some reason, the Department of Material Resources of the USSR Ministry of Defense (in 1991, the UFM was transformed into the Department of Material Resources and Foreign Economic Relations (UMRiVES)) from the beginning of perestroika considered the cruisers not the people's treasure, but the property of the Ministry of Defense. The Directorate for the Sale and Use of Released Military Property (VVI) has not yet been created under the TSUMRIWES (became called “central” since August 1992) in accordance with Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1518-92, but light artillery cruisers have already begun to arrive in Alang. The Ministry of Defense began to actively develop the practice of redistributing nationwide Russian property, which was scrap ferrous and non-ferrous metals from yesterday’s warships, after the well-known events of August 1991, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decree No. 1518-92 only legislatively assigned the so-called practical developments to TsUMRiVES, that is, the right to sell decommissioned ships both on the domestic and foreign markets. It is not difficult to guess in which divisions of the Central Apparatus of the RF Ministry of Defense originated the corresponding proposals in the mentioned presidential decree on military aviation. In addition, foreign currency funds (in US dollars and German marks) from the sale of ships decommissioned abroad were initially transferred to two accounts of TsUMRiVES in Vneshtorgbank. Employees of TSURM and VES converted part of the currency into rubles and allegedly transferred them to the fleets where the ships were decommissioned. Then the remaining funds were transferred to the foreign currency account of the Main Directorate of the Military Budget and Financing of the Ministry of Defense (GUVBiF). At the same time, both divisions of the Ministry of Defense did not have powers of attorney to exercise rights on behalf of the defense department, that is, they did not have the legal capacity of legal entities to open foreign currency accounts on their own behalf...

A foreign entrepreneur living in Moscow in those years, who will be discussed later, purchased one cruising ton of mass displacement (that is, the mass of the ship) from the Russian military for $9.63, when for the same ton of ferrous metal from a decommissioned American warship he he forked out between 60 and 120 US dollars. Of the twenty-eight ships he bought at the specified sale price from the Russian Navy (USSR), twelve were cruisers of the 68th project...

Ships of this type, which never fired a single shot at the enemy during their long life, experienced their first blow of fate during the years of the so-called Khrushchev reduction of the Armed Forces. Then, out of twenty-one laid down artillery cruisers of the mentioned project, only fourteen entered service. One of them - "October Revolution" - was cut up in Leningrad's Coal Harbor in 1990, the other - "Mikhail Kutuzov" - is now moored at the Novorossiysk pier as a museum ship.

Before describing the events associated with the twelve remaining cruisers of the 68-bis project in 1988-1992, we will briefly return to the Indian subcontinent to feel the atmosphere of shipbreaking work at the site of their destruction.

Barge haulers on the Ganges

Today, the once agricultural state of Gujarat has reached the highest point of its industrial development thanks to shipbreaking plants in the Alang area. In 1982, representatives of the shipbreaking industry received for use near it and nine other villages a unique section of the continental shelf with a tide height of up to 10 meters for dragging ashore decommissioned large-tonnage ships using the real haulage method (with ropes by hand). The site was divided into 100 sites, where up to 200 large-displacement vessels can be dismantled simultaneously. (Editor's note: According to other sources, there are up to 400 sites on the coast capable of breaking up up to 1,500 ships per year.) And the necessary production infrastructure was built in a short time.

This is how LiveJournal user grey_croco describes his impressions of watching the shipbreaking in Alang:

“The word “platform” when applied to the coast of Alang is a clear exaggeration. This is nothing more than just a piece of the beach. Before setting up the next ship for cutting, this piece, called a platform, is cleared of the remains of the previous poor fellow, that is, not just cleaned, but literally licked, up to the last screw and bolt, absolutely nothing is lost. Then the ship intended for scrapping accelerates to full speed and jumps out to the designated site under its own power. The landing operation is carefully worked out and goes without a hitch.

The coast of Alang is ideal for such work - the fact is that a truly high tide occurs only twice a month, and it is at this time that ships are washed ashore. Then the water subsides, and the ships find themselves completely ashore. The cutting itself is striking in its thoroughness - first, absolutely everything that can be removed and separated as something separate and suitable for further use is removed - doors and locks, engine parts, beds, mattresses, galleys and life jackets... Then the entire hull is cut. The actual scrap metal (hull parts, plating, etc.) is taken out on trucks somewhere straight to be melted down or to scrap metal collection sites, and huge warehouses stretching along the road leading from the coast are filled with all sorts of spare parts that are still usable. If you need to buy something for the ship, from door handles to cabin bulkhead panels, the best thing to do is go to Alang; you won’t buy it cheaper anywhere in the world.”

Cruisers of the 68th project "Alexander Suvorov" (left) and "Admiral Lazarev" in Postovaya Bay among other mothballed ships, 1991. Author's archive

In India, with a population of more than one billion people, there is no shortage of cheap labor for the needs of shipbreaking (up to 30-40 thousand people). It is recruited primarily from illiterate and unmarried young men from the underdeveloped North Indian states. While hired, they spend the night in rented slums on the shore without drinking water, electricity or sewerage. They work six days a week from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. with a half-hour break for lunch. For a month, an unskilled shipbreaker earns no more than $50, a foreman - $65, while a foreman or someone working with equipment (winches, gas cutting tools) receives up to $200. A large displacement vessel can be disassembled manually in 3-4 months. The nature of the work and the level of salary of the hired shipbreaker is still influenced by his belonging to one of the four castes of the Hindu community. So, with each tide, thousands of barge haulers of the lower caste ("sudras"), meter by meter, drag the ship onto land with still old hemp ropes. "Shudras" collect and partially dispose of industrial waste, mainly by burning. The general management of shipbreaking life is carried out by the “brahmins”, and the “kshatriyas” supervise the workers and guard the areas with cut metal. Despite the social mixing that has occurred in India over the past decades, the “vaishyas” from the villages neighboring Alang still gravitate toward agriculture, so they usually do not work in shipyards, but provide housing for workers for a small fee or are hired by “brahmins” as foremen. Housing conditions adequate for slave labor contribute to the spread of jaundice, tuberculosis and malaria among shipyard workers, which, against the backdrop of numerous accidents due to violations of safety regulations at work, is perceived by shipbreakers as an inevitable phenomenon. In addition to outbreaks of sexually transmitted diseases, cases of HIV infections are frequent. In the working slums of Alang there is a dominance of prostitution from priestesses of love from lower castes who came from all over the country. Often, far from their homes, young migrant workers enter into relationships with residents of nearby villages and start families. Thus, the population in ten villages located around shipbreaking sites increased from 8,000 people (1982) to 80,000 (2011).

However, the owners of shipbreaking facilities and state authorities turn a blind eye to epidemics and brutally suppress popular unrest, since today the industry provides 15-20% of the metal produced in the country.

By the mid-90s of the last century, the net profit of the Gujarat Maritime College from sales to the national ship metal industry exceeded $900 million.

"Brahman" with a British passport in his pocket

The author of these lines first heard about the plight of shipbreakers in Gujarat in November 1991 from the lips of then thirty-nine-year-old British citizen of Hindu origin, Keshav Bhagat, a native of Delhi, an electrical engineer with two university degrees and the owner of a private company registered on June 26, 1981 in London with 100% foreign capital Trimax Marketing (UK) LTD. Of course, the company Trimax, specializing in shipbreaking, owes its appearance in the register of companies of the United Kingdom under the serial number 01564017 to the money of the State Maritime Board and the capital protection policy pursued by the Gujarat government in at least two offshore jurisdictions. The educated Keshav as a “Brahmin” and a Delhiite also attracted the attention of the members of the said board because his father’s connections contributed to the positive decision of the officials to alienate the treasured section of the continental shelf near Alang to the owners of the shipbreaking enterprise.

Keshav Bhagat, 1988. Author's archive

Keshav Bhagat's business came to the Soviet Union in August 1988. There was practically no American or British naval base left in the world that had not been visited by an enterprising “Brahmin.”

For a fabulous rent at that time - $500 per day, in room 1907 of the Moscow Hotel Orlyonok (now Korston) on the street. Kosygina-15 Keshav Bhagat opened a 24-hour Russian representative office of the company. Trimax employees began developing connections in the USSR Ministry of the Navy, purchasing decommissioned ships, organizing their delivery to Alang and supporting the purchased ships with technical control equipment installed in the offices of Moscow, London and Bombay. The need for continuous monitoring of the movement of the purchased specific product, which is the ship to be dismantled, explained the round-the-clock rhythm of work of the Trimax representative offices. The schedule of business trips for the entire company's twelve-person staff to the above-mentioned branches and the initial point of departure of the ship was drawn up in such a way that employees would travel by air to the scene in advance. Mobility, unpretentiousness in everyday life, fluency in English and lack of fear of air travel were valued by Keshav Bhagat in his team, along with professional knowledge of management and engineering education.

The “Brahman” lost his first million dollars in commissions in business in 1989 on an unsuccessful deal to purchase the decommissioned Project 68-bis cruiser “October Revolution”, naively relying on the assurances of intermediaries that the ship would be deregistered through the fleet’s stock property department and the military would safely tow the cruiser to Alang.

Since then, the owner of Trimax did not skimp on travel allowances, worked with people in uniform from TsAMO directly and double-checked the data he received directly in the fleets.

From his first days in Russia, Keshav Bhagat was primarily interested not in civilian ships, but in aircraft carriers and light artillery cruisers.

According to the “Brahman”, warships of these classes make it possible to obtain the maximum return on the investment spent on their acquisition due to efficient disassembly. During the initial selection of the decommissioned cruiser, the enterprising Indian took into account, in addition to the price, the mass displacement and specialization of the ship, as well as the origin of its shipbuilder. All this taken together makes it possible to determine in advance how many tons of briquetted ferrous and non-ferrous metal to expect in Alang from one purchased unit of a unique product, which for Keshav is a cruiser.

Dismantling of weapons on the cruiser "Admiral Lazarev" before being sent to Alang, 1991. Author's archive

K. Bhagat knew by heart the characteristics of the cruiser "Sverdlov" - the first-born light artillery cruisers of Project 68-bis with armor thickness from 50 to 120 mm. This ship was torn to pieces on Indian soil, but the entrepreneur himself returned the million dollars spent only three years later. Keshav does not like to remember the story with “Sverdlov”.

In November 1991, the owner of the Trimax company admitted that after the fiasco with the purchase of the first-born Russian cruiser at the Gujarat State Maritime College, his initiative to knock on the doors of the offices of Russian admirals, where data on decommissioned ships was stored, was literally received with hostility. The patrons of the Indian shipbreaking business argued their skepticism by the fact that, unlike American ones, the hulls of decommissioned Soviet ships annually lose more than three percent of metal from corrosion (American - 0.5-1%). In addition, the experience of breaking up Russian ships has clearly shown that, due to the difference between GOST standards for the equipment abandoned on them (primarily diesel generators) and Western standards, the restoration of this equipment is more expensive compared to the cost of liquidation work.

Keshav Bhagat received the “go-ahead” from the Gujarat rulers to implement the “cruising idea” only after sending a detailed report to Mumbai on the unprofitability of post-Soviet Russia in the nineties to use factory capacity to dismantle decommissioned warships that had accumulated in the so-called settling tanks. In a facsimile document to his homeland, the “Brahman” also reported that the Russian government has nowhere to provide multi-billion ruble allocations for the dismantling of the aging fleet, so the “Russian White House” is looking for a way out in its transfer to self-sufficiency in order to eventually completely abandon state funding for the dismantling of ships. And in this regard, Moscow will allegedly soon make an appropriate decision.

Fragment of the Alexander Suvorov hull after its conversion, 1992. Author's archive

Keshav had to work hard to provide his homeland with the evidence base as a real emissary: to visit St. Petersburg and, through local businessmen, to make sure that the Nevsky Design Bureau was inclined to adhere to the opinion that there were no technical and financial means in Russia for cutting up large-capacity ships.

Yesterday's naval specialists acted as intermediaries in contacts between an Indian, or rather British, entrepreneur on B. Komsomolsky (Zlatoustinsky) Lane in Moscow with officers of the Main Directorate of Operation and Repair of the Navy. Trimax began to receive detailed information about proposals born in the womb of the naval department for the withdrawal of warships from the campaign. Moreover, this information ended up in the foreigner’s hotel room earlier than in the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Of course, information about future naval dismantlement facilities was not a closely guarded secret, but the fact that the Brahman’s reports on the technical condition of Russian ships materialized in Sanskrit before these data were printed in Cyrillic by the typists of Zlatoustinsky Lane characterizes that complex and contradictory time .

Yes, in 1991, Moscow counterintelligence officers were busy reforming the KGB department, and their colleagues on the ground obediently awaited instructions from above, not forgetting to read the latest central newspapers and watch the upcoming “Russian News” program on TV sets before bedtime. The Center, informed in time about foreign commercial intrigues in Russian naval bases, remained eloquently silent.

The reduction in combat formations of the fleet and ship personnel, professional dissatisfaction, domestic instability, lack of money, political and social confrontation in society led to a moral breakdown and commercialization of the consciousness of the defenders of the maritime borders of the Fatherland.

Bhagat sent materials from the Jane reference book on Russian warships to the Gujarat Maritime Board, indicating in the cover letter that in the near future the flags on two-thirds of all “pennants” of the Russian Navy will be lowered. And at least three hundred cruisers, large anti-submarine ships, destroyers, patrol ships and submarines will go under the knife.

The reports to the owners of Indian shipbreaking yards were not without simpler but more intelligible arguments. Thus, K. Bhagat explained that in the new Russia there is no longer a Gulag, construction sites like the White Sea Canal and BAM, where cheap labor can be used in the same way as the slave labor of the same “shudras” is exploited in Alang. Like, whoever is the first to enter the Russian naval conversion market will remain there forever, the “Brahmin” concluded.

“Give me a chance to grab at least one admiral’s chevron, and I will drag the entire Russian fleet to Gujarat,” read a telex from the Moscow office of Trimax in 1990 in Mumbai.

Leaving the Moscow office in the care of a resident manager (a fellow countryman, an electronics engineer, but from the “kshatriya” caste and settled in Russia permanently), Keshav Bhagat was the first of the foreign investors to rush to the ship cemeteries of the Pacific Fleet.

Several years ago, at the behest of Govinda, I started working in a ship repair business. I am completely far from maritime affairs, and it was very interesting for me to see this facet of life from the inside. It’s amazing how much human effort needs to be spent, calculations made, fuel burned so that ships sail on the sea and cargo is delivered on time.

One day I came across photographs of what ultimately happens to those beauties that are being repaired at our shipyards. There is something eerie and bewitching about this spectacle.

Disposal is a big headache for a shipping company, because in order to get rid of an old ship you have to pay a lot of money. The price is high because disassembly requires huge areas protected from the penetration of toxic waste and fuel into the soil, equipment is needed, and specialists are needed.

Plus, the highest safety standards must be met, since the injury rate in such production will always be much higher than in the construction of the same ships. These are the realities in Europe and North America.

But the cunning shipowner, quickly estimating that the next repair will cost more than the further operation of the ship, sells it while still in sailing condition to a shady company, which takes on all the costs of disposal.

Also, agents of these companies are on the prowl in search of old ships that should soon go to the pins and needles. Often at ship repair yards you can see the so-called “settlement tanks”, in which there are ships of bankrupt shipowners who have not paid for repairs.

Ships arrested for some judicial or financial issues often sit idle in ports for years. Over a long period of time, the watercraft fall into a pitiful condition, and in the end, they find themselves victims of metal hunters.

Next, the company hastily repairs the ship and hires a crew of dashing people who will deliver the ship to its final stop. Why is this beneficial for them, if, as I wrote, expensive production space is needed for disassembly..? The trick is that metal prices have been rising in recent years, and it has become very profitable to dismantle ships. On this basis, a semi-legal business has grown in Asia, capturing up to 80% of the market for dismantling decommissioned ships.

Production area? For what? For example, India, the town of Alang. The ship is accelerated, and at full speed, at maximum tide, is driven onto land. Once upon a time there were endless beaches with snow-white sand, sea turtles crawled along them, seagulls and albatrosses flew in the sky.

Now the entire coast has been turned into a huge dismantling site, the white sand has turned black due to the constantly leaking fuel oil from tankers being torn to pieces, tens of kilometers are covered with metal rubbish - what remains from disused steamships.

Safety? No, we haven't heard. In India and Bangladesh there will always be tens of thousands of poor people who will work a 6-day week for a pay of 2 dollars per day. No equipment is needed: one gas cutter per team, each with a sledgehammer, and off you go. We must hurry, the next strong tide is in a month, before that time the ship must be dismantled as much as possible.

What can we say, the mortality and injury rates in this business are off the charts, and no one takes workers into account. Doctors in Alang say that every week up to a hundred workers from dismantling sites come to them with poisoning, burns and fractures. True, they say that in recent years the situation has begun to improve - people are already being given helmets, and even boots to those who work well.

It’s sad to look at these skeletons of ships that just recently proudly cut through the waters of the world’s oceans. On the one hand, this is normal: the metal is recycled, the mechanisms are sold on the secondary market, new ships are built, but on the other hand, it is sad. It is also sad to see how paradises of nature are desecrated, only so that someone can get fat from the money earned from the blood of workers.

On the advice of my reader, I am inserting a short video:

nlKrhndjF6k

How ships are dismantled for scrap in Bangladesh aslan wrote in May 15th, 2016

Like everything made by man, from cars and trucks to airplanes and locomotives, ships have a lifespan, and when that time is up, they are scrapped. Such large hulks, of course, contain a lot of metal, and it is extremely cost-effective to gut them and recycle the metal. Welcome to Chittagong, one of the world's largest ship scrapping centers. Up to 200 thousand people worked here at the same time. Human.

Chittagong accounts for half of all steel produced in Bangladesh.

After World War II, shipbuilding began to experience an unprecedented boom, with a huge number of metal ships being built around the world and increasingly in developing countries. However, the question of disposing of spent ships soon arose. It turned out to be more economical and profitable to dismantle old ships for scrap in poor developing countries, where tens of thousands of low-paid workers dismantled old ships several times cheaper than in Europe.

In addition, factors such as strict health and environmental protection requirements and expensive insurance played an important role. All this made scrapping ships in developed European countries unprofitable. Here such activities are limited mainly to the dismantling of military vessels.

Recycling of old ships in developed countries is currently extremely high, also due to the high cost: the cost of disposal of toxic substances such as asbestos, PCBs and those containing lead and mercury is often higher than the cost of scrap metal.

The development of the ship recycling center in Chittagong dates back to 1960, when the Greek ship MD-Alpine was washed up on the sandy coast of Chittagong after a storm. Five years later, after several unsuccessful attempts to re-refloat the MD Alpine, it was decommissioned. Then local residents began disassembling it for scrap metal.

By the mid-1990s, a large-scale ship scrapping center had developed in Chittagong. This was also due to the fact that in Bangladesh, when dismantling ships, the cost of scrap metal is higher than in any other country.

However, working conditions at ship dismantling were terrible. Here, one worker died every week due to occupational safety violations. Child labor was used mercilessly.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh imposed minimum safety standards and also banned all activities that did not meet these conditions.

As a result, the number of jobs decreased, the cost of work increased and the ship recycling boom in Chittagong began to decline.

About 50% of the world's scrapped ships are recycled in Chittagong, Bangladesh. 3-5 ships come here weekly. About 80 thousand people directly dismantle the ships themselves, and another 300 thousand work in related industries. The daily wage of workers is 1.5-3 dollars (with a working week of 6 days of 12-14 hours), and Chittagong itself is considered one of the dirtiest places in the world.

Decommissioned ships began arriving here in 1969. By now, 180-250 ships are dismantled in Chittagong every year. The coastal strip, where ships find their final refuge, stretches for 20 kilometers.

Their disposal occurs in the most primitive way - using an autogen and manual labor. Of the 80 thousand local workers, approximately 10 thousand are children from 10 to 14 years old. They are the lowest paid workers, receiving an average of $1.5 per day.

Every year, about 50 people die during ship dismantling, and about 300-400 more become crippled.

80% of this business is controlled by American, German and Scandinavian companies - the scrap metal is then sent to these same countries. In monetary terms, the dismantling of ships in Chittagong is estimated at 1-1.2 billion dollars a year; in Bangladesh, 250-300 million dollars remain from this amount in the form of salaries, taxes and bribes to local officials.

Chittagong is one of the dirtiest places in the world. When dismantling ships, engine oils are drained directly onto the shore, where lead waste remains - for example, the maximum permissible concentration for lead here is exceeded by 320 times, the maximum permissible concentration for asbestos is 120 times.

The shacks in which workers and their families live stretch 8-10 km inland. The area of this “city” is about 120 square kilometers, and up to 1.5 million people live in it.

The port city of Chittagong lies 264 km southeast of Dhaka, approximately 19 km from the mouth of the Karnaphuli River.

It is the second largest population center in Bangladesh and its most famous tourist center. The reason for this is the city’s favorable location between the sea and the mountainous regions, a good sea coast with an abundance of islands and shoals, a large number of ancient monasteries of several cultures, as well as many distinctive hill tribes inhabiting the areas of the famous Chittagong Hills. And the city itself during its history (and it was founded approximately at the turn of the new era) has experienced many interesting and dramatic events, therefore it is famous for its characteristic mixture of architectural styles and different cultures.

The main decoration of Chittagong is the old Sadarghat district lying along the northern bank of the river. Born along with the city itself somewhere at the turn of the millennium, it has been inhabited since ancient times by wealthy merchants and ship captains, so with the arrival of the Portuguese, who for almost four centuries controlled all trade on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, the Portuguese enclave of Paterghatta also grew here, built up rich for those times villas and mansions. By the way, this is one of the few areas in the country that has still preserved Christianity.

Here's what they write about working conditions in this place:

“...Using only blowtorches, sledgehammers and wedges, they cut out huge pieces of sheathing. After these fragments collapse like glacier calving, they are dragged ashore and cut into small pieces weighing hundreds of pounds. They are carried onto trucks by teams of workers singing rhythmic songs, as carrying the very heavy, thick steel plates requires perfect coordination. The metal will be sold at a huge profit for the owners who live in luxurious mansions in the city.

The cutting of the ship continues from 7:00 to 23:00 by one team of workers with two half-hour breaks, and an hour for breakfast (they have dinner after returning home at 23:00). Total - 14 hours a day, 6-1/2 day work week (half a day on Friday free, according to Islamic requirements). Workers are paid $1.25 per day."

And a short video about working conditions

Taken from
Click on the icon and subscribe!

Residents of Bangladesh, in search of income, do not disdain the most dangerous occupation - dismantling old ships.

They immediately made it clear to me that it would not be easy to get to where they were dismantling sea vessels. “Tourists used to be brought here,” says one local resident. “They were shown how people disassemble multi-ton structures with almost bare hands. But now there is no way for us to come here.”
I walked a couple of kilometers along the road that runs along the Bay of Bengal north from the city of Chittagong to a place where 80 shipbreaking yards line a 12-kilometer stretch of coastline. Each is hidden behind a high fence covered with barbed wire, there are guards everywhere and signs prohibiting photography. Strangers are not welcome here.

Ship recycling in developed countries is highly regulated and very expensive, so this dirty work is carried out mainly by Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

In the evening I hired a fishing boat and decided to make an outing to one of the shipyards. Thanks to the tide, we easily scurried between huge oil tankers and container ships, sheltering in the shadow of their giant pipes and hulls. Some ships were still intact, others resembled skeletons: stripped of their steel plating, they exposed the insides of deep, dark holds. Sea giants last an average of 25-30 years; most of those delivered for disposal were launched in the 1980s. Now that the increased cost of insurance and maintenance has made older ships unprofitable, their value lies in the steel of the hulls.

We found ourselves here at the end of the day, when the workers had already gone home, and the ships rested in silence, occasionally disturbed by the splash of water and the clanking of metal coming from their bellies. The smell of sea water and fuel oil was in the air. Making our way along one of the ships, we heard ringing laughter and soon saw a group of boys. They floundered near a half-submerged metal skeleton: they climbed onto it and dived into the water. Nearby, fishermen were setting up nets in hopes of a good catch of rice fish, a local delicacy.

Suddenly, very close by, a shower of sparks fell from a height of several floors. “You can’t come here! - the worker shouted from above. “What, are you tired of living?”

Ocean-going vessels are designed to last for many years in extreme conditions. No one thinks about the fact that sooner or later they will have to be dismantled into pieces, many of which will contain toxic materials like asbestos and lead. Ship recycling in developed countries is highly regulated and very expensive, so this dirty work is carried out mainly by Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Labor here is very cheap, and there is almost no control of any kind.

True, the situation in the industry is gradually improving, but this process is very protracted. For example, India has finally introduced new requirements for worker and environmental safety. However, in Bangladesh, where as many as 194 ships were dismantled last year, the work remains very dangerous.

At the same time, it brings in a lot of money. Activists say that in three to four months, by investing about five million dollars in dismantling one ship at a shipyard in Bangladesh, you can get an average profit of up to a million. Jafar Alam, former head of the Bangladesh Ship Recycling Association, disagrees with these figures: “It all depends on the class of the vessel and many other factors, such as current steel prices.”

Whatever the profit, it cannot arise out of nowhere: more than 90% of materials and equipment find a second life.

The process begins with the remanufacturing company purchasing the vessel from an international used vessel broker. To deliver the ship to the dismantling site, the company hires a captain who specializes in “parking” huge ships on a strip of beach a hundred meters wide. After the ship gets stuck in the coastal sand, all liquids are drained from it and sold: the remains of diesel fuel, engine oil and fire-fighting substances. Then the mechanisms and internal equipment are removed from it. Everything is for sale, without exception, from huge engines, batteries and kilometers of copper wiring, to the bunks on which the crew slept, portholes, lifeboats and electronic devices from the captain's bridge.

Then the devastated building is surrounded by workers who came to work from the poorest areas of the country. First, they dismember the ship using acetylene cutters. Then loaders drag the fragments to the shore: the steel will be melted down and sold - it will be used in the construction of buildings.

“Good business, you say? But just think about the chemicals that are poisoning our land! - Mohammed Ali Shaheen, an activist of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, is indignant. “You haven’t yet seen young widows whose husbands died under torn structures or suffocated in the holds.” For 11 of his 37 years, Shaheen has been trying to draw public attention to the hard labor of shipyard workers. The entire industry, he said, is controlled by several influential families from Chittagong, who also own related businesses, in particular metal smelting.

Sahin is well aware that his country is in dire need of jobs. “I'm not asking for a complete end to ship recycling,” he says. “We just need to create normal working conditions.” Shahin is convinced that it is not only unprincipled compatriots who are to blame for the current situation. “Who in the West will allow the environment to be polluted openly by dismantling ships right on the beach? Then why is it considered normal to get rid of ships that have become unnecessary here, paying pennies and constantly endangering the lives and health of people?” - he is indignant.

Going to the nearby barracks, I saw the workers for whom Shahin was so offended. Their bodies are covered with deep scars, which are called “Chittagong tattoos”. Some men are missing fingers.

In one of the huts I met a family whose four sons worked at the shipyard. The eldest, 40-year-old Mahabab, once witnessed the death of a man: a fire in the hold broke out from a cutter. “I didn’t even come to this shipyard for money, afraid that they wouldn’t just let me go,” he said. “The owners don’t like to wash dirty linen in public.”

Mahabab shows a photograph on the shelf: “This is my brother Jahangir. He was engaged in cutting metal at the shipyard of Ziri Subedar, where he died in 2008.” Together with other workers, the brother tried unsuccessfully for three days to separate a large section from the ship's hull. Then it started to rain, and the workers decided to take shelter under it. At this moment, the structure could not stand it and came off.

The third brother, 22-year-old Alamgir, is not at home right now. While working on a tanker, he fell through a hatch and flew 25 meters. Luckily for him, water accumulated at the bottom of the hold, softening the blow from the fall. Alamgir's partner went down on a rope and pulled him out of the hold. The very next day, Alamgir quit his job, and now he delivers tea to the shipyard managers in the office.

Younger brother Amir works as a worker's assistant and also cuts metal. He is a wiry 18-year-old with no scars on his smooth skin yet. I asked Amir if he was afraid to work, knowing what happened to his brothers. “Yes,” he replied, smiling shyly. Suddenly, during our conversation, the roof shook with a roar. There was a sound like thunder. I looked outside. “Oh, it was a piece of metal that fell off the ship,” Amir said indifferently. “We hear this every day.”

These guys claim that they are already 14 - this is the age at which they are allowed to work in shipbreaking. Shipyard owners give preference to young disassemblers - they are cheaper and do not suspect the danger that threatens them. In addition, they can get into the most inaccessible corners of the ship.

Steel is cut from ship hulls in fragments, each of which weighs from 500 kilograms. Using scrap materials as supports, loaders drag these sections onto trucks. Pieces of steel will be melted down into reinforcement and used in the construction of buildings.

Loaders sit for days in the mud, which contains heavy metals and toxic paint: such mud spreads from ships throughout the area during high tide.

Workers armed with cutters work in pairs, protecting each other. It will take them three to six months to completely dismantle the ship, depending on its size.

It took several days to cut through the decks of the Leona I. And then a huge part of it suddenly separates, “spitting out” steel fragments towards the side where the shipyard authorities are located. This bulk carrier was built in Croatia, in the city of Split, 30 years ago - this is the average service life of large-tonnage sea vessels

Workers warm themselves by the fire using gaskets removed from pipe joints, without thinking that such gaskets may contain asbestos

About 300 people gathered for the funeral of Rana Babu from the village of Dunot at the foot of the Himalayas. Ran was only 22 years old, he was working on dismantling a ship and died from an explosion of accumulated gas. “We are burying a young guy,” lamented one of those who came to say goodbye. “When will this end?”

Indian Coast of Dead Ships
Alang - “Coast of the Dead”, this sonorous nickname was given to the coast of the town of Alang, which is 50 km from Bhavnagar, India. Alang has become the world's largest site for the division of scrapped ships. Official statistics are quite stingy, and in general Indian statistics do not suffer from an excess of thoroughness and accuracy, and in the case of Alang the situation is further complicated by the fact that quite recently the place was the object of close attention of organizations involved in human rights. However, even what can be collected is impressive.

The coast of Alang is divided into 400 cutting areas, locally called "platforms". They employ between 20,000 and 40,000 workers at a time, manually dismantling the ships. On average, there are about 300 workers per ship, and within two months the ship is completely dismantled for scrap. About 1,500 ships are dismantled per year, of almost every conceivable class and type - from warships to supertankers, from container ships to research vessels.

Since the working conditions are indescribably terrible and difficult, and the safety precautions are completely absent - they don’t even know the words there - Alang has become a magnet for the poor of India, who are ready to do anything for a chance to get at least some kind of work. Alang employs a lot of people from the states of Orissa and Bihar, some of the poorest in India, but in general there are people from everywhere, from Tamil Nadu to Nepal.

The word “platform” when applied to the Alang coast is a clear exaggeration. It's nothing more than just a piece of the beach. Before setting up the next vessel for cutting, this piece, called the platform, is cleaned of the remains of the previous poor fellow - that is, not just cleaned, but literally licked, down to the last screw and bolt. Absolutely nothing is lost. Then the ship intended for scrapping accelerates to full speed and jumps out onto the designated site under its own power. The landing operation was carefully worked out and went off without a hitch.

The coast of Alang is ideal for such work and this method - the fact is that a truly high tide occurs only twice a month, and it is at this time that ships are washed ashore. Then the water subsides, and the ships find themselves completely ashore. The actual cutting is amazingly thorough - first, absolutely everything that can be removed and separated as something separate and suitable for further use is removed - doors and locks, engine parts, beds, mattresses, galleys and life jackets... Then the entire hull is cut, piece by piece . Scrap metal itself - parts of the hull, plating, etc., are taken out on trucks somewhere straight to be melted down or to scrap metal collection sites, and with all sorts of spare parts that are still usable, huge warehouses stretching along the road leading from the coast are filled.

The world leadership in cutting ships for scrap belongs to Chittagong (Sitakund) in Bangladesh, Pakistan's Gadani and India's Alang.

Disposal of ships occurs in the most primitive way - using an autogen and manual labor.

Thanks to cheap labor and less stringent environmental regulations, such ship graveyards have grown in a very short time, destroying trees in coastal areas with oily liquid leaking from ships. Dangerous fumes and soot from burning materials heavily polluted the coastal area.

Thick black oil and burnt fuel from the ship are polluting the coastal waters at the ship graveyard in Sitakunda. The pollution here is so bad that sometimes it's hard to breathe. When ships are dismantled, engine oils are drained directly onto the shore, and lead waste also remains there.

In a ship graveyard like this, a worker's wages depend on the number of hours he works and his level of skill. There is no overtime, sick leave or vacation. Typically, a worker works 12-14 hours a day, and his salary varies from 1.5 to 3.5 dollars. Working conditions are very dangerous. There are practically no safety regulations. There is either no protective clothing, or it is completely unsuitable for work. Every year, accidents occur that claim dozens of lives, leaving many crippled.

The ship is being cut into pieces by hand, without the workers being given normal protection. Many are killed by the explosion of gas cylinders or toxic fumes inside the ship. What's not there? From fuel residues or undegassed, uncleaned tanks, to asbestos and other harmful materials, most recently used for thermal insulation or finishing of ships.

Greenpeace is sounding the alarm – the ocean is being polluted by petroleum products and other toxic substances. In addition to the ocean, the atmosphere also suffers due to the fading of ship paint. The hull of a marine vessel is repeatedly coated with anti-fouling paints, which contain mercury, lead, antimony and other poisons. When burning scrap that has not been cleaned of paint, these harmful substances are released into the environment. But the efforts of environmentalists are mostly in vain, because everything comes down to money and the profitable return from recycling, and the ocean is big - it will endure...

http://www.odin.tc/disaster/alang.asp: "...In recent years there have been a lot of changes at the sites. The workers were finally dressed in overalls and boots, and their heads were in helmets, cranes, winches and other equipment is checked by the inspection team before installation, primarily for the presence of fuel residues and fuels and lubricants.

Many organizations became interested in the cutting situation, and in the end the matter came to the IMO. Already in 2008, a set of requirements for both shipowners and cutting sites may appear. Shipowners will be required to provide an accurate list of hazardous materials and their quantities on board ships being scrapped, and site owners will be required to provide them with some minimum safety precautions and environmental protection. Countries that have accepted and signed the upcoming rules will be able to send ships for scrapping only to those sites that have a license to do so. "