The Ship Breakers

Untitled Part 1

The Ship Breakers. 

The Neptune Giant is a VLCC, a very large crude carrier. When it was completed in 1979, it ranked among the largest oil tankers in the world. From bow to stern, 75 Cadillacs could park bumper to bumper. The crews used bicycles to travel the elongated deck. With a beam of nearly two hundred feet, five bungalows could be placed lengthwise side by side across the deck; her keel is six stories underwater. The raw steel is covered with over fifteen hundred gallons of paint. She'd been given a lifespan of thirty years; instead, she had sailed every ocean of the world, berthed at every continent, rode many storm's fierce waves and trolled the endless seas for thirty-five years. Today is her final voyage. 

Her last port of call, two weeks ago, was Saint John, New Brunswick, with two million barrels of Venezuelan crude. Now, the tanker cruises the Bay of Bengal at fourteen knots. At that speed she requires five miles to come to a dead stop. The ship breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh, are only four miles away. The captain brings the ship to starboard, aiming the aging tanker directly at the muddy beach. The tide is high, which is necessary to allow the gargantuan machine to ground itself like an aged sea lion, as near to the shore as possible, where it will die. 

The engine that powers the ship is eighty-nine feet long and forty-four feet wide with twelve massive cylinders - one of the largest engines in the world. It weighs two thousand metric tons costing more than the rest of the transport. Its thirst for fuel demands over fifteen hundred gallons of crude every hour. Its last chore will be to power the vessel onto the tidal mud banks, where humans who are dwarfed by its immensity will eventually take it apart, by hand, piece by piece. The work is extremely dangerous with an exceptionally high mortality rate and yet there is no shortage of men. 

Of the approximately 45,000 ocean-going vessels in the world, about seven hundred per year are taken out of service for dismantling. Many go to Alang, India, the world's largest shipbreaking yard. Or to Gadani, Pakistan, the third largest after Chittagong. Where the ships go, the jobs go. As difficult as the work may be, ship breaking is part of the momentum powering the economy of a young Bangladesh. The owners of this particular ship-breaking yard paid three million dollars for the Neptune Giant.

With torches, sledgehammers, steel wedges, brute force and painstaking drudgery, it will take six months to dismantle; one man will die and two men will be injured by a thousand pound slab of steel cut from the behemoth's hide. It will net the owner millions more than he paid when he sells the scrap metal and he will provide no compensation for men that can't work. They toil fourteen hours a day, with two half hour breaks and an hour for lunch, six and a half days a week. The men will eat their supper when their work shift ends. At least one quarter are illiterate; one quarter are children. The average wage is $1.25 per day. 

* 

Azhar Uddin is gently woken by his father. It's 4:30 a.m. 

"Come my little man, you must join your brother at the table. You must leave for work soon. Come now." 

Hafiz Uddin turns from his son, supporting himself with his only arm grasped upon a homemade crutch; the other arm is buried beneath the muddy beaches where he once toiled, severed by falling steel at the same crippling yards where he will soon send his two sons. He wobbles even with his lopsided support; the left knee and lower leg, the same side as the missing arm, were wrecked in the accident also. Unable to find meaningful work with only a single hand, one strong leg and a defeated spirit, he remains dependent upon his male children: Nur is fourteen; Azhar will be thirteen next week. Because they are exceptional workers, they earn two hundred and sixty takas a day, just over three dollars. 

Rising slowly, he sits up on the side of the bed, Azhar rubs his shoulder. The dull ache in his muscle reminds him of the steel pipes he helped carry all day. Long straight bangs of the fiercest black hang over his narrow forehead. His brown boyish skin is smooth and untroubled, not yet marked by the lines of struggle. A slight dimple on the end of his nose balances the squareness of his jaw. The man's work he does has not taken the childish shine from his eyes. Blinking the sleepy fog from his brow he rises to find his work clothes neatly folded at the foot of his bed. His father washed and hung them to dry before he retired for the night, as he would've done for Azhar's older brother, Nur, also. There are no women in the house.