questions must be asked and lessons learned Nave Andromeda It sounded dramatic and the media duly ramped it. The essential ingredients were all in the mix - a ruthless band of shady foreign hijackers (surely terrorists if not mere pirates?), a shady foreign tanker under a shady Liberian flag, and a SpecialForces operation. But when the facts were revealed there was no injury, no loss of life and no damage to property, and neither the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth nor Southampton were subjected to an apocalyptic attack. The drama proved to be nothing more than a woeful tale of human despair in the all too familiar shape of lost souls seeking a better life. We should be grateful for the professionalism of the special forces, but we must also question why it happened at all. Firstly, there are questions about the timescale of the military response and, secondly, there are questions about why stowaways were still on a ship that was a few miles from British shores when it had visited b...

Two major shipping publications recently published an article I wrote about the factors surrounding a impending maritime disaster. As an author of a plausible oceanic catastrophe, The Ocean Dove , I am fascinated by political agendas that act against humankind. Read it in full below or click on the links... SPLASH : FSO Safer - a ticking time bomb HELLENIC SHIPPING NEWS : FSO Safer - a ticking time bomb   FSO Safer   A ticking bomb Carlos Luxul , author of The Ocean Dove TheOcean Dove focuses on a new kind of danger arising from abuses of shipping’s loose regulatory framework. Thankfully it’s a novel, and while the disaster scenario in its climax is rooted in plausibility and could so easily happen, I sincerely hope it doesn’t. Meanwhile, back in real life, a disaster is just waiting to happen and the world seems powerless to stop it. Perhaps powerless is not the right word. The world certainly possesses the power. What it lacks is the will. The Ras Isa oil termina...