The expression “water under the bridge” is generally understood to mean that what’s done is done, so let’s move on and forget about it if we can. It’s an expression of something like forgiveness, though tinged with regret.
But “a bridge under water” is an entirely different matter. That is catastrophe. Or it was when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland was obliterated two months ago by the crashing of a huge container vessel, the M/V Dali, a ship bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka. Of course the ship was also seriously damaged.
In San Francisco we are mindful of having something similar befall us. Nothing — at least nothing so portentous — has happened to the Golden Gate Bridge. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, however, did receive a glancing blow from a cargo ship. That was in 2007. On a foggy morning that year, the M/V Cosco Busan, leaving the Port of Oakland veered off course due to a bar pilot’s miscalculation. Though there was no loss of human life, the accident had devastating consequences for the local bird and fish population — they were decimated by the spill of the 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel. And 26 miles of our coastline was contaminated.
The escalation of FOC registries began more than a century ago when U.S. shipping companies, rather than meeting the high safety and crewing standards set in the Jones Act (the Merchant Marine Act of 1920), started to transfer their vessels to new open FOC registries like Liberia and Panama.
What both of these collisions have in common is that “Flags of Convenience” (FOCs) were involved.
The escalation of FOC registries began more than a century ago when U.S. shipping companies, rather than meeting the high safety and crewing standards set in the Jones Act (the Merchant Marine Act of 1920), started to transfer their vessels to new open FOC registries like Liberia and Panama.
Under the Panamanian flag, for example, vessel operators can continue to use ships that wouldn’t meet U.S. safety regulations. It is not merely the flag and the looser regulations that are convenient. Conveniences abound for those who register their vessels under an FOC — they get to hire a foreign crew to whom they are not obligated to pay anything resembling good wages, and also, they don’t have to pay corporate tax. Nearly four out of five of the world’s oceangoing merchant vessels are registered under a flag of convenience.
FOC registries are not confined to cargo vessels. A case in point is the American-owned, foreign-registered cruise ship industry. For example, Carnival Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line both have corporate headquarters in Florida but operate only FOC ships registered in countries such as Panama, where international shipping companies pay no corporate income tax.
There are those in the maritime community who are eager to reform the FOC. Advocates for such change insist that every vessel should be registered in the country in which its owner lives and from which he runs his business. All should be required to pay the full scope of mandated taxes to the country where the company’s headquarters are based, thereby ensuring a more ethical industry less likely to have disastrous accidents like the one in Baltimore.
