Random Writings of Others

  It’s not a war Just suppose the master of the containership  Ever Given , as his ship came up the top of the Red Sea and approached the Suez Canal, had scrutinised the weather reports for the next 24 hours and concluded that the high winds forecast suggested that he should stay at anchor until it calmed down a bit. Or if he had weighed up the situation and said that a passage was safe only with the addition of a powerful tug to help with the steering. The big COSCO ship ahead of him in the convoy had opted for such assistance and indeed a large LNGC bound for the north had postponed its passage because of the weather. Hypotheses are always dangerous and doubly so with the benefit of hindsight, but one wonders what the reaction of the ship’s operators might have been had  Ever Given ‘s master opted for either of these strategies on the grounds of prudence. Prudence itself is a word that is sadly derided in the full-on, go-on, stop-on world of modern shipping, where cauti...

  What’s past is prologue By  Mark Schreiber By Eiichiro Tokumoto Translated by Mark Schreiber An excerpt from an article originally published  in the 12, 19 November, 2020 issues of the weekly news magazine,  Shukan Shincho . Sir William Keswick  “M y great grandfather did organise the  Meiji Restoration. But I’m a merchant and am much more interested in what  business can be done today”. On 3 July, 2019 at a house in a quiet residential  area in the City of Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament, the elderly man looked back nostal­gically on the past. As bright sunlight streamed into the window, in a quiet, carpeted room, time seemed to stand still. Seated on a sofa, with his back toward the window and holding a cane to his side, he began  speaking in a modulated tone. He resembled the classic image of a good old man. “When Chinese burned the opium, we asked  the British government to send gunboats to destroy  and punish t...