Word: shipped
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...launched Zheng He's fleets, they are long gone, destroyed by five centuries of tumult and neglect. But there are still treasure boats of a sort that ply the Liu Creek, where the armada once assembled. Fan Ping owns one of them, the Sutai Yuyou 503, a small steel ship that doubles as her family's home. It's just 10 m long; the engine a mere 20 h.p. But the 49-year-old matriarch uses the modest craft to ply the waterways for riches. She finds oil spills, sucks them up with a powerful hose and resells the fuel...
...waits for his next sortie, he tells the story of his last raid in February. A crew member on a Thai palm-oil tanker gave him the layout of the ship and an exact time and place to meet in the Malacca Strait. The captain contacted the boss of a Hong Kong triad who agreed to pay the captain and his crew $9,000 upfront and another $50,000 on delivery. The triad also hired a crew of bajing loncat and arranged fake papers for the ship under a new name. On the agreed night, two speedboats raced west...
...deserted island off the east Sumatran coast near Kualatungkal. They also left the inside man so as not to arouse suspicion. Then they headed northwest, back past Singapore, skirting Melaka and Medan. Over the next seven days, while the captain sailed, the crew of 14 worked, repainting the entire ship and plastering a new English name over the Thai lettering on the bow. Off the Maldives, they rendezvoused with another tanker and the Hong Kong crime lord. The palm oil was pumped into the second boat and the first one auctioned, a Filipino outbidding a Thai buyer with an offer...
...pirates' open and unpunished presence has led to accusations of complicity with the Indonesian security forces. "I don't think there is much doubt that they are involved," says ship security expert Trevor Hollingsbee. Arthur Bowring, director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association, has a different analysis. "Some small- scale military people may be involved. But there is a theory that the Indonesian government is tolerating or encouraging piracy to get aid for better boats and equipment," he says. "Certainly they don't seem to be doing anything to stop it." He proposes a draconian solution: sanctions against Jakarta. Meanwhile...
...bookshop near my old home, I find an obscure monograph on the history of Cochin that provides more clues to the tiles. The author suggests they were presented to the Cochin Raja by the Chinese traders who were accompanied by Ma Huan, the treasure ship's chronicler, and an unnamed ambassador (probably Zheng He). The tiles, he claims, were meant for the Raja's palace, but some clever Jewish merchants spread the rumor that Chinese use cow's blood to make porcelain and the King, a devout Hindu, had to give them up - to the Jewish merchants...