The Wild Hijacking Of A $100m Supertanker - Kit Chellel

1. 0:00 – 0:30

   Intro

   1. KCKit Chellel0:00

      From the point of view of the sailors who were locked in the TV room in the middle of the night, it's a terrifying situation. They have no idea what's happening. They hear the engines start up, which is not a good sign because they all know what happens if this ship makes it to Somalia. And then they hear gunshots. And even worse than that, they hear, uh, uh, an explosion coming from deep within the ship and smoke starts pouring in through the grilles. They recognize that this is about the worst situation they could be in. They're sitting on top of a million barrels of, uh, explosive liquid and the ship's clearly on fire. (fire blazing)

2. 0:30 – 4:53

   Is Piracy Still Relevant?

   1. KCKit Chellel0:30

   2. CWChris Williamson0:30

      I can't believe that modern day piracy is still a thing.

   3. KCKit Chellel0:35

      Mm. Yeah, I, you know, I didn't really know much about it before I started down the road of doing this book. Um, I just assumed that shipping was like everything else, you know. The economy modernizes, the world gets bigger and more corporatized, and, you know, generally safer. But, you know, that just didn't, uh, it hasn't happened yet with shipping. It's still, in some ways, uh, the same as it was back in the days when, you know, pirates were roaming the Caribbean. It's still kind of lawless around the edges. Um, it's still dominated by, like, very secretive wealthy people, and it still does its business completely outside of the general public and law enforcement. And we just don't know what goes on out there, but it turns out there's a lot of crime happening, uh, which is kind of the subject of the book.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:22

      Isn't it that 90% of the things that you see, 90%, pretty much everything has arrived by ship?

   5. KCKit Chellel1:30

      Yeah, that's right, Chris. It's, um, the famous expression is 90% of everything. And, you know, that go, that runs from your iPhone, your smartphone, your computer, through to a Barbie doll you bought for your daughter, um, through to, you know, some fresh fruits that's come in. It's all come by boat. It still works that way. And, you know, we're still, we're actually more reliant on ships than we have ever been in human history. It's, um, it's so important.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:57

      It's interesting, like, I, I, I don't understand how such a fundamental industry... Remembering what happened with the Ever Given, when that blocked-

   7. KCKit Chellel2:06

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:06

      ... the Suez Canal and all hell broke loose for a couple of weeks, I don't understand how it's still such a cowboy industry. Is there something about, uh, uh, uh, is there something very particular about this industry that's causing it to have loopholes that people can take advantage of?

   9. KCKit Chellel2:22

      Yeah, there's a, there's a few things happening at once, really. I mean, the main one is, is the same story that it's always been, which is that governments and police forces and federal agencies, they only reach about 10 miles out off the shore of whatever country you're in. And out, you know, once you go past that point, there is no law. Uh, quite literally that's the case. You, you know, and so-

   10. CWChris Williamson2:42

       Is that actually true?

   11. KCKit Chellel2:43

       Well, I mean, technically when you're on a ship, you're subject to the law of the, of the flag that you're flying at the time. Um, but, you know, the reality is that out at sea, if, um, if a crewman gets thrown over the side of a, of a vessel and his, you know, his fellow sailors are threatened into silence, who's going to prosecute that crime? Which police force is going to bring the perpetrators to justice? It's, it kind of falls in between the cracks of global law enforcement. And, you know, police and law enforcement agencies have a tough enough time dealing with all the shady crap that happens on shore. They just don't have the resources or the means to, to stretch out into the sea. And so, yeah, you know, 150, 200 years ago, if, um, uh, if you murdered someone and you wanted to, to escape justice, you could just board a, board a tramp ship at your nearest port and go off to the new world, uh, or go to Africa or Asia and, you know, it's still a bit like that. Um, it's just really difficult for law enforcement agencies to, to monitor what's happening at sea. So, it attracts a certain kind of person.

   12. CWChris Williamson3:48

       I've got a friend, uh, Michael Malice, who's a, a famous anarchist, and he always uses this example. He says, um, "A Frenchman murders a Canadian in Mexico. Who investigates it?"

   13. KCKit Chellel3:59

       Well, I mean, a good example of that problem is what happens when someone burns a, uh, a Greek-owned oil tanker that is carrying a million barrels from Ukraine to China, uh, is insured in London, and is carrying the flag of Liberia and owned by a shell company in the Marshall Islands.

   14. CWChris Williamson4:23

       (laughs)

   15. KCKit Chellel4:23

       And it's, it, it, like, it's, it's funny, it's funny t- when you put it that way, but that literally is the, is the quandary when an incident like that happens. Everyone sits around going, "Whose job is this?"

   16. CWChris Williamson4:37

       (laughs) That's like one of those logic puzzles that you get in the back of the Telegraph.

   17. KCKit Chellel4:42

       Yeah. It's, it's a-

   18. CWChris Williamson4:44

       Julie is, Julie is Joanne's mother and Katie is her sister. They have known each other for 45 years. How old is blah, blah? How many birthdays is it until the dog dies? So,

3. 4:53 – 10:44

   How Modern-Day Pirates Operate

   1. CWChris Williamson4:53

      all right, I, I... Talk to me about the fact, let's get the, the pirates, right? So, you have this ship-

   2. KCKit Chellel4:58

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson4:58

      ... which is trying to get from the Ukraine to China. It's got-

   4. KCKit Chellel5:01

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:01

      How, what's the value of the, the cargo?

   6. KCKit Chellel5:04

      The cargo's about $100 million. It's a million barrels of oil.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:07

      Okay.

   8. KCKit Chellel5:08

      At the time, that's $100 million.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:10

      Would have been way more now.

   10. KCKit Chellel5:11

       It was, yeah, exactly.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:11

       Should have done it now.

   12. KCKit Chellel5:12

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson5:13

       Should have built it in now. Um, talk to me about how pirates operate. Like, you've got this huge ship.

   14. KCKit Chellel5:20

       Mm.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:21

       Uh, uh, some people may have seen, Captain... What was that film with Tom Hanks?

   16. KCKit Chellel5:25

       Captain Phillips.

   17. CWChris Williamson5:25

       Captain Phillips. It still kind of blows my mind that a little wooden boat with a couple of guys in sleeveless T-shirts and wooden guns-

   18. KCKit Chellel5:33

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:34

       ... are able to stop a huge tanker moving at full speed. What's, what's their MO?

   20. KCKit Chellel5:39

       Captain Phillips is a, is actually a great starting point for, for the way modern piracy works. And especially in 2011, this was, this was the peak of Somali piracy, which is the kind that everyone's, you know, read about and seen movies about. Um, there was a, uh, an attack on a ship once every couple of days back in this period. It was rampant. And, you know, the, the MO of the Somali pirates would be, they had a skiff, which is a tiny little motorboat-... quite quick, um, carrying maybe, you know, six or seven guys with guns and sandals and scruffy clothes. And they would be directed out to a large, any large vessel they could find coming through the Gulf of Aden. And they would come alongside it, use grappling hooks to try and board, um, literally climb 30 or 40 feet up the side of these enormous vessels, and then wave their guns around, um, get into the bridge, and take the ship back to Somalian water where it would be held until someone paid a ransom. And the crazy thing was that, you know, these ransoms were paid. Um, they were often paid. Uh, not only would there be maybe 20 sailors whose lives would be at risk if the ransom doesn't get paid, um, a big, a big cargo ship might be carrying $1 billion worth of cargo on its own, 20,000 containers that could be packed with laptops or, you know, what, whatever else. They just simply couldn't afford to have these vessels, you know, sat off the coast of Somalia for months and months at a time, so they paid. I, I, I once spoke to a guy whose job it was to pay pirate ransoms, and he would sometimes literally, uh, take a small plane and fly over Somalia and drop suitcases of cash out of the window. Um, so this insane industry sprang up and it was incredibly lucrative for the Somalis. So in 2011, um, the oi- the oil tanker i- in our story, the Brillante Virtuoso, comes into this area and, of course, everyone on board is terrified because they've seen Captain Phillips, right? They've heard the stories of what happens to sailors when Somali pirates get on board. It's the middle of the night and all the, all the Filipino sailors on board are absolutely terrified that something's gonna happen.

   21. CWChris Williamson7:46

       What's special about this place that they are in the water?

   22. KCKit Chellel7:50

       The Gulf of Aden? Um, well, the Gulf of Aden just happens to be, uh, the, the part of, uh, uh, of the coastline of Somalia and of the Middle East, and it's at the, uh, entry point of the Suez Canal. So, if you're coming from Asia and you're transiting the Suez Canal, which you have to do, otherwise it's a, like a 3,000-mile journey round the whole of Africa, you have to come through the waters off the coast of Somalia, and you have to get quite close. And, you know, this is a major world trade route, you know. We saw that when the Suez Canal got blocked for a week, how bad it was for the whole world. You know, there's, there's, there is no option but to transit Suez. So, you know, major vessels have to risk passing through this area. There's a few things that you can do to make it safer. Uh, go very quickly would be one. Um, a lot of vessels would go in naval convoys, so they'd have a big British or American or European destroyer, uh, escorting them through the area, which is gonna put off any pirates. Uh, sometimes they would carry guards, armed guards. Um, and the Brillante Virtuoso decided it was gonna pick up a security team off the coast of Aden, which is a, a Yemeni port. And so they had to just wait, uh, overnight, um, you know, a few miles off the, off the, off the coast of Aden for these guys to arrive by boat.

   23. CWChris Williamson9:06

       That does seem a little bit like trying to fix the problem by hitting it with a big hammer. Like, the, the, the, the very thing-

   24. KCKit Chellel9:13

       (laughs) .

   25. CWChris Williamson9:13

       ... that you're trying to avoid by getting the security force on board is the thing that you're inviting by sitting there in the middle of the night.

   26. KCKit Chellel9:20

       This, this becomes important, uh, as the story progresses. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, it's not the cleverest thing to do to, uh, to wait in a heavily pirated area overnight, drifting without power. Uh, not only that, but the captain decided to light all the lights of the Brillante Virtuoso, so it was lit up like a Christmas tree. You could literally see it from 10 miles away. Um, you can imagine how the crew felt just sitting out there waiting.

   27. CWChris Williamson9:46

       What, what security measures does a normal ship have? You don't have a, an escort with you. You're not moving quickly.

   28. KCKit Chellel9:51

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson9:51

       Is there anything that they've got?

   30. KCKit Chellel9:53

       Um, uh, mostly they don't have guns or actual weapons. It's kind of legally problematic to shoot at, at, at people from a, from a container ship or, or an oil, an oil tanker, um, let alone the moral question. So they don't normally have guns. But in the absence of that, and you see a bit of this in Captain Phillips, they have these powerful water hoses that, that are actually can blast these powerful streams of water at small vessels and can capsize them. Um, the Brillante ran, uh, uh, barbed wire all the way around the, the outside of the vessel to make it harder for pir- pirates to board. Um, I think at one point they even had like a, uh, a mannequin dressed up in, in sailor's gear propped up on the bridge to look like it was, um, there was someone on watch even when there wasn't.
4. 10:44 – 16:03

   Hijacking the Supertanker

   1. KCKit Chellel10:44

   2. CWChris Williamson10:44

      How did they get on then?

   3. KCKit Chellel10:46

      (smacks lips) So the... It, it was a strange incident. The, um, the crew of this ship are all Filipino. And there's a watchman, uh, it's about, um, uh, coming up to midnight and he's just finishing his, his shift. And he sees a, a small vessel approaching very fast. So he goes down and hails them and he can see from, from the deck of the ship that this is a small boat carrying armed men wearing masks. They're, they're carrying what look like AK-47 rifles. Um, they're in strange sort of camouflage outfits. And, um, they shout up that they're the security crew, uh, that they've arrived, uh, they're the security crew and they've arrived and they're ready to board. Now, as anyone would, looking down at these men with their masks and their AK-47s, they don't look much like professional security operatives. And he's re- the guy on watch is really reluctant to let them on board. But, you know, he, he, he, he calls up to the captain in the bridge and the captain's instructions are clear and immediate, "Let them, let them come on." So he, he lowers a ladder and literally invites them onto the ship. And they'd been on board for no more than two or three seconds when they point their, their rifles at him and demand to be taken to see the captain.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:56

      Well, straight away there, there's something dodgy going on. How would they know that they were waiting for a security force? How would they know that that would be a thing that they could shout up?

   5. KCKit Chellel12:06

      ... that's, that's the big question. How would they know that there was a ship here waiting for security crew? You would have to have very specific knowledge.

   6. CWChris Williamson12:13

      All right. So, what happens next?

   7. KCKit Chellel12:15

      So, what happens next is this chaotic situation where you've got seven or eight armed men on board the ship. The Filipino crew are rounded up and locked in the television room. The captain and the chief engineer are taken away by these armed men. And from the point of view of the sailors who were locked in the TV room in the middle of the night, it's a terrifying situation. They have no idea what's happening. Uh, they hear the engines start up, which is not a good sign because they all know what happens if this ship makes it to Somalia, and then they hear gunshots. Um, and even worse than that, uh, they hear, uh, an explosion coming from deep within the ship and smoke starts pouring in through the grilles. Um, so, you know, they, they, they recognize that this is, uh, uh, th- about the worst situation they could be in. They're sitting on top of a, uh, a million barrels of, uh, explosive liquid and, uh, the ship's clearly on fire. So, they decide to take a risk and, and get out of the TV room. So, they get out of the room, the pirates have disappeared, and so they sort of inch their way up to the bridge, up the, up the steps in complete darkness 'cause the power's gone out, and they find the captain sort of hogtied on the bridge, uh, waiting to be rescued.

   8. CWChris Williamson13:25

      Hang, hang on a second. They've left? The pirates have left?

   9. KCKit Chellel13:30

      The pirates just upped and left. They disappeared.

   10. CWChris Williamson13:32

       They're supposed to take this back for ransom, that's their usual MO, right?

   11. KCKit Chellel13:36

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson13:38

       But they've, they've left. The captain's there, everybody's there. No one's been harmed, no one's been hurt-

   13. KCKit Chellel13:42

       No.

   14. CWChris Williamson13:42

       ... no one's been shot.

   15. KCKit Chellel13:44

       No. They just left. They, they're, there was a mysterious explosion and then they left. You can see why almost immediately people who had a financial interest in the ship were asking the question, "What the hell happened here? This doesn't look like a normal-"

   16. CWChris Williamson13:56

       WTF. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, so how do they get-

   17. KCKit Chellel13:59

       Yeah. This doesn't look like a normal piracy attack.

   18. CWChris Williamson14:00

       How do they get saved? Is the, is the ship still mobile at the moment?

   19. KCKit Chellel14:04

       No, it's, it's dead in the water, it's just floating. It's, it's, it's, there's this really serious fire happening now and it's so hot they can feel the heat and they can hear the sound of the steel on the ship, uh, sort of warping and bending in the extreme heat, uh, which is, you know, a, a really, an awful sound to hear. Um, but they do a couple of things. There's a security button on the, on the, on the bridge that they, that they press, which alerts the local, uh, authorities and naval forces that there's a problem, and they issue a distress call which is picked up by an American destroyer called the USS Philippine Sea, which is an hour or so away. And, you know, the Filipino guys say, "Philippine Sea, Philippine Sea, we're under attack. Please come and help." And within the hour the Americans are there. They've got a helicopter and, um, they're in a position to help out.

   20. CWChris Williamson14:53

       Right. So, everybody gets picked up and taken away?

   21. KCKit Chellel14:55

       Yeah. They, they, they, they abandon ship. Uh, everyone abandons ship. They get into the lifeboat and they're picked up and taken aboard this USS cruiser. Um, one of the, one of the individuals, the chief engineer somehow is left onboard, and he's on the ship for about two hours on his own in very strange circumstances. Um, he later tells people he was just hiding from the pirates in the engine room. But he, uh, at the crack of dawn he sort of appears on deck waving a flag, um, and he jumps into the water and is, is picked up and, and taken away by the Americans as well.

   22. CWChris Williamson15:28

       Okay. Is, w- what do the rest of the crew say? Did they, uh, was he not with them in the TV room? Was, was he somewhere else?

   23. KCKit Chellel15:34

       No. No, uh, uh, you know, this is one of the strange things about what happened is he basically disappeared from sight for hours. Uh, you know, he would later say that he was taken to the engine room to keep the engine running and he managed to escape from the pirates and hide in a toilet. Um, and then, and then basically sort of skulked around for a few hours until the fire became so serious that he had to leave and then he was rescued.

   24. CWChris Williamson15:58

       Everyone's so dodgy. And there's no one that isn't dodgy so far. Uh, okay.

5. 16:03 – 25:18

   The Wild West of Salvage Laws

   1. CWChris Williamson16:03

      Lloyds of London are the people that are in charge of the sort of protection strategies for this, 'cause there's a lot of different people who own the ship, who want their money back-

   2. KCKit Chellel16:12

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:13

      ... for potential loss or wastage or the s-

   4. KCKit Chellel16:16

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:17

      ... the actual cargo that the ship's got on it. Where do, how do they get involved?

   6. KCKit Chellel16:22

      Well, so L- Lloyds is, Lloyds is the market where you buy insurance for anything big. If you wanna launch a space rocket or, or, you know, carry a million barrels of oil from Ukraine to China or build a skyscraper, whatever it is, you can't do it, you can't get your bank loans without getting insurance. You know, it's just impossible, it wouldn't happen. And so for anything really big, you go through Lloyds. It's like 500-year-old market. It's been the biggest in the world for a long time and it remains the biggest in the world. So, that's the place you get your insurance from and that's the place that connects all the different insurers to a ship like the Brillante Virtuoso. So, uh, whenever, whenever something bad happens at sea, uh, whenever there's an accident or a fire or, you know, a hurricane or whatever it is, um, Lloyds has sort of an apparatus that kicks into action to start solving problems, um, start trying to rescue the vessel. It's, it's a little bit similar to, uh, if your bathroom floods, you know, who do you call? The first person you call is your insurer. And then you talk to your insurer and the, the insurer negotiates someone to come out, and first of all, fix the problem and then afterwards, uh, try and get some compensation to repair the damage. It's the same in shipping.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:26

      Okay. So who do Lloyds send?

   8. KCKit Chellel17:29

      So, initially the first person on, the first people on the scene are, are salvage experts. Um, s- salvage crews are like the emergency service of the ocean. They're these guys who roam around looking for shipping accidents and they show up on the scene as fast as they can, um, and they're there to, they're there to rescue a, a, a sinking ship essentially. They'll come onboard, plug leaks, put out fires, uh, rescue the crew. And the reason they do that is not, not because of, uh, that, you know, they're great guys and they're doing it from the kindness of their hearts. It's because if, uh, under, under sort of the maritime rules of the Lloyds market and, and ocean-bound trade generally, if you manage to, to salvage a ship, you get, I think up to sort of 10% of the value of what it's carrying. Now, if you imagine these days-... a, a big ship might be carrying a billion dollars worth. If you're a salvage crew and you, you get one of these ships that run aground, and you manage to ... And you sh- And you're first on the scene, and you rescue it, that's a huge payout. So it's a, a crazy, risky, dangerous, but very lucrative business. And the first guys that show up is this Greek salvage crew that are based in Aden, and so they start doing some basic firefighting.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:35

      The ship doesn't sink then?

   10. KCKit Chellel18:37

       It doesn't sink, no. The fire, uh, initially looks like it's gone out, and then there's an upsurge in the, in the inferno, um, and the salvage crew spend a good couple of days doing, doing firefighting efforts. So they're, they're pouring water on board, they eventually board the vessel and try and, try and look at the damage. Um, and they're responsible for that ship whilst in the emergency situation.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:58

       Has there ever been a case where multiple salvage crews have arrived at a ship at the same time and they're competing for it? It sounds like ... Is it like finders keepers?

   12. KCKit Chellel19:07

       Yes. Uh, it, it is a bit like that. And because of the way salvage is, you know, these are, these are rough, uh, sort of weather-hardened sailors. They're tough people. They have to be. It's that kind of, that kind of game. And so it can be quite violent, you know. There can sometimes be conflict between salvage crews if they show up at the same time. You know, I've heard of guns being pointed to keep other salvage crews away. Sometimes, um, salvage crews will sort of board a vessel that's in trouble and try and forcibly remove the chains from the other salvage crew so they can take control of it.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:36

       (laughs)

   14. KCKit Chellel19:37

       It, it, it can get a bit nasty, but y- when you're talking about $50 million worth of rewards, you can, you can imagine why they do that.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:43

       Yeah, it's a serious, uh, incentive, I suppose, to play dirty. So what about the investigation?

   16. KCKit Chellel19:49

       Yeah, so, so, you know, after you, after you stop the flood in your bathroom, you need to, someone to come and assess the damage, you need an assessor. And it's the same with this gigantic ship. There's, uh, you know, a dozen companies potentially facing a loss over this vessel, and what they need is an expert to go and, first of all say, you know, "Is this ship finished? Is it a total write-off? Can it be repaired and recovered? Uh, and what's the nature of the damage? Uh, what caused the damage?" And so the person who does that job is called a marine surveyor, and it just so happened that in nearby Aden there was a very experienced British guy called Captain David Mocket who had been doing this job a long time. He was kind of famous in the port city, um, 'cause he was about six foot four. He was, like, by, by half a foot the tallest guy in the area. Had this, this big booming laugh, huge personality, everyone knew him, and he was the guy that you hire if you want a job done properly, um, off the coast of Yemen. So the insurers quickly appointed him to go and do ... Get his boots on the deck and go and do a proper survey.

   17. CWChris Williamson20:52

       One feller for the entire boat, for the entire investigation?

   18. KCKit Chellel20:56

       Well, he ... So he's, he's there in the first instance just to get aboard, um, quickly, to get an idea of the damage. Of course, there will be-

   19. CWChris Williamson21:03

       Kind of like the, the crime scene photos and then perhaps after that they can be assessed by a big team of people?

   20. KCKit Chellel21:08

       Exactly. So they would eventually expect to tow the, tow the ship somewhere much safer, and there'd, then there'd be dozens of people crawling all over it. But in the meantime, they need someone to take a look. Um, and David Mocket is the guy they hire. He takes a fishing boat out, he manages to talk his way in with the Greek salvage crew, and he, he gets aboard the vessel, looks around. And like you say, he has a camera, he's taking pictures all the time. He takes hundreds of pictures of the twisted wreckage of the inside of the ship. Uh, and he can ... I think he can see early on it's, you know, it's completely destroyed. The ship will never be used again. It's, it's damaged beyond repair.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:42

       What hap- What's happened then, the fire's just got rid of some, um, important parts of infrastructure?

   22. KCKit Chellel21:48

       The, the engine room is, is completely ... Is, is, uh, is destroyed completely. It's just a black and sooty mess. Um, uh, and at, you know, at that point, the cost of repairing it would, um, be far more expensive than, than, you know, just scrapping it or buying a new ship.

   23. CWChris Williamson22:02

       Okay.

   24. KCKit Chellel22:02

       So it's a write-off. Um-

   25. CWChris Williamson22:03

       Do- does he see anything suspicious?

   26. KCKit Chellel22:05

       Well, he's also, he's also looking for signs of how this fire started. Because, as you pointed out, it's not, it's not very, uh, smart pirate behavior to burn your prize once you board a vessel. You've gone to all the trouble to get aboard, why burn it and leave? So one of the theories that was going around and was, was being used to explain this was that they'd fired a rocket-propelled grenade, and that started the fire. So he's ... Uh, Mocket was looking for signs of a rocket-propelled grenade strike. He didn't find any. He was looking for signs, uh, of AK-47 fire. He didn't find much of that either. Um, and so what, what he, what he came away with was this confused sensation of, you know, this doesn't ... The evidence doesn't point to piracy, so what is it? And he, you know, he has to return to Aden. He sends his reports back to London, um, and his photographs and all the evidence he's got. Uh, and his initial assessment is there's something strange about this incident, the local authorities are suspicious, and I'm gonna need to dig further to find out more.

   27. CWChris Williamson23:07

       How much is the value of the ship?

   28. KCKit Chellel23:11

       Uh, that's an interesting question. The ship ... For insurance purposes, the ship was valued at about $50 million. That's not what-

   29. CWChris Williamson23:20

       Okay, so that's still quite a, a hefty investment as well.

   30. KCKit Chellel23:25

       Yeah, but it was a, it was an old ship. It was towards the end of its life, and it wasn't in great shape. It was kind of a rusty wreck. So the, the actual value of the ship if they tried to sell it would be, would be much less than that, maybe down to $10 million or below. Um-
6. 25:18 – 29:18

   What Yemen Was Like

   1. KCKit Chellel25:18

   2. CWChris Williamson25:18

      Is there anything interesting about Yemen or the, the structure there? Is... 'Cause it's... Somalia doesn't have a single government, right? That's kind of still basically up for grabs by whichever person's the most ruthless.

   3. KCKit Chellel25:30

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson25:30

      What, what's Yemen like?

   5. KCKit Chellel25:33

      Yemen, Yemen back then, um, was, uh, under the dic- dictatorship of a guy called President Saleh, who was, you know, a fairly bog-standard developing world kleptocrat. Um, he ran this sort of corrupt network of cronies who made billions of dollars, uh, from, from the poorest country in the Middle East. Um, it wasn't, uh, it wasn't as chaotic as it's since become, but at this particular moment, you know, it was the... Uh, the country was on the cusp of civil war. It was the, uh, start of the Arab Spring. So all these uprisings against corrupt dictatorships that started in Tunisia and spread across the Middle East had arrived in Yemen, and there were, there were massive street protests. And President Saleh, you know, reacted the way that dictators often do, which is to send in troops and open fire on peaceful protesters. So, uh, the situation in Yemen was, was chaotic and complicated, for sure, and it's definitely got worse since.

   6. CWChris Williamson26:30

      Who investigates David's death then?

   7. KCKit Chellel26:34

      Uh, in the first instance, it's the job of the Yemeni police. Um, the, the local Yemeni CID, it's their job. Um, but because this is a British citizen, uh, and because President Saleh purportedly has good relations with, with European countries and the US, the British cops decide to send one of their detectives over to liaise with the Yemeni colleagues. Now, of course, this guy, Jonathan Totman, he didn't have jurisdiction to investigate in Yemen, but he's there to offer assistance and I guess to try and sort of find out as much information as he can for, for the British government and for Mockett's family. So he goes out and sort of joins the, joins the investigation.

   8. CWChris Williamson27:12

      Did he find anything interesting?

   9. KCKit Chellel27:15

      Yeah. So we, we know about, um, Jonathan Totman's work because, uh, at, at an inquest into David Mockett's death a few months later, he comes and he, he explains what he did in Yemen and why. Um, I, I guess the picture that emerges is of, uh, an investigation that doesn't really do anything you would want, uh, police investigators to do. There's no sort of forensic assessment of the, of the crime scene. Uh, David Mockett's laptop is destroyed and is never recovered, and they refuse to release it to the British police. Um, there's no serious investigation of who potentially might want to hurt David Mockett and why. The whole thing is kind of, you know, uh, seems to be for show. But Jonathan Totman does learn one interesting thing, which is, uh, he's having dinner one night with some Yemeni policemen, and they share their feelings about what's happened, and they say, no, they don't think this is terrorism, um, they think that, that, uh, David Mockett has been murdered because of his job, that he's been murdered because of some corrupt scheme to extract money from the shipping, uh, insurance industry, and that that was the reason for him to be ta-... For being to be targeted. It was a criminal act. And so Totman takes this information back to the inquest and he shares it with the Mockett family and, and the wider world, it's reported in the British press, uh, and so now you have this insane situation where an oil tanker has been attacked and burned in, uh, what looks, it looks increasingly like, uh, a fraud, the one person sent to investigate and find out the truth has been murdered by unknown criminal actors, uh, and what happens next? Um, well, nothing happens. There's no British police investigation. There's no pressure on the Yemeni government. Yemeni descends further into chaos and civil war. The... There's no criminal investigation into whatever insurance fraud might have happened. Everything gets sort of clogged up in the administrative machine of the Lloyd's of London insurance market.

7. 29:18 – 34:39

   Reigniting the Investigation

   1. CWChris Williamson29:18

      Why, why does anything start moving then? If everything's clogged up and everything's going slow and ground to a halt, why does something begin to pick back up?

   2. KCKit Chellel29:29

      Well, the main reason for that is that the c- uh, the ship owner files an insurance claim at Lloyd's. Um, the Greek ship owner files the claim and, and the value of that claim rises to over $100 million, or in the region of $100 million, because this guy is claiming not only for the value of the ship that's been destroyed, he's also claiming for lost profits and interest. And so the number keeps ticking up and it becomes this enormous-

   3. CWChris Williamson29:52

      Oh, because the ship is not being used, and by not having the ship, he's losing business, losing business, losing more business.

   4. KCKit Chellel29:58

      Exactly. So the number keeps ticking up and it becomes so large that it's kind of hard to ignore. Now, even at Lloyd's of London, the world's largest insurance market, where... I don't know, I think they pay out something like $200,000 every hour or some insane sum. You know, there, there's vast pools of capital out there, al- almost unlimited. $100 million over one ship is still an enormous amount of money, so the insurers really have no choice but to, to dig a little deeper. And they have the good fortune to, um...... to hire a legal team who, uh, used these investigators, these two former policemen, uh, from the Met Police in London, who now do private work, um, for the insurance industry and others. And these two guys, um, are brought in by the lawyers to, to do deeper investigation into what happened to the ship. And, you know, their, they have the mentality of crime fighters. They see something that, to them, looks like a criminal act and they, their motivation is to solve it. At the same time, you know, they're aware of what happened to David Mockett. They meet Mockett's family, his widow, and they see a kind of travesty of justice. And so, they become highly motivated not just to solve the problem of this $100 billion insurance claim, but also to get to something that looks like justice.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:15

      They're the heroes of the story then, so far?

   6. KCKit Chellel31:17

      In as much as this story has heroes. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson31:20

      Well, they're the only two. Between them-

   8. KCKit Chellel31:21

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson31:21

      ... and that Topman guy, they're the only three people that haven't been dodgy yet.

   10. KCKit Chellel31:24

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson31:25

       Everybody else is either dead or dodgy.

   12. KCKit Chellel31:28

       They, they would probably, uh, dispute the characterization of them as heroes, but, look, I, I definitely think when this incident happened, uh, the various actors reacted in different ways. Some were motivated by politics, some were motivated by money. Um, there are very few people who made decisions based on integrity, which is, "I've seen something happen here and it's wrong. You know, a really good guy was murdered. He left behind a wife and daughters and grandchildren. And I know I don't want to be part of that." Very few people made a moral decision about what to do next, apart from our two investigators, who were Richard Veale and Michael Connor, um, to the point where they would be giving presentations at the Lloyd's of London Market. They'd go to these glitzy office buildings, uh, in a room full of lawyers and insu- insurance executives, and they would bring up on the screen a picture of Mockett's burnt out car, just to remind everyone that this isn't just an insurance contract, this isn't just a dollar dispute. A guy was murdered here, a really good man was murdered, and we need to do something about it.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:29

       What's happening with the investigation into the boat after Mockett dies? 'Cause he was the first person on the scene, but presumably-

   14. KCKit Chellel32:37

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:37

       ... there was subsequent investigations done after that that were more forensic.

   16. KCKit Chellel32:42

       Yeah. The ship was, uh, was towed up to the United Arab Emirates and, uh, you know, was, was inspected by various agencies, uh, including the insurers. The US Navy's Crime Scene Investigators Unit showed up and had a look around. Uh, they were concerned that pirates might now start, if they were blowing up oil tankers that were passing through the Middle East, that's something the Navy wanted to know about too. So, the ship was picked over. But, you know, the, the fire is a wonderful way of h- of hiding evidence. Um, the ship was so badly damaged, there wasn't really much left for them to look at. Um, they found some kind of suspicious dents that looked like an explosive device had been detonated, but that was really the extent of the evidence. Um, after that, the ship was sold for scrap, and it went off to the place where ships go to die, which are these, um, eli- sort of semi-legal ship-breaking yards in Pakistan and India, where they get, um, you know, driven up onto the beach and picked apart by hand, and all the metal bits taken away and sold. And so, uh, yeah, the ship was literally, um, torn to pieces. Uh, the evidence was gone. Um, so what were left-

   17. CWChris Williamson33:45

       Presumably, the, the, the barrels of oil must have been taken away and put onto some other ship to transport it away?

   18. KCKit Chellel33:52

       Yeah. They managed just the... Uh, one of the salvage crews managed to, to salvage the, uh, the oil. They, they siphoned it off onto another ship, as you say, and that was taken away. Um, but that still left a very large insurance claim for the ship itself, which was damaged beyond repair. Um, but the problem they had, like I say, is the, the evidence was gone, destroyed or burnt or scrapped. Um, there was lots of expert opinions about the cause of the fire and lots of, sort of legal back and forth about the various debts to the ship owner. But what they, what they were lacking was, you know, really clear evidence that a crime had taken place. What they needed was to speak to people who were on the vessel at the time, who were around in the immediate aftermath, who might actually be able to say, "You know, here's what happened to this ship. Here was the cause of the fire."

8. 34:39 – 39:51

   Suspicious Characters

   1. KCKit Chellel34:39

   2. CWChris Williamson34:39

      Who's this dodgy Greek salvage guy, then? How does he come into it?

   3. KCKit Chellel34:44

      Uh, Vassilios Vurgos is his name. He, he was, um... I spoke... I t- I told you about the salvage crew that arrived really quickly from, from, uh, from Aden on the Yemeni coast. Uh, and Vassilios Vurgos is the guy who runs that salvage outfit, which is called Poseidon Salvage. Now, he's, yeah, he- he's a whole other character. He's, he's a former, uh, Greek Navy diver. He was in the Greek Navy's elite diving school, and he was badly injured in a, uh, in a, in a diving accident. I think he got the bends and it left him with a lifelong limp and a bad temper. Um, and he's, he's made this strange life for himself in Yemen. He basically lives on a rusty salvage barge, um, doing bits and bobs for the, for various Yemeni projects. Um, but he's, you know, famously got a, got a bad temper. So, um, he's first on the scene and he gets, he gets to the Brante Virtuoso in, like, four hours, um, from nearby Aden, which is astonishingly fast. I mean, like, he was on the scene so quickly that he must have woken up immediately on getting the call, started his engine, and bolted straight for the ship. Like, a remark- a remarkable feat of efficiency. Um, but there's lots of questions about him. You know, th- the first one being, well, how did he know to be ready in the middle of the night in Yemen? How did he get there so fast? Um, you know, he, he has one of these characters that investigators look at and they see his track record and, you know, they, they... Maybe he's not in the elite, uh, ranks of salvage crews. He's not. Um, there's a famous Dutch company that, that's, um, are famous all over the world. You know, he's kind of on the... on, on one of the lower rungs of the ladder. He's got one of these ramshackle operations.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:30

      Who's the other...... Greek guy, that Super Mario guy, that's not the same person, is it?

   5. KCKit Chellel36:34

      No. So, uh, Super Mario, it was the guy who owned the Brillante Virtuoso. He's the, he's the big tycoon. Um, and, uh, yeah, he's got a fleet of, of tankers and, um, and container ships that he operates around the world. And he's part of the, the Greek shipping class, which is to say that he's very rich, he lives in Greece, pays almost no tax, uh, and he lives this kind of life of bond villain luxury, uh, running his fleets. Um, his particular hobby is racing cars. He's a rally driver. Uh, and he's actually quite good. He's, um, he, he, he does competitive racing around, around Greece, and he'll win competitions. He's a, he's a good driver. And, uh, and, uh, racing rally cars was always his first passion. Um, but he sort of fell into the family business of, of running a fleet. Um, and he's a relatively promin- prominent character in Greece. I mean, he owns the main fast ferry line between the mainland and the holiday islands. So, anyone who's been sort of boating around Greece may well have been on one of his vessels. Company is called Seajets. So he ha- you know, he has, he has this, this big reputation, um, and it turns out that he's the owner of the Brillante.

   6. CWChris Williamson37:44

      Risk-taker.

   7. KCKit Chellel37:45

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson37:46

      Adrenaline junkie guy.

   9. KCKit Chellel37:47

      Yes. Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson37:48

       Mixed with disgruntled, uh, h- one and a half legged, uh, Greek salvage owner.

   11. KCKit Chellel37:57

       Yes.

   12. CWChris Williamson37:58

       A- again, we're just continuing to add more and more dodgy people to this, to this list.

   13. KCKit Chellel38:02

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson38:02

       Didn't some dude from Lloyd's say that this had happened before at the funeral? Didn't he tell the wife that it had happened before?

   15. KCKit Chellel38:10

       Yeah. W- I mean, one of the things the investigators, uh, ran into early was, although it may be hard to believe, um, sometimes the Lloyd's of London insurance market doesn't know who owns the ships they're insuring. All they see is a brass plate company name with a generic title, but they might not know who the beneficial owner is. So, with the first job they had, um, in the aftermath of the attack, was to find out who actually owned the Brillante. And the insurance guys didn't know. They thought it was, they thought it was some other entity. And then they discovered it was Marios Eliopulos, and you know, then there was immediate name recognition. They knew that name. The reason they knew his name was that another ship owned by him had got into trouble only a few miles away a couple of years earlier. It had mysteriously, um... there had been a fire on the bridge, it had run into a sandbank, and the salvage operation had gone disastrously wrong, and the ship ended up splitting in two like a watermelon. Uh, and the other thing that caught the, the investors', uh, the investigators' attention was that it was exactly the same salvage crew who arrived with remarkable speed from Aden to help out. It's our old friend, Vassilios Fargos, the Olympian Greek diver. So, he's on the scene as well. So, you've got same ship owner, same salvage crew, and remarkably, the chief engineer, the Filipino chief engineer was the same on both voyages as well.

   16. CWChris Williamson39:30

       The one that stuck about for two hours?

   17. KCKit Chellel39:33

       So, yeah, yeah. So, you know, one unfortunate accident off the coast of Yemen is bad luck, two is probably something else.

   18. CWChris Williamson39:43

       Dude, I (laughs) can't face so ridiculous how sort of flagrant and blatant the dodginess is. All right. So what, what,

9. 39:51 – 54:14

   Seeking Justice in a Dangerous Business

   1. CWChris Williamson39:51

      what happens next? We... It seems like all of the pieces at least start to come together, but presumably, the investigators, other than coincidence, the investigators don't really seem to have much to tie people together yet.

   2. KCKit Chellel40:04

      They don't have a lot of physical evidence, no. And they're also, they're also battling against this, this kind of institutional complacency that you get in, in the City of London in lots of industries, to be fair, but also in the insurance industry, where, you know, Lloyd's of London has been running for 500 years. For 500 years, it's been a reliable source of income for the British middle and upper classes. You know, the elites of London life. Um, they quietly make tons of money at Lloyd's. They would, uh, much prefer to do so without any fuss or attention. And, um, it, it's a great business for them to be in. You know, they, they get to go to the pub for lunch and, uh, they have wonderful bespoke suits, and you know, they have this sort of privileged existence. And you know, they're not very incentivized to look closely at the nasty criminal parts of the shipping industry. There's just no reason for them to do it. Um, you might imagine that if there's fraudulent insurance claims being made, it would be expensive for them to pay, and so they wouldn't pay them, they would fight. But actually, the reverse is true. It's actually, in most cases, a lot easier just to pay to make these problems go away and then pass the cost on to the customers by raising your premiums.

   3. CWChris Williamson41:18

      Mm.

   4. KCKit Chellel41:18

      Which is what Lloyd's has been doing for hundreds of years. Um-

   5. CWChris Williamson41:22

      It, it's, it sounds like the shipping industry that the, um, dodginess is so endemic that w- what are you gonna do? Are you gonna fight this one guy? Well, what about the next guy? And what about the next guy? Every single one of the claims that could be made is going to come from someone that has a shell company in-

   6. KCKit Chellel41:41

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson41:41

      ... Bermuda. And didn't you say that most of the company, like, each boat is owned by a single company?

   8. KCKit Chellel41:48

      Yeah. It's a single-ship system. Um, yes, it's partly the scale of the problem, but also, uh, unfortunately, fraud and criminality has kind of been built in to the cost stru- structure of, of the Lloyd's of London insurance market. Um, they know it happens, they know that it's expensive, um, and they tolerate it. Um, they figure that, uh, let's say 1 in 50... this is... I'm, I'm making this number up.

   9. CWChris Williamson42:17

      Yeah.

   10. KCKit Chellel42:17

       Let's say 1 in 50 ship casualties isn't an accident. It's been done on purpose to get the insurance money. They figure it's simpler to p- simply just to pay that 1 in 50 and keep doing what they've been doing rather than go through big expensive legal battles.... rather than go through all the terrible publicity of accusing a customer of fraud, and rather than actually facing up to the fact that there's this really nasty criminal underworld that's kind of attached itself to the shipping business. So rather than do any of those things, they just pay. And they, and they keep doing what they've always been doing. So, uh, you know, our two investigators in this story, Richard Veale and Michael Connor, they constantly encounter this reluctance to, to go and get the answers they need. Um, they are prevented from in- uh, doing the investigation they want to do. They're not allowed to interview the crew. As crazy as that sounds, they weren't given, they weren't given access to the crew. Um, there are a load of sources that they identify who might have information about how the ship was attacked, they are prevented from going to do that. And, you know, the situation becomes really tense and kind of, uh, conflicted, where they're fighting against their own legal team and saying, "We need to do more."

   11. CWChris Williamson43:26

       They've been brought in by Lloyds of London, though.

   12. KCKit Chellel43:29

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson43:29

       So it does seem that Lloyds of London felt like presumably, they can't bring in this level of investigation for every, uh, one of these. If you've said that it's easier for Lloyds to pay out, it seems like-

   14. KCKit Chellel43:40

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson43:41

       ... they've maybe got something in the side of their minds that's made them think, "Uh, we, there's something up here."

   16. KCKit Chellel43:47

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson43:47

       "Let's bring these grizzled old Met officers-"

   18. KCKit Chellel43:50

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson43:50

       "... in to come and do a bit of work."

   20. KCKit Chellel43:52

       I'd, I'd love to tell you the, the, the thing that made this exceptional was that David Mocket was murdered, and, um, you know, there may be some truth in that, but, you know, the evidence doesn't necessarily point that way. The evidence just points to the fact that once the, once this claim reached a certain size, once they were, uh, on the hook for a certain sum of money, they decided it was time to fight because, um, they didn't want to just pay. Um, and their, their own lawyers have written in legal filings that they would have been happy to settle this case had the sum of money not being so large.

   21. CWChris Williamson44:26

       Wow. Okay, so what happens next?

   22. KCKit Chellel44:30

       So next, it's, um, uh, it's full speed ahead in this, in this lawsuit between the Greek ship owner and the Lloyds of London insurers, and things get really messy and dangerous quite quickly. Um, the ship owner, Super Mario, is incredibly hostile to, uh, any attempt by the insurers to get information out of him. He, uh, isn't handing over evidence. You know, hard drives full of emails go missing. Uh, it all becomes quite threatening, and this is where I enter the story because, uh, at the time, I was, uh, I was covering the courts in London, and I'd sort of become aware of the Brillante Virtuoso incident, and I happened to cross, uh, on the court lists one day seeing the name of the company that owned the ship, um, in a, in one of the big courts in London. I just turned up, and what I stumbled into was Super Mario, the ship owner, had been summoned by a London judge to give evidence, uh, in the case. And I mean, I've been to hundreds and hundreds of commercial trials. I've never seen anything quite like this. Um, he was, uh, bellicose and angry and belligerent, waving his finger. At one point he threatened the English lawyers. We just, you just don't see these things in the rarified sort of world of London, London law. Um, it was, it was, uh, frankly very entertaining and, and a little amusing. Um, and then, uh, at the end of this two days of, you know, incredibly fraught cross-examination, he walks out of court and is arrested by the City of London Police for fraud. Uh, accused of fraud.

   23. CWChris Williamson46:07

       Wait, what fraud?

   24. KCKit Chellel46:07

       Well, uh, he's, uh, he's arrested on suspicion of a fraud against the Lloyds of London insurance market.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:11

       Oh, so for this, this wasn't him-

   26. KCKit Chellel46:13

       So-

   27. CWChris Williamson46:13

       ... getting picked up for something else.

   28. KCKit Chellel46:14

       For something else. No. (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson46:14

       This is him getting picked up for this, right.

   30. KCKit Chellel46:16

       This, it's for the Brillante Virtuoso, and so I've, I've walked into this mad situation where there's a simultaneous very hostile lawsuit and criminal investigation, uh, and this remarkable character of a ship owner, um, and that's where I sort of pick up the story. Um, it takes, uh, it takes a good few months after that to sort of unravel what's happening because all that I've told you so far is happening behind closed doors in the City of London. Um, so it took us quite a while to get up to speed on exactly who Super Mario was.
10. 54:14 – 57:38

    Current State of the Investigation

    1. KCKit Chellel54:14

       And then, and then he sort of cut off contact.

    2. CWChris Williamson54:17

       So where's the investigation at now? And what do you think is gonna happen in the, the sort of near future?

    3. KCKit Chellel54:25

       Well the, the sort of cause of Cynthia Mockett has been picked up by her local MP in Devon, who's raised it in the Houses of Parliament. Um, and he called it a travesty of justice and, and he sort of-He asked a question of the, of the, of the justice minister, the head of the, of the, of the justice department, um, you know, "What are we going to do about this?" And I think the police's attitude is that, "Well, it's not our job to investigate a murder in Yemen." And that, and of course, they're right about that. They have no jurisdiction to go over to Aden and start throwing people in the back of police vans. But the point of Cynthia Mockett, uh, and of Michael Connor, actually, the investigator who's been helping her, is that you don't need to prosecute that crime. You can treat this as a financial crime. You can do what they did to Al Capone, right? They got him on his taxes. Treat this as an act of maritime piracy and an act of insurance fraud, and then you can start to bring charges. But no one's been willing to do that, and I think it's clear the British police see it as too difficult and too problematic to pursue a case. But it's not too late. Um, as this MP pointed out, the evidence is still there. Um, you know, uh, someone could pick this up and pursue it from a law enforcement point of view, uh, it would just take a little bit of will and bravery. So, it remains to be seen whether that'll happen.

    4. CWChris Williamson55:43

       And the money to Super Mario wasn't paid out, or is that case being finished now with Lloyds?

    5. KCKit Chellel55:50

       The lawsuit is, is ended, and, um, it ended up as kind of like a Pyrrhic victory for the insurers, because they won the case, you know. Uh, technically, they won the case. The judge, the judge found that they didn't have to pay on the insurance claim because it was a fraud. But, um, they didn't actually win in any real sense because Super Mario managed to extricate himself from the legal process because he refused to hand over evidence, because he basically didn't play the game of London litigation the way you're supposed to. He just cut himself off from the process. Um, his claim was thrown out, but he had an existing insurance policy that his, from his bank. His, uh, his lenders who lent him money to buy the boat had their own insurance policy, so they continued the case against the London insurers. So, the lawsuit ended up as insurer versus insurer, which group of insurers were going to pay for the damage to Gallante Virtuoso. Super Mario got away, um, and basically, he, what he had at the start of this was an aging, rusting, useless, money-losing oil tanker. He burned it, um... Oh, and he had... Sorry, he had about $60 million in loans to cover the cost of that oil tanker. He burned his own ship, he was freed from his loans, his l- you know, his debt went to zero on the ship, and he was also freed of his money-losing ship. So, by some standards, you could say he's won. He's probably at least tens of millions of dollars better off than he would've been if he hadn't sunk his own ship, which is one of the crazy things about this story, uh, one of the things that still blows my mind.

    6. CWChris Williamson57:29

       (laughs) Yeah, I can't believe it. This story is, is insane. Uh, look, Kit, dude,

11. 57:38 – 58:41

    Where to Find Kit

    1. CWChris Williamson57:38

       c- congratulations on th- the lengthy and very impressive investigation. The book's great, the story's fantastic. Uh, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do or your further investigation with regards to the story, you did a great piece on The Ever Given and, and what that caused as well, where should they go to to keep up to date with your work?

    2. KCKit Chellel57:57

       Uh, you can, you can follow me on Twitter @KitShallal. Uh, like any vain journalist, I, I post all my stories on there. Um, yeah, and c- and check out Dead in the Water. Look it, it... Father's Day is coming up, if, if, if you know someone in your life who loves sort of crazy yarns about life on the open sea, um, you know, this is definitely one of those. I, I've been doing this job a long time, and I, I've never seen anything quite like this.

    3. CWChris Williamson58:20

       Chris, I appreciate you. Cheers.

    4. KCKit Chellel58:22

       Thanks, man.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:22

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 58:41