Clay Maitland

On a quest for quality in shipping

The Magnetic North

The United States has granted Royal Dutch Shell conditional approval of its plan to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea, off the North Slope of Alaska, next summer. Continue reading

Somalian militants and pirates – can one cure fix all?

There is growing evidence that the American campaign against Somali “militants” – the current term applied by the great and the good to all sorts of thugs – is having an impact on anti-piracy countermeasures. Continue reading

The Pavit – a 21st Century Marie Celeste?

Maritime history buffs may remember the story of the Marie Celeste, a sailing ship found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean, which seemingly had managed to sail for months without reaching land, and whose crew were mysteriously absent. To this day, her mystery remains the subject of speculation. Continue reading

A down to earth lunch with looming doom Larry!

I have a friend (let’s call him Larry, though that’s not his real name) who is a well-known lawyer specialising in ship finance in the States. Of a pronounced gloomy worldview, as befits his Polish heritage, he was one of the few skeptics I know who warned of a gathering economic storm, back before the Lehman Brothers collapse. Continue reading

Worse to come for shipping

The true state of the world economy was shown on August 1, with the release by JPMorgan of a series of indicators making up the global manufacturing purchasing managers’ indices (PMI). Continue reading