Editors’ Note
Issue 4: Shipwrecks
MAY 2, 2023
This month’s theme was among the first ones we decided upon as we set out to build The Dial. Shipwrecks are, after all, often international affairs, and when they occur they have a strange way of conjuring horror, wonder, and mystery all at once. To speak of shipwrecks is also to speak metaphorically: “Le monde est un grand naufrage,” Voltaire once wrote. The world is a great shipwreck. His advice was that we should all save ourselves.
The pieces in this issue, which we will publish over the course of the month, offer stories of literal shipwrecks and figurative ones, of passengers left to save themselves from falling into the sea, and of those who are fighting to make sure that, on the great wreck of planet Earth, no rescue missions are necessary. From Bremen, Kris Bartkus reports on the many kilograms of unexploded ordnance currently lying on the bed of the North Sea, and speaks to the scientists and divers trying to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. From Karachi, Alizeh Kohari chronicles the development projects that are violently remaking the city’s coastline. From Strasbourg, Denise Hruby speaks with the KlimaSeniorinnen fighting to claim the right to a future at the European Court of Human Rights. From Geneva, Isabelle Mayault writes about the growing effort to clean up the space junk flying through the stratosphere. From Tuscany, Pablo Trincia brings us a gripping account of the slow-motion horror that took down the Costa Concordia in 2012. And from Beirut, Lamia Ziadé writes of the destruction that engulfed the city after the 2020 explosion at the city port.
We bring you not only reports of shipwrecks, spaceships, and ports but also reflections on the rules by which they operate. In a kaleidoscopic essay that begins in Terminal 3 of Singapore's Changi airport and ends at the hydrothermal vents under the sea, Surabhi Ranganathan, professor of international law at the University of Cambridge, offers a new theory of the law of the sea. Rounding us up with a shipwreck of crime is “Don't Mess with my Boys,” Fernanda Melchor's crónica from Veracruz.
Anchors away,
The Editors