Ghost fleet of the Recession

From London's Daily Mail is "the ghost fleet of the recession" the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lying at anchor off Singapore. Never before photographed, it has no crew, no cargo and no destination.

Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined, but their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers, they are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis.

These ships are parked in this Sargasso off the beaten track,where nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer people not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

The ships have been quietly retired to this backwater, to be maintained only by skeleton crews left to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed.

The Singapore site is only one of these graveyards, there are similar sites in the Bosporus Strait and Qinhungdao off the Chinese coast. A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth across the oceans, now 12 per cent are doing nothing.

The only positive I can see - they could end up the world's best wreck dive site, provided it isn't too deep.