The open ocean--that vast expanse of international waters--spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, it is a place that remains radically free. With typically understated lyricism, William Langewiesche explores this ocean world and the enterprises--licit and illicit--that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems--shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews of the gargantuan ships, and the growth of two pathogens: a modern and sophisticated strain of piracy and its close cousin, the maritime form of the new stateless terrorism. This is the outlaw sea that Langewiesche brings startlingly into view. The ocean is our world, he reminds us, and it is wild.

The Draft Marine Navigation Bill was published on 6 May 2008. (Cm. 7370, ISBN 9780101737029 ). A supplementary consultation on the ratification of the Nairobi Convention on the Removal of Wrecks, for which the draft Bill includes the necessary statutory provisions, was published at the same time by the Department for Transport. The Bill covers four main areas: (a) port safety, including measures relating to pilotage, National Occupational Standards for Harbour Masters and pilots, and extending powers of general direction to more harbour authorities; (b) the closure of harbours, and the subsequent relinquishing of the legal rights and duties of the harbour authority; (c) the role of the General Lighthouse Authorities, including their powers of enforcement, the territorial extent of their operations, their commercial work and their pension schemes; and (d) the ratification and implementation of the Nairobi Convention. The introduction of new powers to issue directions to port and harbour authorities and to specify minimum standards of competence for harbour masters and pilots is supported. The provisions relating to General Lighthouse Authorities are a sensible package intended to clarify their powers and put beyond doubt the legal validity of much of the essential work which they have been carrying out for centuries. The provision in the draft Bill to give statutory effect Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks will remove from the UK taxpayer a significant potential liability in respect of wrecks in UK waters.