Narrator:
 The days of the Emesun as an oil tanker are over. Three months ago it sailed here to the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh on its own steam, today it awaits its destruction. The 20 year-old tanker has become a liability for its Japanese owners, its insurance premiums sky high, its age rendering it unseaworthy.

scene of workers chanting

Narrator:
 Now its new owners, Bangladeshi businessmen who bought the 22,000 ton vessel for $185 a ton, are interested in only one thing: its value as scrap, its harvest of steel.

Mohamed Rahman
President of the Shipbreakers Association of Bangladesh
 "All development activities of a country depend on the infrastructure of a country. For building the infrastructure, iron steel plays an important part. In Bangladesh, ship breaking or rather ship recycling industry is very important."

montage of wreck pieces:

Narrator:
 Turning a vessel from ship to scrap is a growing industry in the world today. This industry is called shipbreaking, and the story of shipbreaking or ship recycling as the industry wants it to be known, is a remarkable one. Ships that survived years of high seas, thick fogs and heavy loads, will now be dismantled as they were built - by hand.
Thousands of workers using gas torches, hammers and winches will turn these boats into jagged steel plates that are then melted into steel rods for use in construction. Before shipbreaking, Bangladesh imported all of its scrapsteel, today these ships satisfy 80% of its needs.