The Ship Breakers

Teams of laborers carry steel cut from the hulls of ships beached in the shipyards of Chittagong, Bangladesh. The steel, cut into varying size lengths, a ton or more in weight, are heaved onto the shoulders of a ragged team of workers who then sway under the weight to the waiting trucks where they are then transported to the steel furnaces.

Young worker from the carrying teams taking a cigarette break. The carrying teams are at the bottom of the hierarchy on the beach, the least skilled and the lowest paid. They wear ragged lungis, shirts hanging loose on their thin strong bodies. These men do some of the toughest physical labor anywhere for around a dollar a day.

Workers carrying cable out to the ship. The thick steel cables that run from the winches are twisted and coated with mud. Sharp bits of metal poke out. The teams stagger against the stiffness and weight as they struggle down the beach and onto the mud bearing the weight of five meters or so of cable.

Laborers carry huge and heavy links from a chain to which the cables will be attached to haul in the segments that have been cut from the ships onto the beach.

Teams of up to three men work with hammers and chisels on sections of the ship that cannot be cut with blow torches. All their tools are made from the steel scavenged from the ships.

A carrying team struggles with the heavy load. In the fading light, even more caution needs to be taken.

A view down a section of the ship yards. There are approximately 30 yards that stretch for about ten miles along the beach in the Bay of Bengal. The lifeboats in the foreground are used by the fisherman and can be purchased in the various stalls and shops along the coastal road behind the ship yards

The cable carriers haul their load to winch up another section from the ship graveyard.

A ship reaches her final destination. When a ship is beached, it's met out at sea by the beaching captain and is then sailed a few miles out to sea, turned towards the land, and, at as high a speed as possible is driven onto the shore. The closer she ends up to the high water mark, the easier and cheaper she will be to scrap.

A young man sits on his bed made from a sheet of steel scavenged from the yard. He has no pillow and uses a lungi, a thin cotton wrap to lie on. The men, largely recruited from the poor rural northern district, arrive at the yards with often no more than what they are wearing.