But it is the ships themselves that truly embody the anarchy of the open ocean: they are possibly the most independent objects on earth, many of them without allegiances of any kind, frequently changing their identity, and assuming whatever nationality, or 'flag,' allows them to sail as they please. In many cases they are owned or managed by secretive one-ship companies so ghostly and unencumbered that they exist only on paper, or maybe as a brass plate on some faraway foreign door. These ships are crewed by mariners of varying quality drawn from the poor worldwide, and mixed together without reference to language or nationality. Expressing that freedom are more than 40,000 large merchant ships that ply the open ocean, among uncountable numbers of smaller coastal craft, and between them carry nearly the full weight of international trade-almost all the raw materials and finished products on which our lives are built. At a time when every last patch of land is claimed by one government or another, and when citizenship is treated as an absolute condition of human existence, it is a place that remains radically free.

Geographically it is not the exception to our world but by far its greatest defining feature. Under its many names, and with variations in color and mood, this single ocean spreads across three fourths of the globe. Some shores perhaps can be tamed, but beyond the horizon lies the wave-maker, an anarchic expanse, the open ocean of the high seas. Since we live on land, and usually beyond sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world, and to ignore what in practice that means.

Anarchy tate james