Whois & Analysis for maritime-executive.com

The Shipping News is a novel by American author E.

Annie Proulx, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1993.

It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award, as well as other awards.

It was adapted as a film of the same name, released in 2001.

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship- or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties.

Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates.

The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations.

Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding.

Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic strictures facilitated pirate attacks.

A land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes.

Privateering uses similar methods to piracy, but the captain acts under orders of the state authorizing the capture of merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation, making it a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors.

An ocean (the sea of classical antiquity) is a body of saline water that composes much of a planet's hydrosphere.

On Earth, an ocean is one of the major conventional divisions of the World Ocean, which covers almost 71% of its surface.

These are, in descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans.

The word sea is often used interchangeably with "ocean" in American English but, strictly speaking, a sea is a body of saline water (generally a division of the world ocean) partly or fully enclosed by land.

Ship transport is watercraft carrying people (passengers) or goods (cargo).

Freight transport has been achieved widely by sea throughout recorded history.

Although the importance of sea travel for passengers has decreased due to aviation, it is effective for short trips and pleasure cruises.

Transport by water is cheaper than transport by air, despite fluctuating exchange rates and CAF charges to account for such.

Offshore drilling is a mechanical process where a wellbore is drilled below the seabed.

It is typically carried out in order to explore for and subsequently extract petroleum which lies in rock formations beneath the seabed.

Most commonly, the term is used to describe drilling activities on the continental shelf, though the term can also be applied to drilling in lakes, inshore waters and inland seas.