Spectral vessels
Theodore Baird, Thomas Spijkerboer and Paolo Cuttitta
Powerful institutional agendas have acted to bolster the ‘ghost ship’ obsession. Such symbolism renders the specificities of Mediterranean migration opaque.
Over the past few weeks, three cargo ships transporting migrants to Italy were abandoned by their crews with the engines still running. They were directed towards Italian coasts and would have crashed there if the coast guard had not intervened to rescue the migrants. While the first went almost unnoticed, the other two – the Ezadeen and the Blue Sky M – made headlines worldwide. The cargoes were labeled as ‘ghost ships’, and the international press readily accepted the notion that abandoned ships constitute a new trend in the history of boat migration. This led to moral indignation and outrage over the fates of large groups of migrants at sea.