Hear, hear.

COASTGUARD (Gregorio De Falco): hello? Captain? This is De Falco in Livorno
SCHETTINO: Good evening, Captain
CG: Tell me your name please.
S: Schettino, Captain
CG: Schettino?
S: Yes
CG: Listen, Schettino, there are people trapped on board. Go with your lifeboat to the bow of the ship, there is a rope ladder there. Get on the rope ladder and get on board the ship. Get on board the ship and tell me how many people there are. Is that clear? I am recording this conversation, Captain Schettino
S: OK, Captain, listen,
CG: Speak up!
S: OK, the ship, now, I am in front [of it]
CG: Captain, speak up! Take the microphone and speak up! Is that clear?
S: [talking to someone else] …lifeboat…tell it to come here, get it to come over here. Captain, right now, my ship is listing.
CG: I know. People are getting off it by the rope ladder on the bow. You go and get on the rope ladder on the opposite side, get on the ship and tell me how many people there are there and what they have with them. Is that clear? You tell me if there are children, women, people who need assistance and you tell me exactly how many are in each category. Is that clear? Schettino, you may have saved yourself from the sea but I’ll make you pay for sure. Go aboard.
S: Captain, please….
CG: Please nothing! You get back on board!
S: I am going there now with the lifeboat. I’m there. I haven’t gone anywhere, I am there.
CG: What are you doing, Captain?
S: I am here co-ordinating the evacuation.
CG: What evacuation are you co-ordinating? Get back on board and co-ordinate evacuation from on board. Are you refusing?
S: No, I’m not refusing anything.
CG: Are you refusing to go back on board, Captain?
S: No, no
CG: Tell me exactly why you are not going back [on the ship]?
S: I’m not going because there is another lifeboat stopped there.
CG: GET BACK ON THE SHIP. THAT IS AN ORDER. You have no other evaluations to make. You have declared abandon ship. I am now taking command. GET BACK ON THE SHIP. IS THAT CLEAR? Can’t you hear me?
S: Captain, I’m going back on board.
CG: You call me as soon as you get on board, there is my rescue official there.
S: Where is he?
CG: At the bow. Go! There are dead bodies, Schettino. Go!
S: How many dead bodies are there?
CG: I DON’T KNOW. ONE, I KNOW FOR SURE. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TELL ME HOW MANY DEAD BODIES THERE ARE!!!
S: But do you realise it’s dark here and we can’t see a thing?
CG: SO WHAT? IT’S DARK SO YOU WANT TO GO HOME, SCHETTINO? IS THAT IT? GET ONTO THE SHIP BY THE ROPE-LADDER AND TELL ME WHAT CAN BE DONE, HOW MANY PEOPLE THERE ARE AND WHAT THEIR NEEDS ARE. NOW!!!
S: Captain, I have my second-in-command here.
CG: So both of you get on board then. What’s the name of your second-in-command?
S: Dmitri
CG: Dmitri what?
S: Dmitri [inaudible]
CG: Get back on board
S: Captain, I want to get aboard but here there is the other lifeboat, there are other rescuers who stopped. Now I have called other rescuers.
CG: You’ve been telling me that for an hour. Now get back on the ship. GET. ON. BOARD. And tell me immediately how many people are on board.
S: OK Captain, I’m going.
CG: NOW.
[HANGS UP]

I am sometimes called eclectic. I wonder why. Then I see the list of search terms that have carried people to this blog:

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• Marie Dedieu; 66 year-old, disabled French tourist kidnapped from Kenya;
• Christian Colombo; French yachtsman killed during the hijack of SY Tribal Kat. His wife, Evelyne, held hostage was rescued by naval forces;
• 4 Americans – Jean and Scott Adam, Phyllis Mackay and Bob Riggle; killed after SY Quest was hijacked, and negotiations were being conducted with a US warship in the vicinity;
• David Tebbutt; British tourist killed during the kidnap of his wife, Judith, from a holiday resort in Kenya;
• Filipino Bosun and 2 others; [Beluga] Nomination. Killed in retaliation as a consequence of a rescue attempt, and one drowned whilst escaping; (mystery still surrounds the incident);
• Wu Lai Yu; Master of hijacked Jih Chun Tsai 68. Killed in crossfire, despite ransom having been paid;
• 2 Indian sailors – Akbarali Mamad Sanghar (Captain) and Jakku Suleiman Sandi of Tiba-2 Halima following rescue mission by the Royal Omani Navy;
• 6 sailors – died of unspecified illnesses - abandoned FV Prantalay 12;
• 1 sailor – one of six sailors taken from crew-disabled MV Leopard (abandoned vessel picked up by Turkish navy);
• 2 sailors – reported to have died from MV Asphalt Venture crew members kept behind when the vessel was released after ransom payment.

And those are the ones we know about. It has been rumoured that another hostage from MV Iceberg, whose crew have now been held captive for over eighteen months, has also died, but that can’t be verified. A film by Neil Bell of Rabotat films about MV Iceberg will be released/screened next year. Neil kindly let me see the whole thing in its current form, and it is excellent. Here meanwhile is a trailer.

The Pirates of Somalia Trailer from neil bell on Vimeo.

“People count on turning on the faucet and having clean water come out,” said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the subcommittee on water. “Our nation’s water infrastructure is reaching a tipping point.”

People live by assumptions and expectations. But having a fully functioning sewer system in your city should not be one of them. It needs care and attention, in all sorts of ways.

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) welcome entries for the fourth edition of the WASH Media Awards. This competition is open to journalists who publish or broadcast original investigative stories and reports on water supply, sanitation or hygiene (WASH) related issues and their impact on individual and country development.

Entries must be published or broadcast between 1st April 2011 and 1st April 2012 in English, French or Hindi (works not originally produced in one of these languages must be submitted together with a translation). Eligible formats are: print & online, TV, radio, cartoons & photos.

Six prizes will be awarded: one for the best entry in print & online format, one for the best entry in radio format, one for the best entry in cartoons & photos format, one for the best entry for the theme ‘economics of sanitation’, one for the best entry from a journalist based in a high-income country or a reporter working for an international media outlet. Prizes 1 to 5 will be awarded to journalists from developing and middle income countries. The six winners will receive a cash prize and will be invited to participate in the World Water Week in Stockholm in August 2012 as special guests of WSSCC and SIWI.

Entries must be received no later than 1st April 2012, together with a duly filled in entry form, by regular post or email to wsscc@wsscc.org. For more information and to download entry forms please visit here.

From: Nigel Cawthorne
Date: 24 November 2011 15:15:56 GMT
To: Walters Guy
Subject: Re: Pirates of the 21st Century

Dear Mr Walters,

Two years ago I dashed off a book about pirates. The publisher John Blake insisted that I did not go to Somalia, or anywhere else pirates operated, soI had no recourse to use written sources. Naturally I was careful to rewrite anything that was within copyright to avoid any infringement, mindful of the fact that, the more you rewrite the more you distance the information from the source material, consequently shortchanging the reader. It is a fine line to walk.

Mr Rose pointed out that I do not give citation for the sources. That is true. Pirates of the 21st Century is not an academic work. It is a potboiler knocked off in a matter of weeks for a flat fee. Sticking in citations, footnotes, bibliographies and the like would piss off readers no end.

If you look at my output, you will see that, when I have been given a decent advance, I have put the leg work in, even to the extent of going to jail. I have been called to testify to the US Senate for the material I had unearthed at some considerable danger to myself. But when it comes to a squib like Pirates of the 21st Century one has to cut corners.

Ms George says she is writing a book of merchant seafaring, so why the fuck is she reading a book like Pirates of the 21st Century? Doesn’t she know a cut-and-paste job when she sees one? Now, if you don’t mind, can I get on with making a living? I have three more books to deliver by Christmas.

And, yes, this is on the record.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Cawthorne
Author
Tel: +44 20 7831 4759

http://www.nigel-cawthorne.com/

http://tinyurl.com/ccy359m

http://tinyurl.com/dxhan5s

http://tinyurl.com/87kl8hf

On 24 Nov 2011, at 14:17, Walters Guy wrote:

Dear Mr Cawthorne

My name is Guy Walters, and I am a journalist and historian who writes a blog for the New Statesman. One of the topics that I cover is that of plagiarism, and I note that you have been accused of this practice by Rose George in her latest blog post. (See http://rosegeorge.com/site/plagiarism)

I would very much like to talk to you concerning the charges that Ms George raises, and to ask you what your defence might be. Any conversation would be on the record.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Walters

So, perhaps I am sensitive about plagiarism. Or maybe it’s because I started my journalism career as a fact-checker for The Nation. It was a fantastic job, and it taught me about being accurate, because people check. Or so I thought. In fact, it is a curious fact that modern publishing does not incorporate any formal fact-checking in its publishing process. I fact-checked my own book; other people read it for me and corrected egregious errors; translators later picked up other stuff (thank you, in particular, to my Swedish translator Nancy Westman). Readers wrote in after publication with other points to make. That sounds like it was full of errors. It wasn’t. But there were a handful that were published that shouldn’t have been, despite the manuscript being read by at least two dozen people over a six month editing process.

That’s just how publishing works. If you want a fact-checker, you pay for it yourself.

So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at my discoveries of the last couple of days. I borrowed from the library a copy of a book by Nigel Cawthorne, called “Pirates of the 21st Century.” I’d never heard of Cawthorne, but the book was shelved next to Jay Bahadur’s Deadly Waters, which I have read and rate highly, so I borrowed it. It was fluently written and readable, but by halfway through Chapter 1, it was obvious that Cawthorne hadn’t actually gone anywhere and done any reporting. So how had he got all these direct quotes? There were quotes from Somali pirates, fishermen, crew members. All sorts. There were no footnote numbers so I immediately went to the back of the book to see the list of sources/references. Nothing. No bibliography, no references. Sort of out of idle curiosity, I put a sentence with a Somali name into Google. It came up, verbatim, in a piece by FT shipping correspondent Robert Wright. I know Robert so wrote and asked if he had been asked permission. Cawthorne had paraphased the descriptive parts, but the quotes were identical. He had not written, for example, “as told to FT journalist Robert Wright,” or “as Robert Wright reported,” which would be the usual convention. Robert said he hadn’t been asked for permission, but that the quote had come from the wires.

I carried on. Every now and then I put a sentence into Google and found a source with identical quotes. By halfway through the book I realised Cawthorne hadn’t done any interviewing or reporting. That would be fine, if there had been attributions. There were a few here and there – eg “told BBC News,” – but 95% of quotes had no source given, nor any indication given that Cawthorne had not got the quotes himself.  Here are some examples. Page references are from the 2010 paperback edition published by John Blake publishing. See? That’s a source.

CAWTHORNE p.51

“We simply want the money so our families can live,” said pirate leader Abdullah Hassan, “but they want to recover the weapons to fight the government troops.” He bristled at the accusation that the pirates were in league with with Islamist militia and were helping to train them. “If anyone has lessons of war to learn, it is certainly not us. “

DAILY MAIL
by Manon Queroil
‘We simply want the money so our families can live, but they want to recover the weapons to fight the government troops,’ says Hassan, who bristles at the idea that the Islamist militia helped train the pirates: ‘If anyone has lessons of war to learn, it is certainly not us.’

Source here.

CAWTHORNE, p.68
As soon as the ship’s security officer Michael Groves, an ex-policeman who had also served in the Royal Navy, heard that two speedboats were approaching, he headed up to the deck. “As soon as I went on deck I came under automatic fire,” he recalled. “Then a rocket grenade blew me off my feet. The next thing I remember is rolling around, trying to check for shrapnel.”

BBC News Thursday, 17 May 2007
After accepting the honour Mr Groves, an ex-policemen, told how he was called to the deck after two speed boats were spotted approaching the liner. “As soon as I went on the deck I came under automatic fire straight away. A rocket grenade blew me off my feet,” he said.
“The next thing I remember is rolling around and trying to check for shrapnel.”

Source here

CAWTHORNE, p. 118

Fellow crewman Anthony Timudo had a slightly different recollection. “It was early on 21 August, when two armed men came on a speedboat and at gun point ordered our ship’s captain to stop. Minutes later, another 18 pirates came in another speedboat and wrested control of our ship.’

TIMES OF India, OCT 18, 2008, Byline GOVIND KAMAT MAAD
Narrating the hijack, Anthony shudders. “It was early on August 21, when two armed men came on a speed boat and at gun point ordered our ship’s captain to stop. Minutes later, another 18 pirates came in another speed boat and wrested control of our ship.

Source here

CAWTHORNE P.118
Many of us ran out on deck, said 28 year old crewman Jeevan Kiran D’Souza. “We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air…There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into one small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.”

INDIAN EXPRESS, OCT 18 2008, byline SHAJU PHILLIP
Early on August 21, when the ship was moving along the Somalian coast in the Gulf of Aden that separates the horn of Africa from the Arabian peninsula, Jeevan heard loud gunfire. “Many of us ran out on the deck. We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air,” he said. “There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into a small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.”

Source here

CAWTHORNE, p. 168
Later the captain was escorted up to the bridge and discovered that the pirates really did know what they were doing. “Someone was expertly steering the vessel, reading the radar very well,” said Surahmat. “I remember thinking, my God, he can handle the vessel better than I can.”

TIME ASIA, November 2004, byline Simon Elegant and Kuala Sepetang
Later, says Surahmat, the pirates escorted him to the bridge. “Up there I realized that they were completely familiar with all the equipment. Someone was expertly steering the vessel, reading the radar very well. I remember thinking: ‘My God, he can handle the ship better than I can.’ I’d thought pirates were just a bunch of petty robbers who jumped onto a ship, robbed the crew, then disappeared. But these pirates were totally beyond my imagination. They were professionals.”
Source here.

That same paragraph, by the way, was reproduced in James Forest’s book “Combating Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century,” which is where I found it first on Google. Unlike Cawthorne, though, Forest cites his original sources in footnotes.

So why does it matter? Because other reporters gathered those quotes. They went to India and Somalia and did the interviews. They got the bylines because they did the work. Cawthorne lifted their work and appropriated it. I consider it plagiarism.

So I wrote to John Blake publishers yesterday, and had no response. Today I wrote to Nigel Cawthorne. I got a reply 9 minutes later. It said, “Mea Culpa.”Another email arrived a couple of minutes afterwards. This one said, “One source is plagiarism; two is research.” I wrote this in response:

“What utter rubbish. 95% of your book is copied from other people’s work. If you had put sources, that would be a different matter. As you didn’t, it’s plagiarism. I will be writing to your publishers. And to National Geographic. I don’t see why you should pass off theft as original work when other people do the actual work.”

He replied with, “As I am not a pirate, plainly all my material comes from written sources.”

Cawthorne’s website, which I recommend visiting, if only for entertainment, says he has written 80 books and that his flat is known as the “book-factory.” 80 books? If all he does is steal work and cobble it together, I’m not surprised at his output. I assume from his responses that he thinks what he does is acceptable. I think people think such behaviour is increasingly acceptable. But it isn’t.

So. I’m waiting to hear from his publisher. I may also write to National Geographic to see how they feel about being plagiarised. I suspect they won’t like it: they do have fact-checkers. And John Blake Publishers should be ashamed. Cawthorne obviously isn’t.

UPDATE:

An email from a publishing assistant at John Blake Publishers:

Dear Rose,

I apologise on behalf of John Blake Publishing Ltd for the issues you
have found in your copy of Nigel Cawthorne’s book. Thank you for writing
to inform us of the problems with plagiarism that you found in it.  I
have informed the editor of your e-mail, and should we do a reprint then
we will take steps to make the necessary corrections. Further to this, I
have sent your e-mail on to the author, and I apologise for the abrupt
response you have received from him.

Again, I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Yours sincerely,
C*** M*****
Publishing Assistant

John Blake Publishing Limited
3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road, London, W14 9PB
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7381 0666
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7381 6868

Of course if they were to reprint the book, it would – in my view, lawyers -  have to be entirely rewritten. “Inconvenience?” Hardly. More like despondency  and despair that people – authors, publishers – get away with such crap.

I am extremely proud of my book. But it is so exciting to see its themes illustrated so powerfully, so visually. Powerful photographs; fantastic illustrations by Nam. And of course exceptionally good text. Buy it here, and also dive into the Lab, which has even more enticing shit stories.