| In the late winter of 1996, a cargo ship called the Maersk Dubai set sail from the south of Spain, passing through the narrow strait that separates Europe from Africa and navigating into the open Atlantic. The following morning, a crew member was making his rounds when he found a pair of illegal passengers hiding near a catwalk: young Romanian men who likely hoped to disembark in Canada, in order to build an easier life. “On most ships, carrying stowaways is not a big deal,” The New Yorker’s Scott L. Malcomson wrote, the following year. On the Maersk Dubai, it was. Despite the frequency with which stowaways are discovered—and the straightforward, relatively lax laws that govern what’s supposed to happen afterward—the captain of the Maersk Dubai reacted badly. The decisions that followed alarmed the ship’s subordinate staff, sparking a series of crises that would come to involve a secret letter, a pastor in Texas, and, eventually, law-enforcement officers in Canada. When another stowaway was discovered on a subsequent voyage, members of the crew faced an ethical dilemma—and the well-founded fear that their concerns, and justice itself, would be abandoned at sea. | 
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