Dead in the Water

Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel reconstruct the case of the Brillante Virtuoso, a tanker that reported a pirate attack off Yemen, and of David Mockett, the British surveyor who doubted the story and was killed by a car bomb. They spent more than four years on it, drawing on crew members, witnesses and former London detectives who, as private investigators, pursued Mockett's killer for his family.

The authors first told the story in a 2017 Bloomberg feature and expanded it into the book. Campbell is a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter and author of The Man Who Stole the Gods. Chellel is a Bloomberg investigative reporter. Mockett's murder remains unsolved, and the ship itself, owned through a Greek company, registered in the Marshall Islands and flying the Liberian flag, shows how opaque the industry can be.

The book was shortlisted for the 2022 FT Business Book of the Year. Mark Bowden in the New York Times praised it as explanatory journalism, and The Economist called it a startling tale of fraud and impunity at sea. It suits readers in insurance, commodities, shipping finance and fraud investigation.

1. Insurance creates incentives to destroy assets. When a vessel is worth more as a claim than as a working ship, an owner under financial pressure has a motive to stage a loss.
2. Opaque ownership protects wrongdoers. Offshore companies, flag registries and nominee structures make it hard to identify who controls a ship, let alone prosecute them.
3. Civil courts can establish what criminal courts never test. The 2019 judgment found fraud, yet the owner was never prosecuted, a gap that investors and insurers should not assume will close.
4. Investigators protect the market. Surveyors and investigators working for insurers are the first line of defense against fraud, and Mockett paid with his life.
5. Ask the simple questions. Mockett's doubts began with basics: how did the attackers board so easily, and why burn a ship they could ransom? Claims that fail common-sense tests deserve scrutiny.

The book unfolds as a mystery that the authors and investigators gradually solve.

1. The attack. In July 2011 the Brillante Virtuoso drifts off Aden. The crew reports an attack by armed men, the ship is set on fire, and the Filipino crew is rescued by a US warship. The owners claim on their war-risk insurance.
2. The surveyor. David Mockett inspects the burned ship and finds that the damage does not fit a pirate attack. He wonders how the attackers boarded so easily and why they would burn a ship they could have ransomed. Soon after, he is killed by a car bomb in Aden.
3. The investigation. Former London detectives turned private investigators follow the trail through Yemen, the Greek shipping hub of Piraeus and the London insurance market, piecing together who was aboard and who stood to gain.
4. The money. The authors take readers inside Lloyd's of London, where war-risk cover for ships in dangerous waters is written, and show why an owner in serious financial difficulty might find a destroyed ship worth more than a working one.
5. The reckoning. Insurers refuse to pay, and the London High Court finds in 2019 that the attack was faked. But criminal accountability never comes, and Mockett's family is left without justice.

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of Somali pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. But when David Mockett, a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd’s of London, inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. How had the pirates gotten aboard so easily? And if they wanted to steal the ship and bargain for its return, then why did they destroy it? The questions didn’t add up—and Mockett would never answer them. Soon after his inspection, David Mockett was murdered. Dead in the Water is a shocking expose of the criminal inner-workings of international shipping, told through the lens of the Brillante hijacking and its aftermath. Through first-hand accounts of those who lived it—from members of the ship’screw and witnesses to the attacks, to the ex-London detectives turned private investigators seeking to solve Mockett’s murder and bring justice to his family—award-winning Bloomberg reporters Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel piece together the astounding truth behind one of the most brazen financial frauds in history. The ambitious culmination of more than four years of reporting, Dead in the Water uncovers an intricate web of conspiracy amidst the lawless, old-world industry at the backbone of our new global economy.