Perhaps this is just what it seems, sheer incompetence. There has been a slow but steady decline in seamanship over the last few decades, as maritime nations neglect their merchant fleets and shipping companies flee to flags of convenience with little in the way of safety, regulations, inspections, or crew welfare and union protection. Modern ships are often old, in bad mechanical shape, poorly maintained, and their international polyglot third-world crews overworked and underpaid, often, from different countries than their officers. It's not unusual for merchantmen to cruise the sealanes under autopilot without helmsman or proper lookout, running down yachts and fishermen, just to save paying a deck watch overtime.

The seas are littered with floating containers fallen from overloaded ships, creating a hazard to navigation and the enviroment. The great increase in maritime trade and foreign manufacturing has led to a huge demand for shipping and a desperation to cut corners and maximize profits, hang the costs in lives. The "invisible hand" stops at the 12 mile limit, and with the ubiquity of GPS and other electronic aids, both the seamanship of the officers and the completeness of the aids to navigation and the charts and publications which document them have been steadily deteriorating. Even our own Coast Guard has been shutting down navaids like lighthouses and buoys, and neglecting surveys for new charts and sailing directions because "GPS is making them increasingly obsolete", and of course, the usual excuse, "to cut costs".

Perhaps the unauthorized crowding of ships at anchor waitng for dock space, dragging their anchors across underwater cables, is not an evil conspiracy, maybe it's just the same old entropy that seems to be plaguing the whole world.