William Langewiesche, one of my favorite correspondents for The Atlantic has a new collection coming out very soon now called The Outlaw Sea. One of the main pieces of the book comes from the September 2003 issue of The Atlantic, and remains one of my favorite magazine pieces in recent memory. Titled Anarchy at Sea, the article covered the wild system of modern shipping, piracy, weak regulations, shipwrecks, and more.
Last night, I read another sea story by Langewiesche about the wreck of the Estonia - a luxury ferry that sank in the Baltic in the early nineties, causing the loss of over 850 lives. That article is in the May 2004 Atlantic, and I believe is also to be part of Langewiesche's new book.