358 — This week on Cargo

There is a furtive undercurrent to the truffle business. Sources of supply are kept secret. Demand is largely fuelled by cash, for which no receipts are given. Safeguards and guarantees don’t exist. Irregularities—sometimes indelicately described as swindles—are not infrequent. And this year, as if to confirm the worst fears of Monsieur Farigoule,

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For fifty years after the turn of the century, shipbuilders and shipping companies worked hard both to make ships faster and to lower their fuel consumption. Even so, the more successful they were in boosting speed and trimming their fuel needs, the worse the economics of ocean freighters became. By 1950 or so, the ocean freighter was dying, if not

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