BANGKOK, Thailand — Their condition recalls dark tales from the 18th century: underfed men lorded over by seafaring captains who pay them nothing and maim the disobedient.

Yet these forced labor abuses play out on Thai-owned fishing trawlers each day. And the victims — typically destitute men from Myanmar or Cambodia lured by coyotes full of false promises — continue to wash ashore with accounts of torture and casual homicide.

For years, US officials have urged Thailand, one of America’s closest Asian allies, to rid its $7.3 billion fisheries export industry of these abuses. Though carried out on lawless seas, these crimes risk entangling supermarkets in America, where one in six pounds of seafood is imported from Thailand.

So far, these persistent abuses have hurt Thailand’s reputation but little else. That may change: if one more year passes without major strikes against Thai trafficking syndicates, the US State Department will be forced, by law, to hit Thailand with sanctions.

For four years running, a US State Department annual “Trafficking in Persons” report has labeled Thailand with its next-to-worst ranking. This year’s report, released this week, painted a similarly bleak portrait of Thailand’s efforts to fix what the report called “pervasive trafficking-related corruption.”

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