July 2019: The Panama flagged crude oil tanker Grace 1 is captured at Gibraltar by the British Royal Marines and the crew is taken into custody. The official position is that the tanker carrying Iranian oil supposedly to Syria was in violation of certain sanctions.
Few weeks later, the British flagged product tanker Stena Impero is captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards for violation of certain regulations.The ship's crew is detained along with the ship.
No doubt, the crew on both the ships are undergoing a stressful period and we hope for their safe release.
But before all this fades away in a few months and years as news cycles go, let's take a moment to consider how seafarers on commercial ships unnecessarily become pawns in political situations. I don't have any answers but I hope to raise awareness on the issue. This is not the first time this has happened and I can share with you a story which a friend in the industry narrated to me:
"May 1984: The Norwegian cargo ship Germa Lionel was captured in the port of Tripoli by Gaddafi's security police. The crew which consisted of 13 Norwegians and one Spanish sailor were accused of being part of a "British conspiracy aimed at killing Gaddafi".
A number of crew members were taken ashore and tortured by Gaddafi's men. One seaman was tortured to death and sent back to Norway in a coffin, leaving three children without a father. The Libyan authorities claimed he had tried to kill himself by jumping out of a car during transport to a "hearing".
The ship had arrived in Tripoli to load/discharge cargo, and the crew knew nothing about the allegations they were accused of. They were not allowed to contact the ship's owner, the Norwegian consulate or to make any contact with the rest of the world. In those days there were no cell or satellite phones - everything went by the ship's radio station which was disrupted on purpose in the North African jurisdictions.
By coincidence, a Swedish captain from another ship walked by on the dock and the crew on the Germa Lionel shouted to him in Scandinavian language about what was going on. The Swedish captain contacted the Swedish embassy who in turn relayed the message to the Norwegian authorities.
An autopsy of the deceased sailor carried out in Norway showed that the sailor had died from nothing other than severe torture.
After 67 days alongside in Libya, the Norwegian authorities finally managed to get the ship and her remaining crew released. The crew had then been under machine-gun-threat 24/7 for the same period of time by military guards who often were under influence of intoxicants.
Later the same year the vessel and three of her sister ships were laid up in Larvik, Norway and marketed for sale. They were alongside in cold lay-up with no crew onboard. I especially remember that we found a note book in one cabin onboard the Germa Lionel.In the note book a crew member had described how he had tried to talk in Norwegian language to the tortured sailor before he died but that a Libyan guard then put a machine gun in his stomach and yelled "Speak English"!
Photo courtesy: Oddleiv Apneseth
Anyway, we never bought any of the ships as they were considered to have an excessive fuel consumption in relation to their cargo capacity. They were built in Singapore after Dutch perpendiculars that advocated a short length, a wide beam and a [not so] great draft. One idea my father had was actually to buy three ships and cut the third into two pieces that would be inserted into the first two ships, which thereby would gain length and cargo capacity. The forecastle and accommodation of the third ship would be scrapped and its engine dismantled into spares for the "lengthened" sister ships. Some Germa-sisters were later lengthened by a group of Danish owners who "normalized" the cargo capacity/ fuel consumption ratio."
The states and names may change but it appears that commercial ships and their unsuspecting crew form an easy target for politically motivated actions. I'm on the side of the seafarers; while on the political chess board, the ships may appear as pawns, spare a thought for the crew.
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