"The sudden appearance of a massive ‘ghost’ ship off the coast of southern Myanmar has shocked local fishermen who were stunned to find the freighter carried no cargo nor traces of crew.
After nearly a decade lost at sea the ‘Sam Ratulangi PB 1600,’ finally ran aground on a sandbar approximately seven miles (11km) off the coast of Thama Seitta village of this week.
The fishermen boarded and inspected the ship after reporting it to local authorities. Teams from the navy, coast guard and police all subsequently searched the abandoned freighter which reportedly measures an impressive 177.35 meters in length, 27.91 meters in width and weighs 26,510 tons.
“No crew or cargo was found on the ship. It was quite puzzling how such a big ship turned up in our waters,” Ne Win Yangon, local MP for the nearby Thongwa municipality said, as cited by the Myanmar Times. “The authorities are keeping a watch on it.”
The ship is reported to have sailed under the flag of Indonesia and was last spotted off Taiwan in 2009. When the Burmese Navy inspected the ship on August 30, it had split in half having been beached on a sand bar for several days.
“In my opinion, the ship was recently abandoned. There must be a reason (why it was abandoned),” Aung Kyaw Linn, general secretary of the Independent Federation of Myanmar Seafarers said.
The Myanmar Department of Marine Administration is attempting to track down the ship’s owner but may be forced to salvage the vessel itself, reports The Irrawaddy."
[...] “In my opinion, the ship was recently abandoned. There must be a reason (why it was abandoned),” Aung Kyaw Linn, general secretary of the Independent Federation of Myanmar Seafarers said.
Aw shucks, would have been fantastic to have had a giant message in a bottle floating about on the deep all those years. Actually the dilapidated cargo ship was being towed by the tugboat Independence since Aug 13 toward a different destination to be taken apart and salvaged. But the crew abandoned it after the cables broke during a storm, and eventually it came to ground near Yangon.
It was indeed listed as decommissioned or lost since 2009 according to Marine Traffic ("stopped" at _X_). Who knows what that means: Did it rest at its last location for almost a decade, or was it taken to a vessel graveyard, or did some group rescue slash acquire it and use it for smuggling operations -- and its activity thereby stayed off the books for that reason, or another?
(Sep 4, 2018 07:10 PM)C C Wrote: It was indeed listed as decommissioned or lost since 2009 according to Marine Traffic ("stopped" at _X_). Who knows what that means: Did it rest at its last location for almost a decade, or was it taken to a vessel graveyard, or did some group rescue slash acquire it and use it for smuggling operations -- and its activity thereby stayed off the books for that reason, or another?
Myanmar is next door to Bangladesh, where rough-and-ready ship-breaking is an industry. Defunct ships are run up on the beach, where teeming crews of men cut them up for scrap. (Hard, dangerous work.)
So it's easy to imagine storms washing some of them free, where they drift down the coast and run aground on beaches in the next country.
C CSep 4, 2018 10:55 PM (This post was last modified: Sep 4, 2018 11:13 PM by C C.
Edit Reason: added information
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(Sep 4, 2018 09:34 PM)Yazata Wrote: Myanmar is next door to Bangladesh, where rough-and-ready ship-breaking is an industry. Defunct ships are run up on the beach, where teeming crews of men cut them up for scrap. (Hard, dangerous work.)
So it's easy to imagine storms washing some of them free, where they drift down the coast and run aground on beaches in the next country.
That actually is the place which the tugboat was towing it to (but necessarily back to): A salvage port at Chittagong, Bangladesh. While the news items are proclaiming that the "mystery is solved", the discovery that it broke free from a tugboat doesn't really answer where the latter got the cargo ship to begin with (or where it's been since 2009). The Indonesian government is denying ownership or waving-off having anything to do with it, perhaps vaguely implying that it may have come from Singapore because the tugboat had the latter's flag. (It was photographed in Singapore in 2008, but the last record of it was Taiwan.)
Lots of lesser-sized and backward or poorly constructed "legitimate" ghost-ships do come from North Korea, with dead crews. (NK ghost ships)
If the vessel was under tow it would require both lights and day signals (day shapes) to be visible. (whether it was being broken or not)
As to whether it was being towed by a cable over 50m or 200m or if it was being pushed rather than towed would define what signals were suppose to be raised.
(I'm not an authority on this, but I recently decided to start a new pastime/hobby of sailing, and some of the RYA documentation for one of the many courses involves signalling. so I have a recent familiarity.)