Category: MARITIME

A Coast Guard MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter aircrew conducted a medevac for a Disney Fantasy cruise ship passenger, Monday, in the Atlantic Ocean 180 miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The medevac patient was a 35-year-old pregnant woman, U.S. citizen, who experienced health complications and required a higher level of medical care ashore.

Commandos from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard rappelled down ropes from a helicopter onto an Israeli-affiliated container ship in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz and seized the vessel April 13. This was the latest in a series of attacks between the two countries. A special forces unit of the Guard’s navy carried out the attack on the vessel, a Portuguese-flagged container ship associated with London-based Zodiac Maritime. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all globally traded oil passes. Fujairah, on the United Arab Emirates’ eastern coast, is a main port in the region for ships to take on new oil cargo, pick up supplies or trade out crew. According to reports, the waters off Fujairah have been subjected to a series of explosions and hijackings since 2019.

The crew of a cargo transport abandoned ship after it came under attack by Houthi militia in Yemen. The Houthi have been firing missiles at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The group says it is a campaign to pressure Israel to end its war in the Gaza Strip. The ship, the Rubymar, was damaged and this was by far the worst attack by the armed group’s missile and drone assaults. Earlier attacks failed to inflict serious damage. The strike involved two anti-ship ballistic missiles launched from Yemen between 9:30 and 10:45 p.m. which, according to the U.S. military, was enough to drive the crew off the vessel.

A wooden boat was sighted at night in international waters north of Libya by a team from Doctors Without Borders. The small wooden fishing boat contained people waving lights from their cellphones to attract attention after the boat’s engine quit. They had been drifting for hours in the pitch black, hundreds of miles offshore in the Mediterranean Sea. Aboard were 162 people, 29 of them children, on the overcrowded boat. The group was rescued and brought aboard another larger ship.

A cargo ship sank off the coast of Greece near the island of Lesbos Sunday, November 26. One person was rescued, one body was recovered but twelve crewmembers were still missing according to Greek authorities. The ship was en route from Alexandria, Egypt, to Istanbul with a 6,000-ton load of salt. The ship reported mechanical issues Sunday morning and later sent a distress signal. A group of merchant ships, helicopters and a Greek navy ship were searching for the crew. The dead crewmember was retrieved Sunday afternoon and was taken to Lesbos. The body arrived but has not been identified, a coast guard spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

Houthi rebels from Yemen seized what they referred to as an Israeli cargo ship in the Red Sea. The group then warned that all vessels connected to Israel “will become a legitimate target for armed forces.” The Houthi rebels released a video showing what they say is the attack and seizure of the vessel. The released video showed masked, armed men exiting a helicopter onto the deck of the ship while it was still moving. The video showed crewmembers with their arms up being threatened at gunpoint. Palestinian and Yemeni flags were raised on board. The authenticity of the video has not been verified. Israel said the vessel, the Galaxy Leader, is a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship and described the incident as an “Iranian act of terrorism” with consequences for international maritime security. Israel’s military said on X (formerly Twitter): “The hijacking of a cargo ship by the Houthis near Yemen in the southern Red Sea is a very grave incident of global consequence.” Houthi forces said they would “continue to carry out military operations against the Israeli enemy until the aggression against Gaza stops and the ugly crimes … against our Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the West Bank stop,” said Yahya Sare’e, a spokesperson for the group in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).

The captain of a dive boat has been convicted of criminal negligence after 34 people were killed on board the boat. Jerry Boylan, the captain, was found guilty of misconduct/neglect of a ship officer in a trial in Los Angeles, Calif. The fire occurred in 2019 on the commercial scuba diving vessel, the Conception. The boat caught fire near Santa Cruz Island, Calif. on the morning of Sept. 2, 2019. All passengers were sleeping below deck. Boylan and four members of the crew escaped but it is maintained that they did not attempt to help the passengers. Boylan was convicted of “failing to perform any lifesaving or firefighting activities whatsoever at the time of the fire, even though he was uninjured,” the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a press release that announced the conviction.

One person died and four others went missing after two cargo ships collided in an incident that took place in the North Sea off the coast of Germany. An additional two crewmembers were rescued, according to German officials. The British-flagged Verity is said to have collided with the Bahamian-registered Polesie. Reports say the Verity sank. The Polesie remained afloat. The Verity was traveling from Bremen to Immingham in the U.K. when it collided with the Polesie, which had departed from Hamburg on its way to La Coruña in Spain. The incident happened off the coast of Heligoland. Rescue ships from the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service (DGzRS), a German navy helicopter and a water police boat are aiding in the search efforts, the DGzRS said. No word as yet on the cause of the collision.

The cruise ship MV Ocean Explorer was pulled free three days after running aground in Greenland. The cruise ship ran aground above the Arctic Circle in Alpefjord in Northeast Greenland National Park, the northernmost national park in the world. The ship had 206 people on board at the time of the incident, according to authorities and the ship’s owner. A fisheries research was able to pull the vessel at high tide, pulling it free, said SunStone Ships, the Copenhagen-based owner of the cruise ship. The Joint Arctic Command coordinated the operation. “There have not been any injuries to anybody on board, no pollution of the environment and no breach of the hull,” SunStone Ships said in a statement. The research vessel which pulled the cruise ship belongs to the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, a government agency, it said. Those aboard were taken to a location and were flown home. The Danish Maritime Authority asked police in Greenland to investigate the reason the ship ran aground and whether any laws had been violated, a police statement said. No one has been charged or arrested. An officer has been on board the ship to carry out “initial investigative steps, which, among other things, involve questioning the crew and other relevant persons on board,” the statement said.

Early on September 12, a group of unseaworthy, overcrowded iron boats came into Italian island Lampedusa, a fishing and tourist hub south of Sicily. 6,800 migrants came in about 24 hours, more people than the full-time population of Lampedusa. The boats and migrants launched from Tunisia. The flotilla taxed the Italian coast guard’s ability to intercept the smugglers’ vessels and testing Premier Giorgia Meloni’s commitment to end irregular migration.