Near-closure of Strait of Hormuz has left thousands of ships stuck in the Gulf with limited protections for crew
For Anuj, an Indian seafarer serving on an offshore support ship stuck in a Gulf port, the first few days of the US-Israeli war on Iran were full of “very scary” Iranian strikes on nearby vessels.
“We were stuck and there were missiles firing over and blasts everywhere,” said Anuj, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym.
Even after nearby air strikes eased, Anuj’s ordeal continued. Like many of the 20,000 seafarers that the International Maritime Organization estimates are stranded in the Gulf, he remained trapped aboard his vessel with limited communications. Some may be forced to ration food and water.
Many sailors have been aboard their ships for months and want to return home, but find their employers either unable or unwilling to repatriate them.
Others fear coming under pressure to risk a passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic route out of the Gulf that Iran has closed to almost all shipping since it came under US and Israeli attack last month.
Iran has struck at least 22 civilian ships in the Gulf since the start of the war. Those attacks have resulted in the deaths of at least eight seafarers. Several more have been reported missing.
“Seafarers are sitting ducks. They are civilians and they are only there to do their jobs,” said Ben Bailey, director of programme at The Mission to Seafarers, a Christian charity with operations in the Gulf. “The international community needs to find a way to get them out and back into the safety of their families and their communities.”
Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, a trade union, said crews often had little to occupy them, leaving lots of time to worry about “‘what-if sets of scenarios” while “rockets [and] drones near the ships add to their heightened sense of fear”.
“Stress levels are ratcheting up,” Cotton said.
Most of the seafarers come from India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine. One Ukrainian sailor who asked not to be named said that when his ship was hit, fellow crew members from other countries had been more “confused” by the explosions.
“For us it’s a bit of an old story already because for us the first time was four years ago when Ukrainian ships were stuck in Ukrainian ports,” said Oleg Grygoriuk, chair of the Marine Transport Workers’ Trade Union of Ukraine.
Seafarers are supposed to enjoy special protections in war zones, but enforcing this is difficult. Soon after the outbreak of war, the ITF and shipping companies agreed that seafarers operating in the Gulf and around the Strait of Hormuz would get a bonus equal to their basic wage.
They also agreed sailors had the “right to refuse sailing” and to repatriation at their employer’s cost.
But Manoj Yadav, general secretary of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India, which has been providing advice to Anuj and his fellow crew members, said that “not more than 30 to 40 per cent” of ships in the Gulf were covered by the agreement.
Yadav also said many seafarers’ pay was structured so that the basic wage made up only a “small component” of total remuneration.
A ship captain whose crew was stranded in the Gulf said basic wages for some sailors could be as low as $10 a day. “It’s a very clever trick that some companies play,” the captain said. The ITF said that under its agreements with shipping companies, the lowest permitted basic wage for a seafarer was around $18 a day.
Owners who wish to repatriate crew must also first find replacements for them to avoid breaching rules on minimum staffing levels aboard vessels.
Anuj said that to go ashore in Iraq he required a sign-off letter from his ship’s owner, but the owner had not paid the crew for months even before the war started and was not responding to messages.
Some companies cite frequent closures of international airspace, difficulties organising travel documents and challenges securing boats to take sailors ashore as reasons for failing to repatriate sailors immediately.
SV Anchan, chief executive of US-based Safesea Group, whose ship Safesea Vishnu was damaged beyond repair by an Iranian strike on March 11 that killed one crew member, said it had “been a difficult task to take [its crew out] by road to Kuwait, to Saudi Arabia then take a flight to various destinations in India”.
Huge increases in freight rates for crude oil tankers have resulted in some owners exerting “considerable pressure” on crews to pass through the strait, said the captain whose ship was stuck in the Gulf.
Iran has in recent days announced it will allow “non-hostile” vessels to pass through the strait, but not US, Israeli or any other “participants in the aggression” against it. Some ships have also sought to quietly transit without appearing to have approval. But overall traffic through the waterway has dropped to a trickle.
Bailey of The Mission to Seafarers recalled “at least two cases” in which crews had contacted the charity asking it to lobby owners to refrain from making them transit the strait. However, within a day, the crews told the charity they were making the trip.
In an email to another aid group that was seen by the FT, a sailor said their ship owner was “forcing us to continue to do cargo operations” in the Gulf and denying their right to repatriation, despite their safety concerns.
Most vessels in the area have ample supplies of food and water, but concerns about provisions were slowly mounting, said Kuba Szymanski, secretary-general of the International Ship Managers’ Association.
“We envisage it would become a serious problem if [the war] continues,” he said.
The IMO, which sets global standards for operations at sea, is in talks to establish a humanitarian corridor that would allow ships running low on essential supplies to be safely evacuated from the region.
Phillip Belcher, marine director at the industry body Intertanko, said there were “real concerns about the safety of navigation” even if such a corridor could be set up. “You can’t have 300 ships going in and out at the same moment,” he said.
