Okay so first a grumble about the fact that NZ news media never seem to pick up the big international news stories… at least not for a few days anyway.
Has anyone seen the news that there is a missing Russian Ship in the Atlantic? Yes a cargo ship has vanished into nowhere. And now there is about 5 Russian warships hunting for it. And no this is not the plot from The Hunt for Red October this is reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Arctic_Sea
The MV Arctic Sea is a timber-carrying cargo ship that disappeared between late July and early August 2009. It is owned by the Malta-based company Arctic Sea Ltd. and is operated by Solchart Management AB of Helsinki, Finland. On July 24, 2009, it was allegedly boarded by a group of men wearing police uniforms off the coast of Sweden, between the islands of Öland and Gotland. They left after about twelve hours, having searched the ship, removed some items and assaulted a few crew members. The incident was not immediately reported, and the ship continued to sail towards its destination in Algeria. However all contact with the ship was lost between July 30 and 31, and it never arrived in Algeria. On August 14 the ship was reportedly located near Cape Verde, but remains missing. Finnish Police stated on August 15 that a ransom, amounting to a “considerable amount”, has been demanded, but did not specify who is being extorted – the ship’s owner claims they have not received any ransom demand.
Okay now you have the back story, I have a question, and so does The Telegraph (UK) Newspaper:
How on earth has the ‘Arctic Sea’ vanished?
In the age of satellite technology, the disappearance of a 4,000-ton cargo ship raises more questions than it answers, reports Andrew Alderson
IT is nearly 100 metres long, more than 17 metres wide and weighs almost 4,000 tonnes. Yet, even in a hi-tech world of satellites and Google Earth, the Arctic Sea has vanished without trace in busy European shipping lanes.
A possible sighting of the Turkish-built “ghost ship” off the Cape Verde Islands was dismissed, meaning the disappearance of the cargo vessel has, in the words of one insurance expert, left “far more questions than answers”.
A huge international search is under way this weekend for the vessel, which vanished more than two weeks ago amid fears that pirates, similar to those now operating off Somalia, had seized the 15 Russian crew and its timber cargo valued at £1.3 million. Finnish police said they had received a ransom demand for a “large sum” of cash, but declined to give further details or say whether the demand was authentic.
Okay so story sounds okay so far, a little odd but okay.
The Arctic Sea set sail from Finland on July 23 and had been due to arrive in northern Algieria on August 3 or 4. However, there were unconfirmed reports that it had been boarded in Swedish waters by armed and masked men on July 24, although this was not said to have been notified to the authorities for several days.
So you get boarded but tell no one for a few days… odd.
The crew are known to have made contact with Dover coastguards on July 28, but at this point there had been no international alert over the “attack” and so there was no hunt for the ship. Two days later, the Arctic Sea was spotted in the Bay of Biscay and at 1.30am on the same day its AISLive gave off its last signal in the same area.
And then just continue as per normal…
However, shortly afterwards, the ship appears to have changed direction, apparently bearing towards the western Atlantic rather than Algiers.
And then vanish…
Solchart, the operator of the merchant vessel which flies under a Maltese flag and is based in Valetta, has blamed piracy for the ship’s disappearance. “My view is that it is most likely that the vessel has been hijacked,” said Viktor Matveyev, the director of the Finnish company.
Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of Russia’s Sovfracht maritime bulletin, has suggested that the ship might have been hijacked because it was carrying a “secret shipment”, such as drugs or arms, unknown to its crew or owners. “The only sensible answer is that the vessel was loaded with a secret cargo apart from timber,” he said.
Now that is starting to sound a little more believable given the circumstances.
Nato has reported that armed gangs have already seized 29 merchant ships this year and carried out 114 attacks – more than in the whole of last year.
However, Mr Davis, the British maritime security expert, thinks piracy on the high seas is unlikely. “I suspect this is either some sort of ‘inside job’ involving the crew, or it’s some sort of insurance or commercial dispute.”
So is it piracy or is it not piracy?
Mr Davis believes that the ship will be traced within days, and thinks its most likely destination is west Africa. “The vessel had just under 300 tonnes of fuel and it burns 13 tonnes of fuel a day. So it had sufficient for 40 days steaming. It would probably have had 30 to 60 days of food on board.”
He expects the ship to turn up, possibly as far south as Cameroon, in the next “48 to 100 hours” and that it will then be boarded by a foreign navy or police force. “The odds are it will have headed for somewhere like Sierra Leone,” Mr Davis said.
He speculated that it would be difficult for the vessel to be retrieved from such a remote, lawless area, where it might be kept until the financial, or other, demands of those controlling the ship were met.
Well if that is the case then my bet is it is piracy.
The ease with which large ships can travel around the world undetected has raised fears that al-Qaeda, or another terrorist group, could use a vessel packed with high explosives to mount a terrorist attack on a Western country, such as Britain or the US.
Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, is said to have “the situation under control,” according to his spokesman. He has ordered Anatoly Serdyukov, the Defence Minister, to take “all necessary steps” to find the ship and, if necessary, to free its crew.
All necessary steps? Makes it sound like it isn’t piracy but something much more sinister.
According to a state-run Russian news agency, the ship’s owners have not filed a claim with its insurer, Ingosstrakh. Vladimir Kleimenov, a spokesman for the insurers, said of the ship’s disappearance: “There are far more questions than answers.”
Odd.
On Friday, French officials were responsible for reports that the ship had been seen about 520 miles off the Cape Verde islands, a former Portuguese colony off Africa’s westernmost coast. However, Russian sources were dismissive of those reports yesterday.
Double odd. They don’t know where it is but are claiming that it has not been sighted? Weird.
To add to the puzzle, the Arctic Sea’s tracking system was reported to be broadcasting signals from the Bay of Biscay off France yesterday, according to the Russian maritime website, Sovfrakht. It said the signal appeared on a tracking service at about 8.30 am but added that it was not known if the AISLive equipment was still actually on the ship.
The Royal Navy has said that it has not been asked to get involved in the search. Source say its rules of engagement for international waters mean it could act only if there was evidence that the ship was about to be hijacked, or pirates were endangering lives on board.
But before it was being said it was pirates.
One senior shipping source said: “There is obviously lots of speculation. The fact that a ship is late is in itself not a huge story, but added to the fact that the vessel was ‘attacked’, and yet at the same time the owners are saying ‘don’t worry, it is sorted’, it is very odd. It is an old fashioned mystery.”
Conspiracy one thinks… I think there is a lot more to this then meets the eye. And I doubt it was just timber on board.
I will leave the final quote with Wikipedia:
The Jakobstad fire department conducted radiation measurements on August 14 at the departure pier of the ship, but the investigation was stopped by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, stating that there was no reason to conduct measurements.
