Bangkok
—
It was exactly what he feared, and yet the attack happened without any warning.
“I just heard a loud bang,” Sammut said. Samut was one of 23 crew members on board the Thai cargo ship Mayuri Naree, which entered the Strait of Hormuz just a week ago despite the risk of an Iranian attack.
“There were two loud bangs, back to back, maybe two seconds apart,” he told CNN, speaking under a pseudonym due to safety concerns.
Alarms sounded and smoke filled every hallway. The entire ship was momentarily plunged into darkness before the emergency power systems activated.
Thai sailor talks about Iranian attack in Strait of Hormuz
“Once you got hit, you didn’t know where the bullets were coming from, you didn’t know who was firing, you didn’t know if there was a warship there. So no one wanted to go out. Everyone just ran straight to the bridge.”
When they arrived, the captain took a head count, “and three people were missing,” he said.
All three men were in the engine room, where the fire was raging.
Among the missing was Chawarit Chaiwong, 35, from Tak province in western Thailand, who had been working at sea for more than 10 years.
Chawalit, like Samut, had concerns about crossing the strait, his wife Suchawadee Malikao told CNN.
Since the United States and Israel began their war against Iran on February 28, Tehran has claimed control of the vital waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, and has threatened to attack US-friendly ships passing through it. Several people had already been affected.
As a result, the 180-meter-long bulk carrier Mayuri Nary remained stuck in the Persian Gulf, anchored near the United Arab Emirates, as war raged around the world. Citing a phone conversation with Chawalit, whom he married five years ago, Suchawadi said he heard rockets flying back and forth over the crew’s heads.
“But the fact is, he couldn’t really see where they were coming from or who was firing at them.”
In the days leading up to the attack, Chawalit said he saw drones roaming around the ship.
“He just said it looked like the drone was spying on the ship, but nothing actually happened,” Suchawady told CNN.
On March 10, the ship’s owner, Precious Shipping, decided to transit the strait to complete the voyage to Kandla, a port city in western India. So it was decided to load rice onto an empty ship.
Even in peacetime, navigating the strait’s narrow straits requires a high degree of skill, but this voyage will put a captain’s skills to a particularly severe test.
Precious Shipping instructed the ship’s captain to leave the anchorage around midnight, according to a person with direct knowledge of the trip plans. He was to drive at normal speed, turn off all unnecessary lights and prominently display the Thai flag. It also instructed the captain to report to the relevant authorities throughout the voyage and to check in every 30 minutes via WhatsApp.
They were scheduled to cross the Strait of Hormuz around 7 a.m.
Precious Shipping said in a statement that it “consulted with professional maritime safety advisors, insurance companies and other stakeholders and conducted a comprehensive assessment of the situation” before setting sail.
“Based on the information available at the time and maritime safety advisories, the vessel was assessed as being suitable to undertake the transit with appropriate precautions in place,” the ministry said.
However, some sailors were afraid to travel.
“I’m not completely sure, but I think they asked us to leave because it would be costly for the ship to stay there all day long,” Samut said.
“They kept saying they wanted to get the ship out of the combat zone as quickly as possible, but the reality is that they had to go through the most dangerous places to get out.”
The company’s managing director, Khalid Hashim, said in an email to CNN that because the ship was on a time charter, “we were able to wait at no additional cost.”
He added that “we were in no hurry to evacuate the ship,” but said given the ship’s position, “it could have been hit by a projectile that was being launched regularly.”
The company gave all crew members a signed waiver. In a document obtained by CNN, all 23 members acknowledged the “heightened security risks” posed by the region’s civil war and said they understood the leaders’ decision to pass the bill.
“They did call a meeting,” Sammut said, noting the crew had little choice.
“Basically, it was either you stayed on the ship or you didn’t.”
Suchawadee said her husband “didn’t want to go at all, but said he was the only one who felt that way.”
“He didn’t want to stay in the hotel alone, so he decided that if the rest of the team was going, he’d go with him.”
Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Pipat Ratchakitprakarn said the ship collided with its stern while passing through the strait, causing a fire in the engine room.
On the captain’s orders, the crew abandoned ship and took refuge in lifeboats. They were rescued by the Omani Navy and taken to the city of Khasab, just across the strait, the Ministry of Transport said.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it opened fire on the Mayuri Nary because it “ignored warnings and persistently attempted to illegally cross the Strait of Hormuz,” according to the state-run Fars news agency.
The Iranian military added that a Liberian-flagged ship was also attacked by Iranian projectiles that morning.
Since the start of the war, more than 20 oil tankers, cargo ships and other vessels have reported incidents in and around the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, according to the UK Maritime and Trade Services Authority.
The 20 rescued crew members of the Mayuri Naree were flown back to Thailand on Monday. A Thai consular official told Reuters that all the returned crew members were in good health and “ready to return to duty.”
However, their loved ones are still missing, and the painful wait continues.
In a telephone conversation on Sunday, Bangkok’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phunketkeo asked Iran to cooperate in search and rescue operations.
However, there is no word on what happened to the ship, and its tracking device last contacted the ship shortly after the attack.
“The ship is adrift because it has no power,” Managing Director Hashim said. “The explosion that rocked her occurred at the aft end of the ship, directly below the engine room, so there was no power on board.”
This means the automatic identification system that normally sounds to alert people to the ship’s location is not working.
“I miss him every day,” Suchawady said. “Every day I’m just waiting and wondering when I’ll see him again. I just want to know how he’s doing. It’s been seven or eight days and I can’t stop thinking. Is he hurt? Has he eaten anything? I’m so worried.”
She calls the Ministry of Foreign Affairs every day, but “all they say is, ‘We don’t have any information at this time.'” To be honest, I have to hear the same sentence every day. ”
