Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Abandoned ship


I wrote earlier that an abandoned ship washed up on shore of Liberia and got no official reaction for 2 days: This at a time of nominally heightened security.

Updates to the story involved arresting looters and discovering that the control room had burned--at some point. (The area is heavily Muslim, btw.)

But all is well--we hope. One of the putative owners showed up, saying he'd bought the oil tanker (transporting groundnut oil) on the installment plan, and that after it started leaking in the engine room the crew got off using one of the lifeboats and were picked up by a fishing trawler. The Nigerian tanker is registered in Panama, ironically. (Instead of Liberia)

Nice to know it probably wasn't pirates. Or arms smugglers.

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