Never before have so many sailors been abandoned at sea
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The crew of the Grand Sunny cargo ship has been stuck at sea for a year, unpaid and often hungry, after the vessel’s mysterious owner stopped paying the bills. The fate of the 11 men on board the Grand Sunny off the coast of China is increasingly common in the global shipping industry.
The vessel appears to have been involved in sanctions-dodging trade, transporting oil products in the South China Sea, according to Hong Kong maritime officials. The Grand Sunny is part of an armada of hundreds of ships that form what the industry refers to as the “shadow fleet." They are old and poorly serviced vessels used to skirt sanctions on Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil and other cargoes. The vessels are often managed or owned through complex structures, according to a recent advisory by the U.S.
Treasury Department, making it difficult for regulators and enforcement authorities to determine who controls them. Some seek to avoid detection by turning off transponders that broadcast locations, switching flags and operating without insurance from established Western underwriters. Crew members of abandoned ships are effectively marooned aboard their vessels because port authorities require them to stay with the ship to ensure the vessels are safe.
The sailors, often from developing countries, also are loath to depart without being paid. This means months or even years stuck aboard a vessel thousands of miles away from home until someone picks up the tab for the ship’s maintenance expenses and the sailors’ salaries. As of mid-November, a record 282 ships carrying more than 4,000 seamen had been abandoned by their owners this year, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, or
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