Graphic: Fleetmon.com
The owners of the product tanker Arsenal lost contact with the ship while she was underway in the South China Sea near the Anambas Archipelago, Indonesia. Fearing that the ship might have been hijacked by pirates, they contacted the Indonesian Navy, which began a search for the missing tanker. (Not long afterwards, the Arsenal re-established contact after apparently suffering a failure in its communication equipment.)
The Indonesia navy did find a tanker, however. At roughly 03 49 15 N, 106 33 20 E, they came upon the Indonesia-flagged product tanker Galuh Pusaka, drifting with engine and navigational lights off, without crew or cargo, but with fresh provisions in the galley. The ship was towed to the Indonesian naval base at Tarempa. The suspicion is that the tanker was used by pirates to siphon and transport stolen oil from hijacked ships. It may have been used by the pirates for some time, as the last AIS signal received from the tanker dates back to Sept 24, 2010. Lt. Col. Agung Jaya Saktika, Tarempa Maritime Authorities, said the tanker had significant damage and a lot of the communication and navigational equipment was missing. The Galuh Pusaka, IMO 7511060, is a product tanker of 2500 DWT, built in 1975, flying the Indonesia flag. The manager of record is Waruna Nusa Sentana, Sumatra.
Modern Mary Celeste – the mystery of tanker Galuh Pusaka, South China sea
Well so much for all the Rules and Regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) with its numbers painted on ships and a supposed commonality of operation of ships and training of crews. Seafarers know just how well all that is actually carried out and how useless the IMO really is. The developed nations vessels are detained and harassed about every little thing while the other nations such as Indonesia are allowed to behave in any manner they see fit. With aircraft operations it seems to be similar as we have seen from Malaysia. What a phony world we live in today!!
Good Watch.
Hopefully, the Captain, and Crew are safe:
If anyone mentions the word “ghost” to the Captain he’s going to twist their head around so that when they’re walking north they’ll be looking south.