Bangkok
—
It was exactly what he had feared, but the strike still came without warning.
“I just heard the loud bang,” said Samut, who was among 23 crew members aboard the Mayuree Naree, a Thai cargo ship that had sailed into the Strait of Hormuz just over a week ago, despite the risk of Iranian strikes.
“There were two loud bangs, back to back, maybe two seconds apart,” he told CNN, speaking under a pseudonym for fears about his security.
Alarms blared and smoke filled every corridor. The whole ship plunged briefly into darkness, before the emergency power system kicked in.
“Once we were hit, we had no idea where the shots were coming from, who was firing, or if there was a warship out there, so nobody dared to step outside. Everyone just ran straight to the bridge.”
When they got there, he said, the captain did a headcount: “And three people were missing.”
All three had been in the engine room, where the fire was blazing.
Among those unaccounted for was Chawarit Chaiwong, 35, from the western Thai province of Tak, who has worked at sea for more than 10 years.
Like Samut, Chawarit had had misgivings about traversing the strait, his wife Suchawadee Malikaeo told CNN.
Since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28, Tehran had asserted its control of the critical waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, by threatening to strike any ships from US-friendly nations that passed through. Several had already been hit.
That left the Mayuree Naree, a 180-meter-long bulk carrier, trapped in the Persian Gulf, at anchor near the United Arab Emirates as war raged all around. The crew could hear rockets going back and forth over their heads, Suchawadee said, citing phone conversations with Chawarit, who she married five years ago.
“But the thing is, he couldn’t actually see where they were coming from or who was firing them.”
In the days leading up to the attack, Chawarit told her he saw a drone loitering around the vessel.
“He just said it looked like a drone was scouting the ship, but nothing really came of it,” Suchawadee told CNN.
On March 10, the vessel’s owners Precious Shipping resolved to pass the strait, to complete the ship’s voyage to Kandla, a port city in western India. There, the empty ship was to load up on rice.
Even in peacetime, great skill is required to navigate the strait’s narrow channel, but this journey would provide an especially tough test of the captain’s skills.
According to a source with direct knowledge of the journey planning, Precious Shipping instructed the captain to leave anchorage some time around midnight. He was to travel at a normal speed, with any unnecessary lights switched off, and display the Thai flag prominently. It also instructed the captain to check in every 30 minutes by WhatsApp, as well as reporting to the relevant authorities throughout the voyage.
They were to pass the Strait of Hormuz at around 7 a.m.
Precious Shipping said in a statement that, before departure, it “conducted a comprehensive assessment of the situation in consultation with professional maritime security advisers, its insurers and other relevant stakeholders.”
“Based on the information and maritime security advisories available at that time, the vessel was assessed as suitable to undertake the transit with appropriate precautionary measures in place,” it said.
But some of the sailors were afraid to make the journey.
“I’m not entirely sure, but I think they pushed us to leave because if the ship just sits there at anchor, it’s racking up costs all day long,” said Samut.
“They kept saying they wanted to get the ship out of the war zone as fast as possible – but the thing is, to get out, we had to sail right through the most dangerous spot.”
In an email to CNN, the company’s managing director, Khalid Hashim, said that as the ship was on a time-period charter, “we could have waited at no additional cost to us.”
“We were in no hurry to get the ship out,” he added, though noting that, given the ship’s position, “she could have been hit by projectiles that were being fired on a regular basis.”
The company gave all the sailors a waiver to sign. In the document, seen by CNN, all 23 acknowledged the “heightened security risks” associated with the regional war, and said they understood the bosses’ decision to make the passage.
“They did call a meeting,” said Samut, noting the crew had few options.
“It was basically: you either stay with the ship or you don’t.”
Suchawadee said her husband “didn’t want to go at all, but he told me he was the only one who felt that way.”
“He didn’t want to stay at the hotel by himself, so he decided that if the rest of the team was going, he’d go along with them.”
As the ship was passing through the strait, its stern was hit, causing a fire in the engine room, according to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Pipat Ratchakitprakarn.
On the captain’s orders, the crew abandoned ship and evacuated to lifeboats. They were rescued by the Omani Navy and taken to the city of Khasab, which sits right on the strait, according to the transport ministry.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the Mayuree Naree was fired upon after “disregarding warnings and insistently attempting to illegally pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” according to the state-affiliated news agency Fars.
A Liberian-flagged vessel was also struck by Iranian projectiles the same morning, Iran’s armed forces added.
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 since the war began, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations.
The Mayuree Naree’s 20 rescued crew members returned to Thailand by plane on Monday. All returning crew are in good health and “ready to return to their duties again,” an official from Thailand’s department of consular affairs told the Reuters news agency.
But for the loved ones of the three still missing, an agonizing wait continues.
In a phone call Sunday, Bangkok’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow asked his Iranian counterpart for help in the search and rescue operation.
But there has been no word on what happened to the ship, whose tracker last pinged shortly after the attack.
“The ship is drifting as it has no power,” said Hashim, the managing director. “The explosions that rocked her were at the aft end of the ship, right below the engine room, hence no power onboard.”
That means the automatic identification system, which normally pings to let people know the ship’s location, isn’t working.
“I miss him every single day,” Suchawadee said. “Every day, I’m just waiting and wondering when I’ll get to see him again. I just want to know how he is. It’s been seven or eight days now, and I can’t stop thinking – is he hurt? Has he had anything to eat? I’m just so worried.”
She calls the foreign office every day, “and they’d just say, ‘We don’t have any information at this time.’ Honestly, I have to listen to that same sentence every single day.”