Iran War’s forgotten captives: Sailors Trapped in the Gulf

Trapped on a commercial ship anchored 4 miles off Iran’s coast, about two dozen merchant seamen are entering their fourth month of living under the watch of Iranian guards.

Iran seized the vessel, the MSC Francesca, as it tried to pass through the Strait of Hormuz on April 22. Its sailors are from Montenegro, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other countries. All are far from home. They have no idea when they might be released and very little contact with the outside world.

The sailors “have no means of communication except every several days 30 min of internet,” a person familiar with conditions on the Francesca wrote.

The crew members of the Francesca are a subset of a much larger group of sailors in harm’s way in the Middle East. The attacks by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28, followed by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, immediately stranded some 1,500 ships and nearly 20,000 sailors, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Many ships have sailed out of the Gulf, dashing through the strait when conditions have allowed. Roughly 6,000 sailors remain stranded, according to the International Maritime Organization. They live in peril, carrying out maintenance, lookouts, and checks on cargo, with no safe way home. Iran has enforced its claim of control over the strait with attacks on ships, drawing American retaliation. And the conflict has broadened throughout the region.

The pace of passages through the Strait of Hormuz has recently slowed to just over a dozen a day, a fraction of the prewar average of around 130 ships a day.

Civilian seafarers rarely have to work on the front line of armed conflict. But that is what has happened to these sailors in the Middle East, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Since the Iran war began, 17 sailors have been killed in 63 attacks around the Strait of Hormuz. Most of the deaths have been the result of Iranian strikes, but three mariners died after the U.S. Navy struck a ship in June. The rebels in Yemen have targeted vessels in the Red Sea, and last week, two ships caught fire after an explosion at an Egyptian port.

The Francesca sailed into the Persian Gulf on Feb. 22. It is owned by the Geneva-based MSC, the world’s largest container shipping company. Some of the Francesca’s sailors had boarded the ship weeks earlier, according to a list of the crew members reviewed by The New York Times. MSC has not commented on the case and did not respond to requests for comment.

Founded in 1970 by Gianluigi Aponte, an Italian ship captain, MSC today has more than 1,000 container ships that transport goods from one continent to another, sailing on 300 trade routes. Aponte, worth more than $50 billion, according to Bloomberg, transferred ownership of MSC to his son and daughter, Diego and Alexa Aponte, last year.

In 2022, MSC surpassed Danish giant Maersk to become the biggest container shipping company after a pandemic-era boom. Flush with cash, the company expanded its fleet and business lines, buying hospitals and ports and a high-speed rail company in Italy.

Despite being in one of the world’s most volatile regions, the Strait of Hormuz had been a busy, crucial and relatively conflict-free trade route. Every month, thousands of ships passed through the strait, and one-fifth of the world’s oil supply depended on it. That has changed drastically. Attacks by Iran have prompted ship operators to avoid the strait.

Representatives for mariners have said the ship operators should not attempt passage until it is clearly safe to do so.

“Trade is important, but we shouldn’t be risking the lives of innocent people,” Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, said in an interview.

The Francesca sails under the maritime flag of Panama, which has led negotiations to free the vessel and its crew, in accordance with maritime convention.

“There has been some improvement in the situation,” Ginette Testa, Panama’s ambassador to the International Maritime Organization, said July 21. She said she could not comment further or give any details that could compromise ongoing negotiation efforts.

Two sailors, both Croatians, have been released from the Francesca, according to Croatia’s foreign affairs ministry. A government spokesperson said he could not comment further because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The seafarers on board the Francesca were treated well and had sufficient access to food, said Romano Peric, a coordinator for the Croatian seafarers union, who was in regular touch with the families of the two Croatians before their release. At first, they had fairly regular access to their phones, but use was later restricted, he said.

In Switzerland, where MSC is based, “diplomatic channels are being used” to secure the release of the Francesca, a Swiss government spokesperson, Pierre-Alain Eltschinger, said last week, declining to elaborate.

On the same day Iran seized the Francesca, it took another container ship, the Epaminondas, which is being held in waters near the Francesca, according to satellite data from Tanker Trackers. The Epaminondas is part of MSC’s fleet under a leasing agreement, and sails under the Liberian maritime flag.

Several sailors from the Epaminondas have been released, according to the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers. The Filipino sailors underwent medical and psychological assessments “after their difficult experience,” the department said in a statement.

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“The seafarers feel absolutely abandoned, absolutely unprotected,” Mohamed Arrachedi, the coordinator of the International Transport Workers’ Federation for the Arab world and Iran, said of the sailors stranded in the Gulf. He added that their finances, sleep and mental health have been affected by the ordeal.

Some of the sailors stuck in the Gulf, with limited food availability, say they eat just rice and lentils once a day, Arrachedi said. One sailor said he was sleeping in his clothes so he could evacuate easily if his vessel were hit.

Crew members can request to be taken off their ships and transported to nearby ports to fly home. But such evacuations are rare partly because they require the cooperation of immigration authorities in nearby countries, said Helen Sampson, a professor emeritus at Cardiff University who has studied the work conditions of mariners.

Many crew members are on short-term contracts and may be reluctant to refuse a dangerous voyage for fear of being blacklisted by employers, Sampson said.

“They know that if they seem to cause any sort of trouble on board at all, they won’t get another contract,” she said. “So for a seafarer to object or demand repatriation while they’re on a ship, that’s pretty much going to be the end of their career at sea.”

Before the two MSC ships were seized in April, nearly 30 vessels had already been attacked, including, just days earlier, a container ship owned by MSC’s French rival, CMA CGM.

The fates of Francesca and Epaminondas remain unclear.

Natasha Brown, a spokesperson for the International Maritime Organization, said Monday that the Francesca and the Epaminondas remained in Iranian waters with seafarers on board. “Discussions are ongoing among relevant parties for their release but are complicated by the wider geopolitical conflict,” she said.

After the ships were seized in April, the navy of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said that two vessels had traveled “without the necessary permits,” according to a statement shared by a semiofficial Iranian news agency. The statement said the ships had been directed toward Iran’s coast. According to the maritime firm Tanker Trackers, the ships remain in Iranian waters.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.