HONG KONG – He and his companions sit down on the deck at night, sometimes watching rockets fly overhead.
What should have been a smooth maiden voyage to transport oil across the Persian Gulf has turned into a nightmare for a 28-year-old Indian sailor, who has spent the past month stuck as his vessel sits idle due to the Iran war.
“We don’t sleep at night, we stay awake because you don’t know what might happen,” said the sailor, who asked not to be named because he was afraid of retaliation by the authorities and his employer.
The sailor, who had been at sea since November, was speaking to NBC News from Iraqi waters minutes after the air strike on Tuesday afternoon, which he said landed a few kilometers away in Iran.
“The ship is still moving,” he said in an interview in Hindi.
He and three other crew members on a small oil tanker are among 20,000 sailors stranded on hundreds of ships in the Persian Gulf, according to the UN maritime agency, after Iran successfully closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to US-Israeli strikes.
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The blockade of a key shipping lane, which has sent electricity prices soaring around the world, has also shut down the vast numbers of invisible workers who keep the world’s maritime trade afloat, increasing their time away from their families and putting their lives at risk. At least seven sailors have been killed and many others seriously injured in what the UN says is an Iranian attack on commercial vessels.
“The world relies on these people to keep trading under impossible conditions,” said Angad Banga, chief executive of the Caravel Group, a Hong Kong-based shipping conglomerate that owns more than 600 ships, including some stranded in the Gulf.
It has been a difficult few years for the world’s nearly 2 million seafarers, most of whom come from the Philippines, India and other Asian countries. During the Covid crisis they were stuck on their ships for a long time, unable to take shore breaks due to the restrictions imposed by many countries.
Their careers and mental health were further disrupted when Houthi rebels in Yemen began attacking ships in the Red Sea, killing at least nine sailors and 11 others being detained for five months.
“When problems disappear from the headlines, the world forgets they exist, and that cycle must be broken,” Banga added.
The International Maritime Organization, the UN’s maritime agency, has confirmed 18 incidents of damage to commercial vessels from March 1 to 19 in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In another incident on March 11, there was an explosion on a Thai-flagged ship after it was hit by explosives and 20 crew members had to be rescued, three of whom were still missing on Friday as Iranian state media reported that the ship ran aground on Qeshm Island in Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the ship ignored “warnings”.
Even if their ships aren’t hit directly, out-of-date sailors can watch in horror as Iran trades with the United States and Israel.
In Tuesday’s incident, a sailor said he heard missiles firing for about half an hour and counted more than a dozen explosions.
“I started in the engine room so I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “When I got to the stage, I saw the rest of my crew watching the rockets fly, which would be followed by an explosion in the distance.”
“I could see when they hit the ground, I saw smoke rising and I could feel the impact on the ship,” he added.
That same day, Banga’s firm showed NBC News how dire the situation had become.
Inside the Caravel Group’s headquarters in a Hong Kong office tower, in a room known as “the Bridge,” hundreds of white dots appear on eight screens that make up a large nautical world map, each representing a ship under the group’s management.
The difference is stark: Although 130 ships used to pass through the Strait of Hormuz every day, some of them caravels, almost none can now. Several ships waiting to pass were visible on the screen.
As the stranded seafarers try to control themselves, Banga said his company has been regularly checking on the crew members, who are trying to maintain a certain routine that combines entertainment and the work of taking care of their ships.
“They exercise, watch movies, some play basketball on the deck, they sit there,” he said.
“When the process breaks down that’s when people start to disperse,” he added. “The sun is setting, that’s when the fear comes because most attacks happen in the dark.”
On Tuesday, the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic said in a post on X that only nine ships had passed through the channel since yesterday, apparently with Iranian support.
One of them was a Chinese-owned ship that managed to cross the waterway on Monday.
A video shot by one of the boat’s sailors, shared on Chinese social media site Douyin and posted by NBC News, shows the ship passing through a narrow section off the coast of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran.
The sailor panned the camera around the ship, showing the small speed boats in the distance that were escorting his ship and at least three other tanks in a visible chain.
“We can see huge tankers. I’m not sure why they decided to stop here,” a videographer is heard saying in Mandarin in one video, pointing to Iran’s coast and other skyscrapers visible in the distance.
“I can no longer shoot videos outside. It is dangerous. Let’s hide in the bathroom immediately,” he said.
NBC News has reached out to the ship’s captain for comment.
Iran said this week that “non-hostile ships” would be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in cooperation with Iranian authorities.
“As we have repeatedly emphasized, the Strait of Hormuz remains open, and the passage of ships has not been stopped,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry wrote in a letter to the United Nations seen by NBC News. “The patrol continues, depending on compliance with the necessary measures mentioned above and the facts arising from the ongoing conflict.”
The letter defines “non-hostile vessels” as those that “do not participate in or support acts of aggression against Iran.” It did not say which countries were eligible, although it did say that the ships of “aggressor groups,” namely the US and Israel, were not.
A sailor stuck in Iraqi waters hopes his ship will be able to sail soon.
“My family is scared,” he said. “We have packed all our bags and are ready when someone calls us.”
