A Seafaring Incident Featured in Time Magazine

In August 1983, while serving as Chief Engineer on the M/V Ever Humanity, I disembarked in Osaka, Japan, to join the crew of the M/V Ever Oasis. During a routine drydock repair at the Hakodate Shipyard, Captain Hsieh-Te Li —an alumnus of the Wu Song Merchant Marine Academy—handed me a copy of Time magazine. He pointed out that the report on page 11 detailed how the Ever Oasis had rescued a freighter, the Cloud, off the coast of Ghana in West Africa.

According to the rescued vessel's captain, a fire in the engine room forced the entire crew and their captain to abandon ship, boarding lifeboats. The Ever Oasis, en route from South Africa to Germany, happened to pass by. The British captain and his 11 crew members (2 British and 9 Ghanaian) were rescued and safely landed at Dakar, Senegal.

The author took a photo with M/V Ever Oasis

With calm seas prevailing, Captain Li directed Chief Officer Ma-li Chen and the crew to bring the Cloud's survivors aboard. Although the Cloud lay adjacent to the Ever Oasis with its captain having declared "abandon ship," and despite the vessel appearing intact after the fire had seemingly been extinguished, a telephone inquiry to the Taipei headquarters confirmed that human life took precedence over salvaging an abandoned ship. The course was promptly corrected to resume the scheduled voyage to the discharge port.

The decision sparked murmurs of regret among the crew, who lamented the missed opportunity for a lucrative salvage. I relay these details as recounted by Captain Li, an account that left Chief Officer Chen indelibly impressed.

In subsequent years, I have testified in several legal cases concerning insurance and P&I disputes over vessel and cargo losses. Experts have clarified that a captain's declaration of "abandon ship" is intended solely to protect the crew's safety by temporarily relinquishing command—the vessel and cargo remain the property of their respective owners, and any salvage reward is strictly for the rescue efforts.

Through my years at sea, I have come to understand the true meaning of "abandon ship"—a lesson we should all remember.

Postscript
Following the successful rescue, Captain Li was honored as that year's Model Seafarer by Chinese maritime authorities. Yet he later admitted his regret over not inspecting a heavy briefcase carried by the British captain—a case that might have contained firearms. This oversight, though within the rescued captain’s rights for self-preservation, serves as an important cautionary note for others facing similar emergencies. After drifting for 62 days, the Cloud was eventually carried from West Africa to the mid-Atlantic and, in a final twist of fate, was towed into port by the Venezuelan cargo vessel Maracaibo, marking a dramatic end for this arms-laden freighter.

Strange Cargo A curious Trove of Soviet Arms
Source: Time July 4 1983 p-11

Halfway through a routine nine-day crossing of the Atlantic, below a scalding sun on a lazy late afternoon, a deck hand aboard the Venezuelan cargo ship Maracaibo suddenly spotted a ship drifting aimlessly in the hazy distance. Captain Humberto Leon Dorante steamed toward the mysterious vessel and tried to establish radio contact with it.

The Cloud at rest: “A floating bomb” With no flag, no crew, but 5,000 boxes of shell

When he received no response, he slowly circled the ship three times to look for signs of life or danger. Than he dispatched an armed three-man expedition to board it. Shortly thereafter. Leon radioed Venezuelan navigation headquarters with his finding: ”We have found the steamship Cloud, without flag, without crew. It cargo: Weapon. We wait for instruction.”

Several Maracaibo crewmembers who board the 2383 tons, Cyprus registered Cloud concluded that it had been abandoned in haste, as if the difference between life and death lay in a few second. Shoes, apparently thrown off as the crew jumped into lifeboat, littered the deck. In the mess, food that had been left during an evening meal was rotting on the tables.

The ship's radio was still tuned to the emergency band. Moving deeper into the engine room, the explorers from the Maracaibo got their first clue as to way the Cloud had been abandoned. A short circuit had started a fire and caused serious damage to the electrical and fire prevention systems. But the fire, which eventually burned out, had caused only limited damage. There are to be another reason for the crew’s panic.

The key to the mystery lay above the engine room in the Cloud's cargo hold, where 5000 wooden boxes labeled TNT were store. Each box contained two 122-mm shells, a caliber used exclusively in Soviet-manufactured field guns and howitzers.

The Venezuelans determined that the crew had probably thought it could not control the fire and that the ammunition was about to blow the ship to piece. Said captain Leon: “They were on a floating bomb”.

The Cloud founded, without flag, without crew. It cargo: Weapon

As the Maracaibo began to tow the Cloud to Turiamo Naval Base, nine Venezuelan infant, or marines, parachuted onto the deck of the mystery ship. They learned from the engine room log that the Cloud had pick up its hot cargo in Yugoslavia in March. The last stop, Probably only a few hours before the fire, had been Las Palmas in the Canary Island, 155 miles of the northwest coast of Africa.

Venezuelan Defense Ministry officials believe that the Cloud's three British and nine Ghanaian sailors were picked up by Panamanian liners (Ever Oasis) and taken to Senegal.

The Cloud then drifted for 62 days, during which it traveled some 1800 miles before crossing paths with the Maracaibo.

According to the Cloud's documents the ship was a perfectly legal mission, heading for Nigeria to unload its cargo. Although the Venezuelans initially thought the weapons could have been destined for Cuba or Nicaragua, the Nigeria embassy in Caracas and the ship's Greek owners confirmed the destination. That did not answer the question of why for 62 days, no one bothered to search for the Cloud or claim its explosive cargo.