State-owned Indonesian box and bulker player Djakarta Lloyd’s decision to scrap its 1,644-teu containership Sam Ratulangi PB 1600 (built 2001) came to light in a spectacular fashion last Thursday.
The crewless ship mysteriously drifted onto a beach near the township of Thongwa in Myanmar.
With the circumstances of its arrival unknown, popular media around the world went into a frenzy over the weekend labeling it as a ghost ship and likening it to a modern-day Marie Celeste.
The mystery was soon solved, although the answer was hardly the stuff that legends are made of.
It turned out that the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600 was being towed to Bangladesh for recycling, and drifted onto the Myanmese coast after the tug’s towline broke. It remains unclear what tug was towing the derelict boxship, and why the tow could not be reconnected.
According to the Myanmar Times newspaper, local authorities including the coast guard and navy had first observed the ship drifting close to the shore on Tuesday, but only boarded after it beached on Thursday afternoon.
Sources close to Djakarta Lloyd told TradeWinds on Monday that the Sam Ratulangi PB 1600 had been handed over earlier in August to Bangladeshi ship-recycling interests, who were responsible for towing the ship to Chittagong.
The ship spent had several years laid up off the Indonesian island of Batam.
