Bulker Ocean Winner Sinks in Eight Minutes off India, 22 Crew Missing
An iron ore cargo and a sudden list point the investigation toward liquefaction
A search is continuing in the Bay of Bengal for 22 crew members of the bulk carrier Ocean Winner, which took a sudden list and sank in about eight minutes on Friday evening some 230 nautical miles off Paradip on India's Odisha coast.
The Panama-flagged Ocean Winner, IMO 9145530, was a 70,000 dwt bulker built in 1998. She loaded iron ore at Paradip and sailed on 20 August for Singapore with 24 crew aboard: 20 Chinese nationals, three from Myanmar and one from Bangladesh. Her AIS signal stopped in the middle of the Bay of Bengal at 1645 GMT on 21 August, and a distress alert was transmitted at about the same time.
Two survivors reached liferafts and were spotted by an Indian Navy patrol aircraft. They were picked up on Saturday evening by the commercial vessel Aisopos, which recovered them from separate rafts. Their account is so far the only first-hand description of the casualty: the ship developed a list on Friday evening and went under within roughly eight minutes. The crew abandoned ship, but 22 remain unaccounted for.
The Indian Coast Guard and the Indian Navy are running a joint search, with three ships taking part and merchant traffic in the area asked to assist. The search box sits well offshore, several hundred nautical miles from the nearest Indian port, which lengthens both the transit time for rescue units and the exposure of anyone still in the water.
No cause has been established. The combination of an early list, an eight-minute sinking and a cargo of iron ore is consistent with liquefaction, the failure mode in which a nominally solid bulk cargo starts to behave like a fluid.
Iron ore fines carry moisture, and above a certain moisture content the cargo can shift to one side as the ship rolls. The result is a list accompanied by a free surface effect that erodes stability, and each subsequent roll can worsen it until the ship capsizes, frequently too quickly for the crew to launch boats. Cargoes of this class are carried under moisture limits set to keep them below the point at which they can flow.
Liquefaction is the deadliest cargo-related hazard in shipping. Nickel ore is the worst offender, but iron ore fines sit in the same high-risk group: between 2007 and 2019, 29 seafarers were killed in casualties involving iron ore cargoes.
Search operations continued through the weekend, with the two rescued crew the only people so far accounted for.
