Engine Failure Grounds Bulker In Dardanelles, Closing Strait For Twelve Hours
Traffic through Turkey's Dardanelles Strait resumed after a bulk carrier that suffered an engine failure and ran aground was refloated with tug assistance, Turkish authorities said. The 190-metre, San Marino-flagged Pilatus Marie, sailing from Syria to Russia, went aground on 29 July at the Nara turn in the Çanakkale Strait area. Authorities temporarily suspended vessel traffic in both directions while inspections and salvage operations were carried out, closing one of the busiest chokepoints in the eastern Mediterranean for roughly half a day.
The Directorate General of Coastal Safety said the vessel grounded as a result of a mechanical failure and deployed two tugs, Kurtarma-19 and Kurtarma-16, which reached the ship after it went aground. Divers were sent to inspect the hull and found that the vessel had not suffered significant damage. The transport ministry said two tugboats, a service vessel and coast guard support were involved in the overall response. The ship was refloated after around twelve hours, allowing two-way traffic to restart, and no injuries were reported.
The Pilatus Marie was built in 2011, has a deadweight of 56,632 tonnes and was travelling in ballast at the time of the grounding. That detail matters for the salvage outcome, since a light ship sitting on a soft bottom in a strait with a strong surface current is a far more tractable problem than a loaded bulker aground in the same place. Had the vessel been carrying cargo, the closure would very likely have run considerably longer.
The ship's inspection record has drawn attention. A port state control inspection carried out in Russia in March recorded seven deficiencies, including items related to the vessel's main and auxiliary engines. A separate inspection in Turkey in January 2026 recorded five deficiencies. Neither record establishes a cause for the failure, and further details on what went wrong in the engine room and whether additional inspections will follow were not immediately available.
The Dardanelles connects the Marmara Sea with the Aegean and carries a heavy flow of bulk carriers moving commodities out of Black Sea ports. Closures there propagate quickly, holding vessels at anchor at both ends and pushing back berth windows in ports several days' steaming away. With Black Sea trade already disrupted by attacks on vessels and port infrastructure, the strait's reliability has become a live commercial variable rather than a background assumption.
