Indian Dhow Sunk In Red Sea With Fourteen Crew Rescued
A mechanised sailing vessel registered in India was sunk in the Red Sea off Yemen after being attacked, with all fourteen people aboard rescued by the Yemeni coast guard and landed at Mokha. The Faize Noore Oliya went down on 4 August following what Yemeni authorities described as an attack involving a projectile and an explosive-laden boat. The crew comprised thirteen Indian nationals and one Yemeni.
Yemen's internationally recognised transport ministry attributed the attack to the Houthis. India's foreign ministry condemned what it called an unprovoked attack on a defenceless mechanised sailing vessel, language that reflects the particular status of the craft involved. Dhows of this kind carry general cargo on short regional routes between the Gulf, the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, operate without the security arrangements available to merchant shipping, and have no realistic means of evasion or protection.
The incident illustrates a dimension of the Red Sea campaign that receives little attention. The debate over the corridor has focused almost entirely on deep-sea tonnage, war-risk premiums and the economics of routing container ships and tankers around Africa. Below that layer sits a large regional fleet of small, often ageing vessels that has no rerouting option at all, because the trade it serves exists only within the waters now under threat. For those operators the choice is between sailing and not sailing.
The crewing dimension is equally stark. Seafarers on vessels of this type generally sail without the collective agreements, war-zone bonuses and refusal rights that apply on internationally flagged ships, and often without the insurance cover that would provide for their families in the event of a loss. The fourteen aboard the Faize Noore Oliya survived because a coast guard vessel reached them; the same attack a little further offshore, or at night, would have produced a very different outcome with no realistic prospect of assistance.
India's response was diplomatic rather than operational, and its options are limited. It has the world's second-largest seafaring community and a substantial regional dhow trade, but no mechanism to protect small craft in another state's waters. The attack came in the same week that Indian authorities were separately tracking six of their own vessels and 166 of their seafarers in the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz, a reminder that the exposure now runs from the largest crude carriers down to wooden-hulled traders with a dozen men aboard.
