Drone-Hit Boxship RMS Team Declared a Constructive Total Loss

The 1,100 TEU containership RMS Team has been declared a constructive total loss, three weeks after a drone strike set her on fire on passage to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

The 2004-built, 12,890 dwt vessel was hit on 21 August. The attack started a fire that forced the crew to abandon ship, and one seafarer was reported missing. She was recovered afterwards and towed to the Turkish Black Sea port of Samsun, arriving around a week after the incident.

Images circulated after the tow showed heavy fire damage across the superstructure. The burn pattern extended forward towards several rows of containers on deck, and further damage was visible behind the wheelhouse and the accommodation block. Following an assessment of that damage, the ship has now been written off.

A constructive total loss is a commercial finding rather than a physical one. It means the cost of repairing or recovering the hull is no longer considered worth bearing against the insured value, and it hands the wreck and the remaining decisions to underwriters. For a twenty-two-year-old feeder of this size, the calculation is short: fire damage that reaches the accommodation and the wiring behind it usually costs more to make good than the replacement cost of comparable secondhand tonnage.

The ship is operated by Turkish carrier Akkon Lines, whose own fleet information is published at the operator's website. Akkon and fellow Turkish operator Arkas suspended all calls at Russian ports at the start of September, a decision taken as attacks on merchant traffic serving the eastern Black Sea became routine rather than exceptional.

That withdrawal reshapes the feeder map. Novorossiysk and Tuapse have depended on small Turkish-operated boxships for their container links to the Mediterranean, and the loss of one hull matters less than the loss of the operators willing to send hulls at all. War-risk cover for the run has moved with it, and the premium now forms a visible share of the freight on a trade whose economics were already thin.

Search efforts for the missing crew member have not produced a result. The wreck remains at Samsun.

This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 10 September 2026.