Sailors stranded in Persian Gulf as rockets fly over their heads

HONG KONG — He and his comrades stand on the bridge at night, sometimes watching rockets fly overhead.

What was supposed to be an uneventful maiden voyage to transport oil across the Persian Gulf has turned into a nightmare for a 28-year-old Indian sailor, who has spent the past month stranded as his ship remains idle because of the war in Iran.

“We don’t sleep at night. We stay on deck because you never know what might happen next,” said the sailor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from authorities and his employer.

The sailor, who has been at sea since November, was speaking to NBC News from Iraqi waters minutes after an air attack Tuesday afternoon, which he said landed in Iran just a few miles away.

“The ship is still vibrating,” he said in an interview in Hindi.

He and the three other crew members of the small oil vessel are among 20,000 sailors stranded on hundreds of vessels in the Persian Gulf, according to the U.N. maritime agency, after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S.-Israeli strikes.

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The blockade of this crucial shipping route, which has sent global energy prices soaring, has also trapped the largely invisible workforce that keeps global maritime trade afloat, extending their time away from their families and putting their lives at risk. At least seven sailors have been killed and several others seriously injured in what the UN says were Iranian attacks on commercial ships.

“The world is counting on these people to keep trade going in impossible conditions,” said Angad Banga, chief executive of Caravel Group, a Hong Kong-based shipping conglomerate. Caravel’s subsidiary, Fleet Management Limited, manages more than 600 ships, some of which are stuck in the Gulf.

The past few years have already been difficult for the world’s nearly 2 million seafarers, most of whom come from the Philippines, India and other Asian countries. During the Covid pandemic, they have been confined to their ships for long periods, unable to take breaks on land due to border restrictions imposed by many countries.

Their work and mental health were further disrupted when Houthi rebels in Yemen began attacking ships in the Red Sea, killing at least nine sailors and 11 others held captive for five months.

“As soon as crises disappear from the news, the world forgets that they exist, and this cycle must be broken,” Banga added.

The International Maritime Organization, the UN maritime agency, confirmed 18 incidents of damage to commercial vessels between March 1 and 19 in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. On March 11, there was an explosion on a Thai-flagged ship after it was hit by projectiles and 20 members of its crew had to be rescued, and three remained missing as of Friday as Iranian state media reported that the ship had run aground off the Iranian island of Qeshm. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the ship had ignored “warnings.”

Even if their ships are not directly hit, the stranded sailors can only watch in fear as Iranian strikes against the United States and Israel.

During Tuesday’s incident, the sailor said he heard missile strikes for nearly half an hour and counted more than a dozen explosions.

“At first I was in the engine room, so I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “When I arrived on deck, I saw the rest of my crew watching the rockets go by, which would be followed by explosions in the distance.”

“I could see when they hit the ground, see the smoke rising and feel the impact through the ship,” he added.

That same day, Banga’s company showed NBC News how serious the situation had become.

Inside Fleet Management’s headquarters in a Hong Kong office tower, in a room known as “the bridge,” hundreds of white dots appeared on eight screens that formed a giant map of the maritime world, each representing a ship under the group’s management.

The contrast is stark: while normally around 130 ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz daily, some of which belong to the management fleet, virtually none are able to do so today. Several ships waiting to pass were visible on the screen.

As stranded sailors struggle to keep morale high, Banga said his company has been conducting regular check-ins with crew members, who are trying to maintain some routine that includes leisure activities and maintenance work on their ships.

“They exercise, watch movies, some play basketball on the patio, sit there,” he said.

“When routine breaks down, that’s when people start to unravel,” he added. “The sun sets, and that’s when fear arises because most attacks happen in the dark.”

On Tuesday, ship tracking site MarineTraffic said in an article on X that only nine ships had passed through the strait since the day before, with apparent support from Iran.

One of them was a Chinese ship that successfully crossed the waterway on Monday.

A video shot by one of the sailors aboard the ship, shared on Chinese social media platform Douyin and geotagged by NBC News, showed the tanker crossing a narrow section of the strait off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran.

The sailor panned the camera around the ship, showing small speedboats in the distance escorting his ship and at least three other tankers in an apparent convoy.

“We can see big oil tankers. I don’t know why they decided to anchor here,” the sailor filming the video can be heard saying in Mandarin in another video, pointing to the Iranian coast and some high-rise buildings visible in the distance.

“I can’t shoot videos outside anymore. It’s dangerous. Let’s quickly hide in the cabin,” he said.

NBC News has contacted the ship’s manager for comment.

Iran said this week that “non-hostile vessels” would be allowed to safely pass through the Strait of Hormuz, in coordination with Iranian authorities.

“As we have repeatedly emphasized, the Strait of Hormuz remains open and maritime traffic has not been suspended,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry wrote in a letter to the United Nations seen by NBC News. “Navigation continues, subject to compliance with the necessary measures mentioned above and the realities arising from the ongoing conflict.”

The letter defines “non-hostile vessels” as those that “do not participate in or support acts of aggression against Iran.” He did not specify which countries were eligible, but he said ships “belonging to the aggressor parties,” namely the United States and Israel, were not.

The sailor stuck in Iraqi waters hopes his ship will be able to sail again soon.

“My family is freaking out,” he said. “We have all our bags packed and are ready whenever someone calls us.”