Contship Jet Sinks Near Bulgaria After Triple Sea Drone Strike
The Liberian-flagged, Greek-managed container ship Contship Jet has sunk in the western Black Sea after three sea drones struck it on 28 October. Bulgaria’s defence minister placed the ship about 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, near Cape Kaliakra, on Bulgaria’s north-east coast close to the border with Romania. The Varna Regional Administration confirmed the sinking on 29 October, although the exact time the ship went down was not given.
The ship was on charter to ZIM and was sailing from Haifa in Israel to Constanța in Romania with 421 containers on board. Bulgarian authorities were alerted at 12:01 local time, and the crew abandoned ship just 12 minutes later.
All 18 crew members, 14 Filipinos and four Ukrainians, were picked up by the Bulgarian Navy and border police and brought ashore at Varna. No injuries were reported. The ship was burning marine gas oil, and officials consider it unlikely that any fuel spill will reach the Bulgarian coast.
Meeting in Sofia, the defence ministers of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey condemned the attacks on merchant shipping and agreed to share more intelligence and give earlier warnings to ships. No one has claimed responsibility for the strike, which was one of several on merchant ships in the western Black Sea this month.
The loss shows how quickly a drone strike can force a crew to abandon ship. The fast and orderly evacuation, completed within minutes of the alarm, underlines the value of realistic abandon-ship drills for seafarers trading in the Black Sea.
