Russian Warship Sinks Chinese Freighter

Wow, outside of time of war or open hostilities deadly force is usually not employed for simple matters of enforcing ship arrest. Ultimately it should be the captain's fault because he should follow the orders of the host nation , but he was put in an tough sitaution since he would have been ultimately fired had he remained in port. Had he remained in port he would not have endangered his crewmembers or be facing charges. The shipping company is probably hoping it turns out this way and will probably claim it was an act of barritry. Just another example of how modern day merchant sea captains are being used as fall guys.

WHY would a ship captain sit there and take 500 rounds of auto-cannon fire? What made him so afraid that he would do that instead of heave to?

 

50 nautical miles from port also involves a jurisdiction question. Was this action in international waters?

I make typos and misspell, all the time. Barritry or barratry; legal harassment is what I understood.

 

 

WHY would a ship captain sit there and take 500 rounds of auto-cannon fire? What made him so afraid that he would do that instead of heave to?

30 mm cannon is a rapid fire weapon. It does not take long to fire that many rounds, and large ship can take a lot of them before being seriously damaged.

 

I think that ship must pay for being docked at port, so the costs were getting higher with each day. Note that it was not their fault, because they just ship the goods that belong to someone else, and  yet they  are liable  to pay  the costs. Very frustrating situation....

 

Anyway, the rice is fish food now. Russian company will get nothing, and I understood that they already payed for the cargo. Chinese ship owner may get insurance. So, Chinese skipper perhaps knew what he was doing.

DG

 

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Writes trenchsol : "Chinese ship owner may get insurance."

 

That's doubtful. Departing port in the manner so described, the captain of the New Star was unarguably committing a criminal act. I don't think that there's a maritime insurance company on the planet that will pay compensation for damages suffered at the hands of a law enforcement agency while the insured is acting in the commission of a crime.

 

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I guess that in the Russian navy they don't practice ship to ship boardings for the pourpose of cargo inspections???

 

30 seconds?

It would most likely have taken place over a longer time period than 30 seconds. Since the incident took place in rough seas I would expect that 515 rounds would have been fired over several bursts, as the Coast Guard ship would have had a hard time maintaining accurate fire while it (and the target) were bucking in the waves.

 

That should have given the Chinese skipper time to reconsider his actions after the first burst of shells impacted his boat. Any sane merchant captain would obey orders after being fired upon. Getting a pink slip for returning to port is still better than you and your crew being killed.

 

Maybe the merchant ship eventually decided to turn around, but the Russians "assumed" the Chinese boat was still not co-operating, and sunk her anyway?

It would most likely have taken place over a longer time period than 30 seconds. Since the incident took place in rough seas I would expect that 515 rounds would have been fired over several bursts, as the Coast Guard ship would have had a hard time maintaining accurate fire while it (and the target) were bucking in the waves.

 

That should have given the Chinese skipper time to reconsider his actions after the first burst of shells impacted his boat. Any sane merchant captain would obey orders after being fired upon. Getting a pink slip for returning to port is still better than you and your crew being killed.

 

Maybe the merchant ship eventually decided to turn around, but the Russians "assumed" the Chinese boat was still not co-operating, and sunk her anyway?

Can see Reuters news video of this below

 

link

I wonder if in the Russian Coast Guard, a cutter captain has authority to sink a foreign-flag ship 50 miles out without getting orders from Moscow first and without trying to board first. My guess is no.

 

I wonder if this is another element of Putin's evolution toward a we're-tough-guys approach to international relations.

 

This must have caused great gnashing of teeth among the Chinese naval high command and national political leadership. Time for a further round of strategic budget increases.