The ship was leased. The ship’s charter company had no employees or contractors aboard. Nobody is saying who insured the ship or who the captain was. The insurer takes the financial cost. The captain and crew should not be able to leave the country. And we should know the name of the harbor pilots who were in charge of navigating the ship out of the harbor. Those are the important pieces of information and we don’t know any of them. We just know its a Singapore flag which means almost nothing. The captain and the harbor pilots are the people who would have to be involved if this was malfeasance or misfeasance.
“The captain and the harbor pilots are the people who would have to be involved if this was malfeasance or misfeasance.”
The malfeasance was the ship’s owner skimping on maintenance costs.
The ship is insured by “The International Group of Protection and Indemnity Clubs”, a group that insures almost 90% of worldwide shipping. Essentially, they use “claims pooling” for claims over $10M to spread risk over all of their members so that no one insurance company can be bankrupted by a single event like this. While not exactly a drop in a bucket, it won’t have a serious financial impact on the group.
The ship is managed and crewed by an Indian company (SYNERGY MARINE PTE LTD), and they have stated that all 22 crew members are Indian. I saw a story that named the pilots, with one being described as an apprentice. While the captain bears responsibility for ensuring the seaworthiness of his vessel, he works for the (Indian) management company, and probably bends a bit to their will. The pilot is responsible for overseeing the transit of the ship between his pick-up and drop-off points. His only indication on the seaworthiness of the ship is verifying certificates, which he does before he boards the ship. He has little ability to recover from a major engineering casualty that results in loss of power/steering/propulsion.