Before chancing the treacherous waters of the Strait of Hormuz, the all-Filipino crew of 23 had been stranded at anchor for more than a month in the Persian Gulf as the U.S. and Israel waged war against Iran.
They had huddled on the cargo ship’s bridge to cast a final vote: Should they risk the perilous six-hour journey, made treacherous by mines and Iranian attacks? Although the path was closed to most international traffic, there was no way out but through.
Their worst fears came to pass: As the vessel navigated the Strait of Hormuz, it met with a hail of bullets that shattered windows and pockmarked it with dents. The crew scattered for cover, caught up in the ripple effects of a conflict in which they had no part. The gunfire appeared to come from small Iranian boats.
Before each of the five votes the sailors wound up holding ahead of their passage, the captain printed and handed out copies of letters from the Greek shipping company managing the vessel, urging them in increasingly strident terms to go for it, and expressing what sailors, some paid as little as a few hundred dollars a month, described as “great disappointment” at their refusal, according to two seafarers who took part.
The pros: They were being offered an additional two months’ pay to take the risk, were already sitting off the coast of a war zone and wanted to avoid being blacklisted by their company or in the industry. “We get out of here, and after that no more overthinking, no more fear, no more sleepless nights,” one seafarer said.
The cons: “We might get blown up by a rocket,” he said. “Or something like that.”
In reporting this story, The Washington Post spoke with two sailors on the ship, along with another who passed through the strait on a different vessel around the same time. The sailors, who remain at sea, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The Post also reviewed photos, videos and correspondence from the ship.
The shipping company, along with others operating in the area, did not respond to a request for comment on the attack or the decision to send the crew through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s U.N. delegation in New York did not respond to a request for comment on Iranian attacks against ships in the strait.
Four times, the sailors voted no, apologizing to the company for any inconvenience. They were still too afraid. A few began changing their minds. Still, the captain held firm: “If one says no, we all say no,” he said.
In the sailors’ fifth vote, in late March, it was like “a domino effect” of yeses, one said. The two men said they voted to go through the strait “under pressure.”
A few days after the U.S. and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire on April 7, they set off.
Two skiffs, carrying three or so people each, soon began tailing the ship, the two seafarers said. One crew member used binoculars to check and saw a “high-powered gun,” then he shouted “Get down, there’s a gun!”
One seafarer described hearing “a chipping hammer … Ding, ding, ding, ding.” At first, he thought it was on-ship construction, but radios paged news of the attack throughout the ship. The gunfire was on-and-off for more than 20 minutes, seafarers said. “Too many bullets, too many sounds,” one of them said.
One bullet flew through the bridge’s window, missing a member of the crew by a few feet as he crouched low to send a distress signal call amid the firing. Panicked crew members hid behind a metal door; one said he went pale. The Post reviewed photos and videos of the attack and aftermath.
After the attack, the crew found at least nine dents from bullets on the ship, including two through glass windows.
They made it out safely and are heading back to South America — potentially to do the whole thing over again.
One of the crew members said he believes the shots were “a warning” signal by Iranian naval authorities, because the ship went slightly off the authorized passage plan — shallower lanes closer to the shore than usual.
But shooting through windows into the ship’s occupied bridge is hardly the typical warning.
Before the shooting began, someone on the skiff showed his gun and signaled for a crew member to run inside, the crew member said. “I guess they’re just sending a signal that we are doing the wrong way, I don’t know.”
He had been scared of “rockets, mines,” but “luckily it’s only bullets,” the seafarer said. Throughout the war, fellow crew members chose to sleep on the floor near the door, closer to the ship’s center, in case of a strike. Others had packed go-bags with food and passports. Some wore life jackets. They prayed together out loud.
Eleven erratic weeks of the Strait of Hormuz effectively closing and reopening only to close again has brought chaos to the stock market and oil prices. But nobody is more affected by the constant whiplash than the more than 20,000 sailors stranded in the Persian Gulf with the chokepoint of the strait as their only exit.
Some among the relative trickle of ships that have attempted to pass the vital waterway, through which one-fifth of global oil shipments ordinarily pass, have faced attacks by drones and missiles, gunboat fire, seizures and the threat of mines Iran says it sank along the waterway.
More than two dozen ships have been attacked attempting to run the gantlet to and from the Gulf, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, which monitors the waters. The attack described in this story has not been previously reported. Companies may choose not to share such details, to keep their ships crewed.
At least 11 seafarers have been killedin incidents in the Middle East since the war began, according to the International Maritime Organization, including three Thai sailors killed in an Iranian strike on the Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree as it passed Hormuz on March 11. On May 5, another attack wounded eight on a French cargo ship.
Tides change all the time at anchor, so stranded seafarers living in close quarters with dozens of others have spent two months unable to disembark and “running routines but you’re not really getting anywhere,” said Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
A third sailor aboard a different ship told The Post that he was stranded in the Gulf on a livestock vessel with more than 60 other Filipino seafarers for 75 days. (The livestock were off-loaded.) His vessel could produce fresh water, and they caught fish to supplement dwindling provisions, he said. They finally made it through this week.
The ITF has received more than 2,000 inquiries from seafarers about the Hormuz crisis, according to Cotton. They’re asking, “What extra pay am I entitled to in a war zone? What if our ship is running out of food, or medicine? Can I leave this boat and go home?”
Under their collective agreement, covered seafarers in designated danger zones receive double pay and have the right to refuse to sail. But asking to be repatriated proves to be logistically difficult when ships require a minimum crew to run safely, even at anchor. Sailors also worry one refusal means being blacklisted from future voyages.
Many seafarers — desperate to provide for families back home, including in the Philippines, which sends more than half a million people to work on ships globally — are up for the gamble. One of the seafarers aboard the attacked ship told The Post that a crew member joked about wanting a rocket to hit their ship because he wanted benefits, to which he responded, “Are you insane? Lives are lost during those attacks.”
At least eight mariners, most of them Filipinos, were killed in attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthi rebels during the war in Gaza.
Hanz Chester Galuno, who worked on the deck department of the bulk carrier Minoan Glory, had been docked at an Iranian port for two weeks, waiting to discharge its cargo of corn from Brazil when the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran began.
While stranded, the crew limited time outside, except for necessary tasks like checking the ropes and watchkeeping, where Galuno said he saw missiles “from land going up, up, up in the sky.”
His crew hardly hesitated when their company said they could traverse the strait on April 1; they wanted “to go out and sail because we are scared inside there,” Galuno said. En route, he said he saw at least three vessels that had been damaged by drones and missiles.
Their joy swelled as they neared the strait’s exit, and sailors were ready with an A4 piece of paper stuck onto the back of a binder — a makeshift plaque — for picture-taking. In printed-out faux stenciled font, it read: “I WAS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ THE GATE OF TEARS.”
With the sign, crew members threw up thumbs-ups, peace and rock-on signs, prayer hands. Some looked out into the distance, pretending to look through binoculars.
Galuno said he knows that the “Gate of Tears” is actually the name of an different strait, the historically treacherous Bab el-Mandeb, but they liked the sound of it nonetheless.
Once through, they celebrated with a cookout, breaking out their grill. “Filipino vibes, dancing, so that we feel happy,” he said. The food was a mix of Filipino barbecue [pork and fish] and Persian [kebab and biryani].
They sang karaoke too, settling on “Under the Same Sun” by the German rock band Scorpions as their anthem of the moment — because all seafarers sail under one sky, he said.
“Why can’t we stop the fight / ’Cause we all live under the same sun,” the men sang, as they left the Strait of Hormuz in their wake.
Joyce Sohyun Lee in Washington and Susannah George in Lahore, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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