The Engine Room
Day 221. On Monday evening the master of a tanker leaving the Strait of Hormuz called the Royal Navy office that takes distress reports from merchant ships. An unknown projectile had hit his ship and set the engine room on fire. The crew was still fighting it. The first notice listed no casualties. (Maritime Executive, Oct 5)
A day later India and Oman reported a tanker hit in the same waters. It’s the On Peace, and 12 of its 19 crew are wounded. An Omani air force helicopter flew 10 of them to hospital in Khasab. Two shipping publications say the reports appear to describe one ship. India and Oman date the attack to Tuesday. (India’s statement via The Tribune; Maritime Executive, Oct 6; gCaptain)
The On Peace flies Panama’s flag. A Dubai company owns it, and a South Korean yard built it in 2021. Seventeen of its 19 crew are Indian. Nobody’s claimed the hit. Maritime Executive counts it as the 12th likely Iranian attack since last Wednesday. (Splash247; Maritime Executive, Oct 6)
India supplies about one of every eight seafarers on earth: 311,936 of the world’s 2.57M seafarers, second only to the Philippines. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN’s shipping agency, has confirmed 93 incidents and 24 seafarers killed since the war began on Feb 28, 2026. The Wire, an Indian news site, puts the number of Indian seafarers killed around the strait at about a dozen. (BIMCO-ICS workforce report via Onmanorama; Splash247; The Wire)
They weren’t all killed by the same side. On Jun 10, 2026, an American warplane fired missiles into the engine room of the tanker Settebello in the Gulf of Oman. US Central Command said the ship was running its blockade of Iran’s ports, had ignored nearly 60 radio warnings and got 15 minutes to clear the engine room. A union leader said the crew told him they’d heard only general warnings they didn’t think applied to their ship. The New York Times reported that an engineer and a mechanic had just started their shifts there. Chief engineer Suresh Patnala, fitter Shivanand Chaurasia and trainee cadet Aditya Sharma were killed. (New York Times via GV Wire)
On Jul 14, 2026, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said two Iranian cruise missiles had hit its tankers Mombasa and Al Bahiyah. An Indian sailor died aboard the Mombasa. On Sep 23, 2026, two projectiles hit the bulk carrier Cape Dao, one in the engine room and one in the crew’s quarters. Oman’s navy took 27 of the crew off. Suraj Yadav, a 26-year-old from Deoria in Uttar Pradesh, was killed. He was a wiper. A wiper cleans the engine room. It’s the first rung on the ladder. (Business Today; Maritime Executive, Sep 23)
The engine room is where a ship gets stopped. A Central Command spokesman told the Times that seizing a ship that resists is risky and it’s safer to disable it. Whoever’s aiming, that means the same compartment. Washington calls it enforcing a blockade. Iran’s Fars news agency says the Revolutionary Guard’s navy hit seven “violating” tankers in five days. (New York Times via GV Wire; Fars via IANS)
India tried the lever it had. On Jul 15, 2026, its shipping regulator barred owners from sending Indian seafarers through the strait. Three weeks later it lifted the ban. What it requires now is each seafarer’s consent. (Business Standard; The National)
Here’s the offer. The Financial Times reports that ordinary crew, who earn about $1,500 a month in normal times, are getting at least four to six times their usual wage to make the transit. Captains can earn about $100,000 a month plus $50,000 a crossing. Under the industry’s war-zone rules, a seafarer can still refuse the voyage and be sent home at the company’s expense. (Financial Times via investingLive; International Transport Workers’ Federation)
Shell’s chief executive said Tuesday that the region’s oil flows are back “close to 80-plus percent of prewar levels.” Nearly every barrel in that number leaves on a ship. Every ship has an engine room, and somebody’s on shift. (CBS News)