Never before have so many sailors been abandoned at sea

The fate of the 11 men on board the Grand Sunny off the coast of China is increasingly common in the global shipping industry. The vessel appears to have been involved in sanctions-dodging trade, transporting oil products in the South China Sea, according to Hong Kong maritime officials.

The Grand Sunny is part of an armada of hundreds of ships that form what the industry refers to as the “shadow fleet." They are old and poorly serviced vessels used to skirt sanctions on Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil and other cargoes.

The vessels are often managed or owned through complex structures, according to a recent advisory by the U.S. Treasury Department, making it difficult for regulators and enforcement authorities to determine who controls them. Some seek to avoid detection by turning off transponders that broadcast locations, switching flags and operating without insurance from established Western underwriters.

Crew members of abandoned ships are effectively marooned aboard their vessels because port authorities require them to stay with the ship to ensure the vessels are safe. The sailors, often from developing countries, also are loath to depart without being paid.

This means months or even years stuck aboard a vessel thousands of miles away from home until someone picks up the tab for the ship’s maintenance expenses and the sailors’ salaries.

As of mid-November, a record 282 ships carrying more than 4,000 seamen had been abandoned by their owners this year, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation, or ITF, a labor union. In 2023, the figure was 132 vessels.

The figure rose when supply chains became snarled during the pandemic, and again when Western sanctions were imposed on Russian interests in 2022, causing a surge in illicit maritime trade. Before 2020, about 40 ships a year were left stranded by absentee owners.

The obscure ownership structures make it difficult for enforcement authorities to do any more than impound the vessels.

“If it’s a shadow vessel you can’t hold the owners into account because they are nowhere to be seen," said Guy Platten, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Shipping, a body representing shipowners.

The Grand Sunny, built in 2004, is a 100-meter-long bulk carrier. Such vessels are typically used to carry coal, grains or other bulk cargo on coastal routes to smaller ports. They can also carry steel tanks of oil products that can be transferred between vessels at sea using deck cranes.

The ship has mostly moved between anchorages off the coast of China since 2022, according to MarineTraffic data. However, the ship’s location transponder has also been turned off intermittently, obscuring its voyages.

The vessel’s captain declined to comment on the ship’s path, why it was abandoned and what it was carrying.

The all-Indonesian crew of the Grand Sunny reported in late 2023 to the ITF that they hadn’t been paid for two months. The ship had dwindling supplies, which the owner had replenished sporadically. The sailors collected rainwater and caught fish, but eventually ran out.

This August, the Grand Sunny arrived in Hong Kong and the captain informed port authorities that the crew had no food or water. The city’s port authorities detained the ship, citing expired and inadequate safety documents and equipment.

An ITF inspector, Jason Lam, boarded the ship and gave the crew fresh supplies. Lam said he has been in contact with a representative of the owner but doesn’t know who ultimately controls the ship.

The registered owner, a company called Thousand Star International in Hong Kong, doesn’t have an office or website. Its corporate filings name a corporate services firm in Hong Kong as a representative.

The services firm told The Wall Street Journal that it had no contact information for Thousand Star’s owner but provided the name of a middleman who had brought the shipping company in as a client. The middleman didn’t respond to requests for comment by the Journal.

The crew spends the day trying to maintain the increasingly squalid ship. A year of neglect means that much of the equipment doesn’t work properly. In recent months, the owner’s representative has sent more supplies, according to the ITF.

“There is no heat or aircon aboard," said Lam. “The ship is old and dirty and not a place to be stuck for such an extended period."

Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com