Jenny Gross
Captain Silke Lehmköster, from her office overlooking the Elbe River in Hamburg, Germany, wrestles with the same question every day: What?
For almost two months, the answer was no. Then, early last week, he saw an opportunity and gave one of the vessels the green light to cross the waterway.
On Monday, just before midnight, under a new moon and without any wind, one of his ships, the Tema Express, crossed the channel without incident. The ship, which anchored off the coast of Oman, near Muscat, was the company’s first passage through the waterway since the start of the war.
Other merchant ships that tried to cross soon after that were not so lucky. Two European-owned ships were intercepted and seized by Iranian forces on Wednesday, one being attacked by a gunboat without warning. They are detained near the coast of Iran.
More than 20 commercial ships have been attacked near the sea since March. The attacks began shortly after the first attacks against Iran by the United States and Israel, which prompted the Iranian army to retaliate by moving vehicles into the important waterway.
The strikes have killed 10 sailors and injured many others. With shipping companies reluctant to navigate the treacherous waters, about 20,000 crew members aboard 1,600 ships are stranded in and around the channel, where nearly one fifth of the world’s oil was gone before the war.
On Thursday morning, Lehmköster, who oversees 310 ships as managing director of shipping at shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd, assessed official advisory notices, contacted intelligence sources and communicated with sailors.
As reports continued to pour in about the two seized ships, senior officials discussed the growing risks to the company’s ships still stranded near the strait. The ships that were targeted on Wednesday were the first commercial vessels that Iran had seized since the war began.
Over the past week, the US Navy has boarded and seized Iranian-flagged vessels in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. On Thursday, US President Donald Trump said he had ordered the navy to fire any boats laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
At Hapag-Lloyd’s six-story headquarters in Hamburg, employees speak a mixture of English and German in the hallways, which feature reminders of the company’s long history, including a nine-foot (2.7-meter) model of the Imperator, a ship launched in 1912. The building sits atop the Ballindamm mansion, named after the late Jew Albertshi boulevard. The 1800s and early 1900s helped build what is now known as Hapag-Lloyd into an international conglomerate. Today, the company is the fifth largest container shipping group in the world.
In the company’s operations room on the ground floor, employees monitored weather patterns on their computers and kept an eye on traffic in the Strait of Hormuz on a large screen where vessels were monitored in real time. Similar regulatory centers are in place for other shipping companies around the world, with much of the world’s shipping industry focused on the narrow route, an area whose influence on the global economy has become alarmingly clear.
Lehmköster said he would need clear assurances from the United States and Iran that the route was safe and information on how to avoid naval mines planted in the strait before giving orders to the other four ships to proceed. This assurance has not arrived.
“Basically, you’re sending an unarmed man into battle,” Lehmköster said in an interview, noting that stranded ships are not able to defend themselves.
Lehmköster declined to comment on the route Tema Express had taken to cross the channel. Industry analysts suggest that it probably took a route that hugged the coast of Oman, a route that ships have taken to cross without permission from Iranian officials, who have imposed tighter controls on the sea.
For Lehmköster, 39, who himself worked at sea for 15 years, the decision of whether it’s worth the risk of sending a ship through the strait is a personal one, and the responsibility of managing stranded ships in a war zone was a heavy one.
Aboard the four stranded Hapag-Lloyd ships are about 100 sailors — Ukrainians, Russians, Vietnamese, Sri Lankans, Romanians, Filipinos and others — all desperate to return home, he said.
Sitting still can also be dangerous. Several weeks ago, the crew of the Hapag-Lloyd ship woke up early in the morning to sound the sirens, after bombs from an Iranian missile or drone fell on their ship, starting a fire. No one was injured, and the ship is under repair, able to run but with difficulty.
The ship’s captains try to keep the passengers entertained with activities such as barbecues, foosball tournaments, and karaoke and movie nights. They maintain regular shifts for maintenance, inspections, and inspections of cargo, which typically includes furniture, electronics, fruit, and frozen fish and meat.
Mixed messages from U.S. and Iranian authorities, who have imposed opposing restrictions and restrictions on traffic in the Persian Gulf, have made it difficult to gauge the risks of crossing the strait, especially from afar. During an uneasy truce, now entering the third weekthe narrow channel has been declared open one minute and the next one.
In addition to Hapag-Lloyd, other major shipping groups, such as France’s CMA CGM and Switzerland’s MSC, have moved ships in the channel in recent days. The ships that the Iranians seized this week were owned or operated by MSC.
Danish shipping giant Maersk, which has seven ships stranded in the area, has deemed it unsafe for ships to cross.
‘If you succeed, you will get a big reward’
For some companies, the economic benefit – especially if the price of oil, gas and other commodities has risen – is worth the risk. “Usually, if you’re successful, you get a big reward,” said Jakob Larsen, chief safety officer at BIMCO, the world’s largest shipping association.
Even in the most peaceful of times, the hours-long journey through the Strait of Hormuz can be hair-raising.
It is narrow – 21 nautical miles at its widest – and dense traffic. Captains must navigate around small fishing vessels and oil rigs. The air is often hazy because of the heat.
Captain Alexander Meier, 48, who most recently led a ship through the strait for Hapag-Lloyd three years ago, tries to show a sense of calm to his crew while transiting through Iran, he said. “A captain should never worry,” he said. But he sighs every time he passes. “There’s always tension going through there,” he said.
Charalampos Kiakotos, a ship captain who has also crossed the channel more than a dozen times, said that it was among the most desirable routes. The risk of being stuck in a war zone would be very stressful, he said in a phone call from the Port of Dos Bocas in Mexico, because of the pressure to follow orders from headquarters to cross as quickly as possible while also looking after the staff.
“If anything happens, everyone will blame the captain, and they will say it was the captain’s decision,” said Kiakotos, 45, who works for a Greek shipping company.
“So at the end of the day, I will have the final say.”
