The Aleksandr Tvardovsky is a cargo vessel. [1] She is owned by a company based in Malta, registered in the Cook Islands, and crewed by Russians.
On June 26, 2018, she was detained in Leith for safety reasons, and lack of payment of her crew. [1] On July 4, 2018, after 9 days of detention, the vessel's captain appealed to authorities to supply the ship with food. [2]
HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.
Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as "shore excursions". On "cruises to nowhere" or "nowhere voyages", cruise ships make two- to three-night round trips without visiting any ports of call.
Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant from their native land. The term has been most commonly applied to the large-scale taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, the Fiji islands and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others.
MS Aegean Myth is a cruise ship. The ship previously named Maasdam for Holland America Line. While sailing for Holland America, the vessel operated primarily in North American waters. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the ship sold to an undisclosed buyer. The ship arrived in July at Piraeus, Greece and was renamed Aegean Myth.
MS Song of Norway was one of the first ships purpose-built as a cruise ship. She was the first ship of Royal Caribbean International when she entered operation in 1970. She was sold for scrap in 2013 and broken up in 2014, after serving her last years as a gambling ship.
Picton Castle is a tall ship used for deep-ocean sail training and long distance education voyages. The ship was the subject of the television series Tall Ship Chronicles which documented her second voyage around the world in 2001. The ship has carried out seven world voyages to date - completing the seventh one in 2019. While flagged in the Cook Islands, the ship's unofficial home port is Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
The Texas schooner Invincible was one of the four schooners of the Revolutionary Texas Navy (1836-1837). She began her service in January 1836 and immediately began attacking ships supplying the Mexican army in Texas, including capturing the United States merchant vessel Pocket and later the British ship Eliza Russell. Both of these actions caused diplomatic incidents between the Republic of Texas and the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Kent was an East Indiaman, a vessel sailing for the British East India Company, and launched in 1820. She completed two voyages to Bombay and China for the Company and was on her third voyage, to Bengal and China, when a fire in the Bay of Biscay destroyed her. Her captain for all three voyages was Henry Cobb.
HMS Bounty, also known as HM Armed Vessel Bounty, was a small merchant vessel that the Royal Navy purchased in 1787 for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the South Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to the West Indies. That mission was never completed owing to a 1789 mutiny led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian, an incident now popularly known as the mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers later burned Bounty while she was moored at Pitcairn Island. An American adventurer helped land several remains of Bounty in 1957.
The MV Arctic Sea is a cargo ship formerly registered in Malta that was reported missing between late July and mid-August 2009 en route from Finland to Algeria, manned by a Russian crew and declared to be carrying a cargo of timber. Hijackers allegedly boarded the ship off the coast of Sweden on 24 July 2009. The incident was not immediately reported, and contact with the ship was lost on or after 30 July. The Arctic Sea did not arrive at its scheduled port in Algeria and was reportedly located near Cape Verde instead on 14 August. On 17 August, it was seized by the Russian Navy. An investigation into the incident was started amidst speculation regarding the ship's actual cargo, and there were allegations of a cover-up by Russian authorities. The Arctic Sea was towed into harbor in the Maltese capital of Valletta on 29 October 2009.
HMS Salsette was a Perseverance-class fifth-rate frigate of a nominal 36 guns, launched in 1805. The East India Company built her for the Royal Navy at the company's dockyards in Bombay. She was the Navy's first teak-built ship.
Bulgaria was a class 785/OL800 Russian river cruise ship which operated in the Volga-Don basin. On 10 July 2011, Bulgaria sank in the Kuybyshev Reservoir of the Volga River near Syukeyevo, Kamsko-Ustyinsky District, Tatarstan, Russia, with 201 passengers and crew aboard when sailing from the town of Bolgar to the regional capital, Kazan. The catastrophe led to 122 confirmed deaths.
James Cook's third and final voyage took the route from Plymouth via Cape Town and Tenerife to New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, and along the North American coast to the Bering Strait.
Colonist was a general cargo and passenger schooner built in 1861 at Dumbarton Scotland by Denny & Rankine. It spent nearly 30 years plying the Western Pacific-based out of Sydney. It wrecked and later re-floated on the remote Elizabeth Reef 550 km from New South Wales, as well as being involved in the gold rushes. Its master was murdered before it was finally involved in a collision in Sydney Harbour, in which it was sunk.
MV Kairali was a bulk carrier, owned by Kerala Shipping Corporation (KSC). She disappeared with her crew of 49 and 20,000 tonnes of iron ore on 3 July 1979 while sailing from Margao, India to Rostock, Germany, via Djibouti.
HMS Coquette was launched in 1807 and spent her naval career patrolling in the Channel and escorting convoys. In 1813 she engaged an American privateer in a notable but inconclusive single-ship action. The Navy put Coquette in ordinary in 1814 and sold her in 1817. She became a whaler and made five whaling voyages before she was lost in 1835 on her sixth.
MV Star of Malta was a passenger ferry which operated routes from Malta to Sicily in the 1950s and 1960s, notable for its sinking off Malta on 29 July 1955, resulting in the death of one crew member and one passenger. Prior to that, she had a long career under a number of different names.
SS Sardinia was a passenger-cargo ship which caught fire off Malta's Grand Harbour on 25 November 1908, resulting in at least 118 deaths. The ship was carrying Moroccan pilgrims on the way to Mecca. It is believed that a cooking fire on deck accidentally ignited nitrate in one of the ship's cargo holds, resulting in a number of explosions and causing the ship to run aground.
Taio Shipping is a shipping company in the Cook Islands. It is the islands' main inter-island shipping company, and operates freight and passenger services between Rarotonga and the outer islands, with services once or twice a month to Atiu, Mitiaro, Mauke and Mangaia, once every two months to Penrhyn, Rakahanga and Manihiki, and once every two and a half months to Palmerston and Pukapuka.
MV Rhosus was a general cargo ship that was abandoned in Beirut, Lebanon, after the ship was declared unseaworthy and the charterers lost interest in the cargo. The 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which the ship was carrying was confiscated and brought to shore in 2014, and later contributed to the catastrophic 2020 Beirut explosion. The vessel's owner at the time of abandonment was Cyprus-based Russian businessman Igor Grechushkin. The ship sank in the Port of Beirut in 2018.
The ship is owned by NWS 6 Balt Shipping Company, a Maltese company and a current member of the Cook Islands Ship Owners Association.
The vessel was also missing valid international safety management (ISM) and ship security (ISSC) certificates. Detained vessels aren't allowed to leave port until they can prove they have fixed all the problems that led to them being barred from heading back out to sea.