Egyptian authorities are searching for a cargo vessel that went missing in the Red Sea. Reem Leila reports on the vanishing act On 9 January the cargo ship Badr 1 with its 14-member crew left the Egyptian port of Suez Canal on its way to Sudan. Badr 1 was carrying 1,700 metric tonnes (1,874 tonnes) cargo of cement, steel, and paint supplies. Its destination was Port Sudan, but it was unclear when and where it went missing along the 1,280km (800-mile) route. The last contact with the ship's captain was on 12 January. The ship, which was built in 1960 and owned by the Afro-Asia Shipping Company, conformed to all safety standards and had obtained all the required permits before departing the Egyptian port. Its crew consisted of nine Egyptians, including the ship's captain, four Sudanese and one Yemeni. According to Rania Mohamed, of the department for Consular and Expatriates Affairs at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, the Egyptian government is meeting with its envoys in Sudan in an attempt to solve the mystery of the ship that has virtually disappeared. According to Mohamed, the consular sector contacted all its envoys in countries overlooking the Red Sea immediately upon receiving reports of the disappearance of the ship at the end of January. "The ministry also contacted all the concerned Egyptian authorities following confirmation by the ship's owner company, AfroAsia, that its joint efforts with the Egyptian Armed Forces, including the navy, and the Rescue Centre in Suez, had failed," stated Mohamed. A statement issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry on 5 February confirmed that the Egyptian mission in Sudan had been conducting intensive efforts in cooperation with Sudanese authorities in the search for the missing ship. Rescue ships have thoroughly combed the area along stretches of Sudanese and Egyptian shores backed up by a search plane. The search started at the end of January because of bad weather conditions. "But so far, all efforts to locate the ship have failed," added Mohamed. The statement added that another aircraft will be dispatched in the next few days to survey the entire coastal area. The statement confirmed that no distress signal was issued by the ship before its disappearance. According to Mohamed, a Sudanese official and the Sudanese Transportation Ministry recently met with the Egyptian ambassador to Sudan, Mohamed Shazli, to discuss the incident. "The two said that the shipping authorities of both countries would continue doing their best to find Badr 1," stated Mohamed. Hani Saad, operations manager of the Maersk Egypt shipping company, said the ship disappeared immediately after passing Halayeb and Shalatine. The sea in this area is surrounded by high mountains, islands and the water itself contains a heavy net of coral reefs in which the ship could easily have gotten stuck. "It is usually very difficult and sometimes impossible to send an SOS because the mountains prevent signals from being picked up," Saad said. "There is not the slightest possibility that the ship sank because the [I-BIRD] device [equivalent to a plane's black box] which is responsible for sending a message via satellite as soon as it touches the water did not send any signal. Most probably, the ship was not functioning well," he added. A few days before embarking on its journey, Badr 1 underwent an overhaul of its engines. At the time of its departure it was travelling at a speed of five knots/hr (nine km/hr). At that speed, the trip was to have lasted for one week. According to Saad, the ship reduced its speed two days later to only two knots/hr after encountering several technical problems which forced it to stop in Port Sudan. "Reducing the speed is likely to increase the period of the journey to more than 11 days," Saad said.
