It was still early morning on December 21, but those working the day shift on the Bella 1 oil tanker had been on duty for several hours. As daylight broke, sailors went about their routine tasks, some checking the engine, others keeping watch on deck.
There were 28 men on board, most from Ukraine, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. Many were experienced seamen, but few had sailed on a ship like the Bella 1 before. At more than 330m long, the supertanker could carry around two million barrels of crude. It was so big it could only dock in a handful of ports worldwide.
Years of service had left their mark on the ship. When one young sailor stepped on deck for the first time, he had been unnerved to find that rust “crunched underfoot like snow”. Still, as the vessel had left the Gulf and sailed along the Suez Canal to pick up its new cargo, he’d grown accustomed to life on the Bella 1. The ageing tanker was a lot of work, but “nothing our guys can’t fix”, said Konstantin. (Like the other sailors in this article, he asked us not to use his real name in order to avoid future repercussions.)