Relief to Crew Stuck for 4 Months in Cargo ship Off the coast of Georgia
Since April, the Newlead Castellano, with a crew on board, has been anchored off the Georgia coast, near Savannah. The crew is stuck on board since they don’t have the right immigration papers to come ashore.
On Monday, the Newlead Castellano was auctioned off — a Connecticut-based company placed the winning bid of $7.4 million, said Alan Swimmer, the president of National Maritime Services.
Once a court approves the sale, the new owner will take over the ship — that should be within the next week or so. Then the crew will be able to leave.
Swimmer’s company will be responsible for repatriating the crew. “Due to their immigration status that will require that we have guards escort them to their international flight,” he says.
“At this point, they haven’t been on land in quite a while,” Swimmer says. “I think they’ll be happy to go home.”
The cargo ship had been seized by U.S. marshals because its owners had stopped paying on their loans. The ship would be sold to pay off those debts — a process “similar in concept” to a home foreclosure, says attorney Todd Baiad, who represents the lenders.
“Because it’s a movable object, there’s some intricacies involved,” he explains. “And, you know, you’ve got crew members.”
In fact, the owners of the Newlead Castellano — NewLead Holdings, of Greece — hadn’t just been skipping out on loan payments. They also hadn’t been paying the ship’s crew for months.
When the ship was stopped by the marshals, the owners could have put down money as security and allowed the ship to continue on its scheduled route as the legal process worked itself out. That’s what normally happens, Baiad says.
Instead, the owners let the ship, and crew, sit at anchor.
As the legal fight played out, the sailors were paid wages that Baiad delivered. And they were provided with food and water through a court-appointed custodian, National Maritime Services, which was responsible for the safety of Baiad, who visited the ship several times during its months-long mooring, says the stranded crew asked for one thing in particular. He found himself calling up his parish priest:
“I contacted Father [Brett] Brannen and I said, ‘This may sound like an unusual request, but do you have any interest in going to minister to these sailors?’ “
The pastor wound up making the trip offshore not just once, but several times over the course of the summer.
Now, the months of waiting might be about to end.
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Source: NPR
