U.S. seizes cargo ship in search for stowaways at New Jersey port
A cargo ship believed to be carrying stowaways was seized at a New Jersey port on Wednesday following stops in India and Egypt to pick up freight, but hours of initial searching found no sign of unauthorized passengers, U.S. authorities said, Reuters reports.
As of 01:30 a.m. British Time (0030 GMT), 18 hours into the search, 150 containers had been examined and no stowaways had yet been detected, but the special inspection was set to continue through the night, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Anthony Bucci.
The vessel was impounded after customs agents reported hearing sounds made by people coming from inside a container beneath a stack of several others in the ship's cargo hold, Coast Guard spokesman Charles Rowe said earlier.
According to the ship's manifest, the suspicious container had been loaded onto the vessel on June 7 in India and was carrying machine parts bound ultimately for Norfolk, Virginia.
Rowe said authorities determined the storage crate in question could not be opened in the hold, and instead began methodically unloading the ship's cargo in order to reach it.
At least seven ambulances waited most of the day outside Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, where dozens of containers were moved to the dock for inspection. Authorities knocked on the outside of each of the red, blue or gray containers, listening for noises, and opened and searched them.
Authorities did not say how many containers they planned to search. The Newark Star Ledger newspaper reported there were about 200 containers in the batch where noises were heard, and that it takes eight minutes to X-ray and inspect each container.
The ship, identified as the Cyprus-flagged vessel Ville D'Aquarius, was stopped at 8 a.m. British Time (0700 GMT) at a standard checkpoint for incoming ships -- the Ambrose Anchorage below the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York Harbor, Rowe said.
"The boarding team went aboard for a routine inspection. They heard sounds that were consistent with people being inside a container," Rowe said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the port, were notified. Federal authorities then rushed to receive the ship at the Newark dock, Rowe said.
The ship began its journey in the United Arab Emirates on May 30 and made a stop in Qasim, Pakistan, on June 2. It then made two stops in India, at Nhava Sheva on June 5 and Mundra on June 7, where the container in question was taken onboard, according to the manifest, Rowe said.
The ship stopped again in Egypt on June 15, then headed for Newark, with its final destination slated as Norfolk, Rowe said.