Finland Detains Suspected Sabotage Ship for Serious Maintenance Issues
Finland's transport ministry has completed a port state inspection of the tanker Eagle S, the vessel suspected of sabotaging five Baltic Sea cables with its anchor on Christmas Day. After finding serious deficiencies, the agency has detained the vessel, preventing it from leaving port until safety issues have been corrected.
On December 25-26, Eagle S was boarded and detained by Finnish police on suspicion of severing four fiber-optic cables and one power cable by dragging its anchor. The tanker was diverted to Finnish waters, taken into custody and moved to a secure anchorage for inspection by criminal investigators. The safety inspection was a separate administrative procedure and began after the police process was well under way.
During the weeklong inspection off Porvoo, Traficom identified no less than 32 deficiencies aboard the aging Russia-linked tanker. The discoveries aligned with previous reports about the vessel's poor material condition: an independent vetting examination found dozens of problems aboard last year, according to Lloyd's List, and the tanker's last two port state control inspections turned up nearly three dozen more.
Traficom announced Tuesday that it has detained Eagle S for three of the 32 newly-identified problems. These "serious" issues relate to shipboard fire safety, navigation equipment and ventilation of the pump room. Other issues related to accommodations, electrical safety and general maintenance, as well as SMS deficiencies - a category identified in the last two inspections as well.
"The vessel has such deficiencies that it is not permitted to operate on it until the deficiencies are corrected. Correcting the deficiencies will require repair assistance from outside the vessel and will take time," says Sanna Sonninen, Finland's Director of Maritime Affairs.
Traficom's administrative detention ensures more time for police investigators to sweep the ship and question the crew, without the risk that a court order might allow the tanker to leave Finnish waters - an order that Eagle S's owner has sought. So far, Finland's courts have upheld the right of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to hold the ship and continue its work. There are other barriers to departure: eight crewmembers have been served with travel bans for suspected criminal activity; the ship's cargo has been impounded for a customs investigation; a subsea cable operator has sued to seize the ship for civil damages; and - in the most definitive detention measure possible - Eagle S may soon be trapped by Baltic ice until the spring thaw, depending on weather.
So far, Finnish police have found strong technical indications that Eagle S caused the cable breaks. The tanker's AIS track lined up with the time and place of the cable outages. It was missing an anchor when it was boarded, and the anchor was later recovered from the bottom, heavily damaged, near the end of a 50-mile-long drag track. A dive inspection revealed that the tanker's hull has patches of newly missing paint near the bow, a possible sign of recent anchor chain contact.
Maritime security experts have expressed strong doubt that the damage could have been accidental, and suspicions immediately turned to Russian intelligence. The Eagle S is an identified part of the Russia-serving "dark fleet" of irregular tankers, and it was the third vessel in 15 months suspected of severing a subsea cable while headed to or from a Russian port. More broadly, European counterintelligence agencies have been combating a wave of Russian-backed arson and sabotage operations across the EU for more than a year.
Against this backdrop, Finland's security services have attracted praise for swift action in detaining the tanker. Unlike the last two cable-damage incidents, the suspect ship was diverted and seized before it could continue on its commercial voyage - even though it was operating in international waters, outside of Finland's legal jurisdiction. Finnish authorities say that the tanker crew voluntarily changed course towards Finland when requested; at an unspecified point during this evolution, a tactical boarding operation involving the Finnish armed forces and an elite Finnish police team occurred.
"We should make it clear to the Russians that anytime there's an accident like this, we are going to impound the vessel that was involved," said former US Army Commander in Europe Ben Hodges in an interview this week. "Until they get punched in the nose, until we make them stop, they will continue doing this. And it only gets worse until we act."
Dark Fleet Tanker Might Have Damaged More Subsea Lines if Not Stopped
Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has found and recovered the missing anchor from the "dark fleet" tanker Eagle S, which is suspected of severing four subsea telecom cables and a high-voltage power cable in the Baltic on Christmas Day. The next step in the investigation is to determine when it came loose - before or after the authorities asked the Eagle S to raise the anchor it was dragging on the bottom.
On Dec. 25, Fingrid's EstLink 2 power transmission cable and four subsea telecom cables suddenly broke down. The outages corresponded to the position of the tanker Eagle S; Finland dispatched a police tactical team in a helicopter and asked Eagle S to divert, and the crew agreed to comply.
In a sonar survey after the casualty, a drag line of about 50 nautical miles in length was found on the bottom. Eagle S' anchor was discovered at the end of the line, near the Porkkala Peninsula, and Swedish military salvors helped raise it to the surface on Sunday night.
Track of the anchor drag line and the location of the lost anchor (sonar image courtesy NBI)
The location where the damaged anchor was recovered happened to be near the place where Finnish authorities instructed Eagle S to raise her anchor. This is of interest to the authorities, as it raises questions about whether the incident could have been worse without government intervention. The tanker's onward route would have passed over the Estlink 1 power cable, as well as the Balticconnector gas line.
"If the anchor only came loose during the hoisting, it is likely that the anchor could have caused further damage to the seabed infrastructure if the vessel had continued its journey," Detective Superintendent Risto Lohi of the National Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
New images released by the NBI show that the anchor's crown is cracked, and its flukes are much shorter than typical. Previous photos of the Eagle S - taken in years past, when she operated under a previous name - show that the tanker was originally equipped with normal Hall- or Speck-type anchors, like most merchant ships.
Courtesy NBI
Suspected Sabotage Ship's Anchor Shows Signs of Extreme Damage
Finnish and Swedish authorities have recovered the lost anchor of the dark fleet tanker Eagle S, the vessel suspected of severing four fiber-optic cables and a power cable in the Gulf of Finland on Christmas Day.
"The location where the anchor was found is along the Eagle S’s route, near the Porkkala Peninsula. The anchor was located towards the western end of the drag trace found on the seabed, near the point where the trace ends," said Detective Superintendent Risto Lohi of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
Officials suspect that Eagle S dragged its anchor under power for about 50 nautical miles along the bottom of the Baltic, dredging up and severing five cables. It was the third such incident in 15 months, following similar cable casualties involving the Chinese vessels Newnew Polar Bear and Yi Peng 3.
On Sunday night, with the help of the Swedish submarine rescue vessel HMS Belos, Finnish authorities located the anchor off Porkkala Peninsula in 80 meters of water. Preparations for the recovery began, and the anchor was raised to the surface at about 1700 hours Monday.
ROV sonar imaging of the anchor (Finnish Border Guard)
ROV prepares to rig the anchor for hoisting (Finnish Border Guard)
The recovered anchor on the deck of the Belos (courtesy Finnish Border Guard)
As in the case of the Newnew Polar Bear, the Eagle S's anchor showed signs of extreme damage. At least one fluke is broken off and missing (above); the location of the break has worn and rounded edges, indicating abrasion after the break occurred. A large crack is visible on the crown (image at top).
Maritime security experts have expressed little doubt that the anchor-drag incident was intentional, given how many manual tasks would have to be performed and then overlooked by the crew to cause it by accident. Local investigators agree: Finland has detained the vessel for a criminal investigation and issued travel bans to eight crewmembers who are suspected of criminal activity.
To execute this maneuver by accident, the Eagle S's crew would have to slow down and pay out the right length of anchor chain, then secure it to prevent it from running out all the way under extreme loads. This sequence would have to happen while making way in a busy sea lane, next to submarine cable crossings - factors that firmly rule out a normal anchoring evolution. Then, over the course of a 50-mile transit, they would have to fail to notice the effects of the anchor dragging on the bottom. Dragging typically causes vibration of the chain at the hawsepipe - vibration that would likely be extreme when dragging under power at nine knots, a load severe enough to damage the anchor.
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