American sailors were missing and five were injured after the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with a merchant vessel near the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, U.S. Navy officials said, making it the second destroyer accident in just over two months.
Search-and-rescue efforts are under way, thanks to ships and aircraft from Malaysia, Singapore and the U.S. In a statement, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet said four of the injured sailors were taken to a hospital in Singapore to treat non-life-threatening injuries. The fifth injured sailor doesn’t require additional medical attention. No fuel or oil is visible on the water’s surface near the McCain, it said, adding that initial reports show the ship sustained damage to its port side aft.
In Malaysia, Adm. Indera Zulkifili Abu Bakar, director-general of the maritime enforcement agency, said crew members from the McCain were reported to have fallen into the sea.
“The waves are from 0.5 to 1.5 meters, I consider that is quite rough,” the admiral said. “You have people on the water, it can be very challenging if you don’t have [a] life jacket.”
He added that he couldn’t comment on how the accident happened.
“Both vessels are coming from southern China,” he said. “I don’t want to speculate how the incident happened. This is [a] high traffic area, at the entrance of a traffic separation scheme.” He said about 80,000 vessels pass through the area every year.
On Monday afternoon, the Seventh Fleet said the McCain had arrived at Changi Naval Base. The merchant vessel, a nine-year-old oil-and-chemical tanker called the Alnic, is elsewhere in Singaporean waters, with a patrol vessel nearby.
The Alnic was also on its way to Singapore, scheduled to arrive at about 11 a.m. local time, according to VesselsValue, a maritime information provider. It departed a port on China’s northeast coastline on July 10 before traveling around the coast of South Korea. It then waited a few days for orders around Taiwan, then steamed southwest to Singapore.
Its last reported location was east of Singapore and Malaysia where ships enter and exit the busy straits. VesselsValue records indicate the oil tanker, a 600-foot tanker with a gross tonnage of 30,000, wasn’t holding cargo at the time of the collision.
VesselsValue data shows the Alnic is owned by Greece’s Brave Maritime Corp., which is owned by Greek shipping magnate Harry Vafias. Brave Maritime wasn’t immediately able to be contacted for comment.
Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority said the McCain requested tug assistance to move it to port after sustaining damage to its left side. The authority said one of the Alnic’s tanks was damaged above the waterline; it reported no injuries.
The damaged USS John S. McCain off Singapore on Monday. PHOTO: REUTERS
Ship collisions are extremely rare, even in congested waters like those around Singapore’s coast. But the accident comes days after the Navy released an initial report on the June 17 collision of the USS Fitzgerald, which hit a merchant ship, the ACX Crystal. Seven American sailors died in that accident, and the Fitzgerald’s captain, the executive officer and the senior enlisted sailor were relieved of command.
The McCain had just conducted a freedom-of-navigation operation in the South China Sea, navigating to within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, one of a chain of disputed islands.
Bryan McGrath, a former Navy destroyer captain, said: “Shocking is not the right word, it’s almost unbelievable,” reacting to news of the McCain accident.
Mr. McGrath said he didn’t have enough information to assess what might have happened.
“It raises questions about the readiness of those ships and whether or not they are navigating prudently in very crowded waters,” he said. “We’ve gone years since a collision [and] to have two, one after the other, is either a coincidence, which I’m willing to believe, or it’s a sign of something deeper, which I’m also willing to believe.”
Singaporean tug boats, patrol ships, helicopters and a police coast guard vessel were in the area to offer assistance to the McCain and the Alnic, according to the Seventh Fleet. In addition, American MV-22 Ospreys and SH-60 helicopters from the USS America were also responding. In a post on Twitter, the chief of Malaysia’s navy said Malaysian search-and-rescue teams had also responded.
The U.S. Navy maintains a close relationship with Singapore, an island nation of 5.6 million people placed strategically at the narrow Strait of Malacca, a narrow stretch of water between Malaysia and Indonesia is a major shipping gateway to Asia for vessels from the Middle East and the Indian Ocean.
Singapore agreed to allow the U.S. use of its military facilities as long ago as 1990, in an agreement that the two sides extended most recently in 2015. U.S. Navy vessels regularly stop in Singapore for maintenance and refueling, including ships that go on to conduct patrols that challenge Chinese and other maritime claims in the South China Sea.
“The waters near Singapore in the Straits of Malacca are a choke point in the most important shipping lanes in the world,” said David Adelman, the U.S. ambassador to Singapore from 2010 to 2013. “As tensions in the South China Sea have increased, the U.S. Navy’s role in the region has become more important than any time since the conclusion of the war in Vietnam.”
—Yantoultra Ngui in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this article.
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