A Mysterious Sinking | Lawless Oceans
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KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): I've asked my friend Lugs to help me take a look at the Ping Shin 101's last journey.
KARSTEN: Let's just go through this together because there are a couple of things I need some verification on. Ready?
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): As a former New Zealand Navy engineer, Lugs knows what it takes to sink a ship. So here's what I think it did. In July 2014, it went past Diego Garcia and then was intending to sail home all the way back to Taiwan. And in this part right here, in the middle of the Indian Ocean—furthest away from Ache, pretty far from Colombo, relatively far from Diego Garcia—on the 7th of July, 2014, it sank here, right? Yeah.
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This is the Australian Maritime Safety Agency, and they had a report out that the Ping Shin 101 suffered mechanical failure and that the crew was abandoning the vessel into life rafts. It depended on what the mechanical failure was.
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): Ships that lose power in heavy seas can capsize as they drift broadside to the current. Yet there's no talk of that in the report.
KARSTEN: You've had cases where ships have broken down with mechanical failure, and they just get towed into port.
LUGS: Yup.
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): But there's a second report from the rescue ship.
KARSTEN: They said that this ship experienced flooding in the engine room. Would one of these things sink just because the engine room floods? Don't you think that's a bit weird?
LUGS: It is. It is. Because they always use the engine room as a safe room for pirate attacks because you can lock it and seal it.
KARSTEN: You can lock it down, yeah. So it would be the same, right? It should be watertight. And why would that rupture? It would have to run aground or someone's done it on purpose.
LUGS: You mean someone scuttling the ship?
KARSTEN: Yeah.
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): I'm sure the rescuers only reported what the crew told them, but why the inconsistency?
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KARSTEN: The Taiwanese then say in their official report that the Ping Shin 101 grounded and started taking on water and sank. And I mean, this is where it sank right here, and in this immediate area, the nearest landmass—the nearest place where there is even a reef for this thing to ground on—was in Diego Garcia. And that's 470 nautical miles.
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): Diego Garcia is a British territory that's home to a major US military base. It seems unlikely that the Ping Shin would come close enough to shore to run aground.
KARSTEN: And even if the Ping Shin 101 grounded, is it feasible that they could have even sailed 470 nautical miles while taking on water?
LUGS: Yeah, there’s no way.
KARSTEN (VOICEOVER): The loss of the 101 is important. It was the key physical link to the killings. Normally, a homicide scene would have forensics—fingerprints, DNA. In this case, we only have video. And even the ship it was recorded on has gone.