‘A moving target’: Two Canadian ships anxious to leave Gulf after almost five months

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MONTREAL — A Canadian shipping firm has repeatedly had to postpone plans to exit the Strait of Hormuz after nearly five months trapped in the Persian Gulf, where a battle for control of the key transit route has flared up anew.

Quebec-based Desgagnés’s two freighter ships are the only known Canadian commercial vessels that were stuck in the Gulf when the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February.

Desgagnés vice-president Pascal Larose says U.S. Navy officials in Bahrain have provided him with a route to steer clear of mines and pledged a measure of protection come departure day, but the “danger zone” will take 12 hours to sail through. With the resumption of tit-for-tat hostilities, the timing is now anyone’s guess.

“It’s a moving target,” Larose said in a phone interview, stating that the exit hinges on American military authorities. “We’re going through their recommendation.”

Early last week, the company had aimed to have at least one of its freighters leave the region within seven days. That never came to pass. Even as the Middle East conflict ramped up, Desgagnés held out hope for an imminent voyage. None has been scheduled so far.

“It’s kind of changing every day,” Larose said.

A fresh round of fighting between America and Iran has put any plans for departure on hold.

Over the past week, U.S. forces said they hit more than 300 targets in Iran, including military speedboats near the strait. More attacks followed on Tuesday. A day earlier, Iran’s military said it had launched another barrage of strikes aimed at U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait as well as sites in Oman and Jordan.

With his path out of the conflict unclear, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday he was reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports and demanding a 20 per cent tariff for all cargo shipped through the critical waterway, which typically carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

The would-be toll echoed previous threats that have failed to materialize and contradicted the administration’s earlier line that no state should charge fees for passage through open seas, a pillar of international maritime law. Trump reversed course on the tolls Tuesday morning, saying that Gulf states will instead make investment and trade deals with the U.S.

For Desgagnés, the prolonged shutdown of the passage has been “very costly,” Larose said.

The company had to lease a pair of freighters to replace the trapped vessels and plug the hole in its 24-boat fleet. “When you charter a ship like that, your margin is very minimal, if not negative.”

The two sidelined ships — the Miena Desgagnés and the Rosaire A. Desgagnés — had been transporting general cargo from Europe to ports in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates when they passed through the strait in the week leading up to the outbreak of war in late February, Larose said.

Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod said the government has “remained in regular contact with an affected Canadian company” that has ships stuck in the Gulf. Officials are providing it with updates periodically, she said in an email.

From March through May, the ships sat “frozen,” bobbing side by side in the Persian Gulf northeast of the Saudi Arabian port city of Jubail.

Larose described the ordeal as “stressful” for the 34 crew members — 17 per ship, plus three trainees from Quebec’s maritime institute who were pulled out in March. None of the remaining sailors were Canadian.

“We didn’t experience any immediate threat. There was no drone attack or missiles towards us,” he said. “We were really careful in choosing where to anchor.”

In May, the mariners briefly docked in Dubai to take on more food, water and fuel, leaving them self-sufficient for two more months.

They had expected from the outset to be on board until mid-June. Nonetheless, by early last month “they were tired,” Larose said.

Most of the original crew members went home to the Philippines and Ukraine several weeks ago, with replacement crews now anxious to leave the area.

In June, after idling for more than three months, the freighters found work within the Gulf hauling a metallic powder used in steel production.

The dangers of braving passage through the strait are real.

Since the U.S. and Iran signed an interim deal on June 17 and Trump told the “Ships of the World” to “start your engines,” Iran has attacked at least five vessels along Oman’s coast, with the U.S. launching retaliatory strikes as the corridor proves an ongoing point of contention. The dispute lies largely in whether vessels have the right to pass through shipping channels closer to Oman rather than only the lanes near Iranian shores.

Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation, said the recent escalation represents a “micro version” of the conflict at its peak in March.

“This is an eerie sense of déjà vu, which in many ways demonstrates that tenuous peace arrangement was always very fragile,” he said in a phone interview from London.

The on-again, off-again hostilities that followed the now-shattered ceasefire also undermine any sense of consistency, crucial to smooth trade.

“That is the primary concern that these vessels have. They can travel on a Monday completely unhindered. But that doesn’t mean that the same thing can happen on a Tuesday,” Gohel said.

Since late May, the U.S. has quietly guided some commercial vessels through the strait, providing air cover along a route that hugs the Omani coast.

With their transponders turned off to avoid detection, most ships that sail through the strait do so only after a high-stakes decision-making process involving ship owners, charterers, insurance companies, crews and the U.S. Navy.

Traffic through the waterway has fallen off in recent days after climbing in late June. When Iran declared the strait closed on July 12, transits that day dropped to just 11, the lowest number since June 14, according to S&P Global’s Commodities at Sea, which provides data on trade flows.

As for the two Desgagnés ships, once they finally depart the region, they may not return.

“There’s a good chance we’ll say no. We’ll go elsewhere,” Larose said.

“The hurt is big enough.”

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press