Ships change flag to avoid Houthi attacks

NOS News•today, 05:58

Shipping companies are changing the flag their cargo ships fly to prevent attacks in the Red Sea. This is evident from figures from the maritime information company Windward. Western ship owners hope that this way they will not be noticed by Houthis. Dutch ships seem to mainly avoid the Red Sea.

Since November last year, Houthis from Yemen have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza. In February, such a rocket attack sank a ship carrying fertilizer. A month later, three crew members were killed after an attack on a cargo ship.

Major shipping companies began avoiding the inland sea between northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the fastest passage from the Indian Ocean to Europe, late last year. In the first quarter of this year, 86 percent fewer ships from the German container giant Hapag-Lloyd sailed in the area.

China’s Cosco and Japan’s One have also only sent a small part of their fleet via the Red Sea since the attacks began.

The same applies to shipping companies that sail their ships under the Dutch flag. In 2023, an average of 13 to 14 ships with a Dutch flag per month passed through Bab al-Mandab (the narrow end of the Red Sea near Yemen). At the beginning of this year, there were only an average of two per month.

It is obvious that most ships detoured via the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of Africa. The number of container ships that sailed past it more than doubled.

But not everyone wants to take a seven to ten day detour to ship goods from Europe to Asia or vice versa. Shipping companies are also looking for methods to sail through the Red Sea, but not to be noticed.

The two largest container shipping companies – the Italian MSC and the Danish Maersk – do divert ships, but their activity in the Red Sea decreased much less at the beginning of this year than its competitors.

Something different stood out during the same period. Maersk and MSC ships turn off their AIS systems much more often, making ships more difficult to track from shore. “This indicates that they have chosen a different method to protect themselves from Houthi attacks,” Windward wrote.

Another way is to change flags. Each ship registers with a country’s shipping register and sails under the flag of that country. Ships that frequently sail through the Red Sea have visited a new register remarkably often in recent months, which means their flag is changing.

In particular, ships flying flags of Western countries that the Houthis see as coalition partners of Israel chose a different flag, often of exotic flag states that conceal where the owner of the ship comes from.

For example, fifteen ships exchanged their Belgian flag for one from the Marshall Islands and seven ships that previously flew the Canadian flag opted for registration in Barbados in recent months.

Africa correspondent Elles van Gelder showed last month how ships send out a signal in the hope of not becoming the target of Houthi attacks:

With this app, cargo ships want to keep the Houthis at bay

Changing flags does not only happen to ships that want to pass through the Red Sea inconspicuously. Tankers that want to continue shipping oil from Russia unnoticed also often opt for so-called convenience flags from shipping registers far away from the actual owner.

Previously, the flags of Liberia and the Marshall Islands were particularly popular with these tankers. But since the United States has taken tougher action against sanctions evasion by ships registered in one of those two countries, part of the ‘shadow fleet’ – ships that sail under a different flag than the country they actually come from – has opted for other countries.

Windward’s figures show that the Gabon flag in particular has been popular since December among tankers that can be linked to Russia.