Angoche affair

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The Angoche affair is an as yet unsolved marine casualty involving the Portuguese coaster Angoche, presumably on April 24, 1971 off the coast of what was then the Portuguese colony of Mozambique . The 23-person crew and one passenger have been lost to this day.

The journey of the Angoche

The Angoche was an 81.65 meter long coaster with a measurement of 1689 GRT, completed in July 1958 in Lisbon by the Companhia União Fabril . The ship was originally built by the resident also in Lisbon Companhia Nacional de Navegação bereedert and their in Lourenco Marques (now early 1971 Maputo -based) subsidiary Companhia de Moçambicana Navegação transmitted.

On April 23, 1971, the Angoche left the port of Nacala at around 5 p.m. with the aim of calling at Porto Amélia (today Pemba ), a good 200 km north . The ship had a crew of 23 men:

  1. Captain Adolfo Bernardino
  2. First Officer (Imediato): João Silva Tavares
  3. Radio operator : Raúl Toementa
  4. Chief engineer : António Sardo
  5. 1st machinist: João Pascoal
  6. 2nd machinist: Floriano Anjos Maties
  7. Electrician: Jose Gonçalves Coelho
  8. Boatswain (Contra-Mestre): José Estrala
  9. Paymaster (Despenseiro): Francisco Lourenço.

14 other Mozambican seamen were not named in the press. An unknown passenger was still on board. The cargo consisted of weapons , ammunition and aviation fuel for the Portuguese armed forces in the north of the colony, which were operating against FRELIMO units as part of the Portuguese colonial war . In fact, the Angoche was an arms carrier in a war zone.

Since it was a routine trip under good weather conditions despite the military cargo, the Angoche was expected in Porto Amélia on the morning of the next day, April 24, 1971. When she had not yet arrived in the afternoon and radio contact could not be established, a search was initiated in which coastal defense boats, units of the Marinha Portuguesa and aircraft took part. Due to the planned course of the Angoche , however, only the sea area north of the port of departure Nacala was searched.

The search was unsuccessful in the two days that followed. Neither the ship nor lifeboats or objects that could be attributed to the Angoche were sighted .

The Angoche as a rescue case

On April 26, 1971, was Angoche good km south of Nacala 200 from under the Panamanian flag propelled tanker Esso Port Dickson under the command of the Italian encountered Captain Aquini drifting with whipped page. Her stern was badly damaged in a fire.

Aquini had the coaster examined by a rescue team who could only determine that there were no more crew members on board, only a dog and a cat. One lifeboat had been destroyed by the fire, a second slightly damaged, but quite ready for action. Aquini took the Angoche in tow because of the expected mountain pay, but did not notify the Portuguese authorities, although he had apparently learned of the search for the missing ship through radio communications, nor did he take part in the search for any survivors.

As it turned out, that the trip of the tanker has been significantly delayed by the tow, he demanded from Cape Town to salvage tug Baltic in Hamburg based ship-handling, shipping companies and salvage company , which by the Esso Port Dickson the Angoche took on the high seas. However, the Baltic - Angoche tug was discovered by Portuguese units on May 2, 1971, stopped and the Angoche was confiscated. The wreck was towed to Lourenço Marques and examined by the authorities. In March 1972, the wreck of the Angoche was sold to a scrapping company in Lourenço Marques.

International conflict

During the investigation it was found that the fire had been triggered by a powerful explosion in the engine room. Since the bridge , the radio room and the lifeboats as well as the engine room were also located in the aft ship area, the ship's command was apparently neither able to make an emergency call nor to have the lifeboats deployed. Presumably the crew fled to the forecastle first .

It was also found that the hatch covers of the forward hold had been forcibly broken open , as well as some rifle boxes . Apparently rifles had also been removed. A life raft and a lifebuoy were missing. In addition, boxes for mooring lines had been broken into and ropes removed that were no longer on board. In the second hatch the remains found of food, meals and drinking water, which would suggest, is that stowaways were arrested on board.

The Portuguese government and the dependent of her press claimed initially that the Angoche the victim of explosives attentats was the FRELIMO with the aim to sink the weapons charge. The Tanzanian government, which is cooperating with FRELIMO, was also suspected . However, both FRELIMO and the Tanzanian government vigorously denied these allegations. FRELIMO pointed out that the inner-Portuguese resistance movement ARA ( Ação Revolucionaria Armada = Armed Revolutionary Action), which was subordinate to the Partido Comunista Português , had already carried out several attacks on military installations in Portugal.

In fact, shortly before, on March 8, 1971, the ARA attacked an air force base in Tancos, destroying 24 planes and helicopters. But the ARA, which consistently made sure that no personal injury occurred during its attacks, denied any involvement in the Angoche misfortune , especially the kidnapping of the crew.

While Beijing Radio claimed in early May 1971 that the crew had been hijacked by a Soviet submarine , the South African press announced on May 8, 1971 that the ship had been attacked by pirates and that survivors were in Dar es Salaam . This news was taken over by the German press, according to the Hamburger Abendblatt .

On May 22, 1971, however, the Portuguese government officially announced that despite international investigations, including the involvement of the Red Cross, there were no signs of the occupation's survival. The official version adopted was a mutiny with a catastrophic outcome, without it being possible to clarify what happened to the occupation.

Even after the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and Mozambique's independence in 1975, no new evidence emerged in the case. In 1979 published research Caso “Angoche” mais um crime impune (“The case 'Angoche' more than an unpunished crime”) by the Portuguese journalist Metzner Leone could only be recorded as a new moment that the Portuguese secret service PIDE in March 1974, so a few weeks before the Carnation Revolution, had destroyed a secret report on the incident. Until today (2021) there is no trace of the crew of the Angoche and the unknown passenger.

See also

literature

  • Klaus Reuter: Angoche. The ghost ship from Mozambique. In: Klaus Reuter: Typhoons, drifting, ghost ships. Hoch-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-7779-0212-8 , pp. 85-94.
  • The secret of the "ghost ship". In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 8, 1971.
  • Crew missing. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 22, 1971.
  • Shipping: Only cats and dogs on board. In: Der Spiegel . 21/1971, May 17, 1971.;
  • Metzner Leone: Caso “Angoche” mais um crime impune. Intervenção, Lisbon, 1979, OCLC 55803504 .
  • Raimundo Narciso: ARA. Acção Revolucionária Armada a história secreta do braço armado do PCP. Publ. Dom Quixote, Lisbon 2000, ISBN 972-20-1842-6 .

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