The Brillante Virtuoso is a VLCC - crude oil tanker of the Greek shipping company Central Mare Inc. in Athens. The ship caught fire on 6 July 2011 with a full load of crude oil after an alleged pirate attack off the coast of Yemen .
history
The double-hull tanker with a measurement of 80,569 GT was built in 1991/92 as St. Romuald at the South Korean shipyard of Samsung Heavy Industries and since then has seen several changes of owner, name and flag. Since November 2008 the ship has been owned by Suez Fortune Investments Ltd in Majuro (Marshall Islands) under the name Brillante Virtuoso . Since February 13th, 2009 the ship has been looked after by the shipping company Central Mare Inc., which is based in Athens.
In July 2011, the ship was on its way from Kerch in the Ukraine to Qingdao in the People's Republic of China with a cargo of around 150,000 tons of crude oil . In the early morning hours of July 6, 2011, was Brillante Virtuoso allegedly attacked off the coast of Yemen by pirates with rocket launchers, as they approach the port of Aden approached where they unarmed guards for the pirates threatened passage through the Gulf of Aden to take on board should. Due to the incident about 20 nautical miles south of Aden, the superstructure of the tanker caught fire. After the completely Filipino crew failed to bring the fire under control, they made an emergency call and, with the exception of one man, left the burning ship in a lifeboat . The 25 men of the crew in the lifeboat were then taken over by the US guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) , and the crew member remaining on board the burning tanker was rescued from the burning ship. The damaged ship was initially burning and without a drive near the position 12 ° 29'N; 044 ° 44'E, later two tugs were added and the fire was extinguished. Then the ship was 16 nautical miles from the coast at position 12 ° 29'N; 044 ° 46'E anchored to record damage and other measures.
A London court later dealt with the case again and published a judgment in early October 2019 according to which the alleged pirate attack was only faked. Judge Nigel Teare's statement of reasons stated: "I have established that, in the present case, a group of armed men were allowed on the instructions of the owner to board the ship and set it on fire as part of the owner's attempt to commit fraud. "
