The crew of a Dutch-registered 1,349 teu containership called Escape have been evacuated after a fire ripped through the vessel transiting the Baltic Sea yesterday morning.
All 15 crewmembers were safely rescued by another ship, the Kairit, after boarding a lifeboat just in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The JR Shipping-controlled ship was heading from from Lithuania to Latvia when a fire broke out in the engine room with the Latvian coastguard saying the fire has since died down.
“What we see are burn marks or soot marks on the hull of the ship, so we can conclude that the fire tried to escape either through the ventilation shafts or through the chimneys, but fortunately did not ignite the hull itself and died out naturally, a spokesperson for the Latvian coastguard told local media.
Two tugs have been dispatched with a salvage company contracted to secure the ship.
