A fire that broke out on the car-carrying cargo ship Fremantle Highway just before midnight Tuesday continued to burn Thursday morning, according to the Netherlands’ coast guard.
The burning boat was floating in the North Sea off the Dutch coast near the Wadden Sea UNESCO world heritage site, which is important to several species of birds, aquatic mammals and fish.
The Panama-registered vessel owned by the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha was carrying 2,857 cars, about 25 of them electric.
The Fremantle Highway was sailing out of the German port of Bremerhaven on the way to the Suez Canal in Egypt and from there to Singapore. Efforts by crew members to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful.
On Wednesday, one crew member died in the blaze, with the other crew members being disembarked and evacuated. The extent of the injuries to the surviving crew members was not specified by Dutch authorities.
While the Netherlands Coast Guard said 23 crew members had gotten off the boat, Shoei Kisen Kaisha’s website indicated that the vessel has a crew of 21 Indian nationals in total. India’s embassy in the Netherlands also indicated there were 21 of the country’s citizens aboard to begin with, one of whom died.
Neither the decedent’s cause of death nor the cause of the conflagration has been determined by Dutch authorities. The coast guard posted video footage of the fire on YouTube Wednesday.
A recovery vessel has stayed connected to the Fremantle Highway in order to keep the burning boat in place. Efforts to cool the boat were halted Thursday morning, as the constant influx of water threatened the stability of the ship, the coast guard said.
Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story misstated the nationalities of the surviving crew members.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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