Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
Via:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_965656,00050002.htm
Sri Lanka court holds back Indian ship, seeks $5mn in damages
They better hope the cargo is valuable; otherwise they will
own one rusting hulk and have to deal with it.
David Lesher wrote:
They better hope the cargo is valuable; otherwise they will
own one rusting hulk and have to deal with it.
It's a break bulk ship - a large container vessel for shipping extra large or awkwardly sized cargo like coal / fertilizer / oil pipes etc
Built in 1978 and has seen real hard use every day it's been in service as far as I can see from googling out the marine registry
I'm sure its owners (the Shipping Corporation of India) would be happy to give them the ship for free.
Valuable? The consignment belongs to whoever consigned it, and I guess all the shipper has to do is to remove it from the impounded ship and book space on some other rust bucket. Should be fairly easy - those are fairly crowded waters.
srs
Did they arrest the crew? They have grounds on negligence
charges...
Tony
The crew of the ship for having dropped anchor presumably in defiance of
'Undersea cable, Do not anchor here' signs, or the telco for having sited
a critical communications cable near/beneath a busy port ?
...an alternative ISP would have made big bucks during those blockout
days using some satellite gear, no? 
Conceivably neither, if...
- the cable was in a well-charted cable area (equivalent to
"do not dig" easements on land which AFAIK are also present
in densely populated/high traffic areas)
AND
- the ship was dragging anchor because of severe weather
forcing it toward shoals or other ships (i.e. safety of
ship and crew)
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