Owner of Baltimore Ship That Crashed Had Vessels Cited for Labor Violations

Ships belonging to the same company whose container vessel crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday have been cited in recent years for labor violations, which include underpaying ship crews and holding crew members on board for months past their contracts, according to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

In 2021, the authority detained the Western Callao, another ship formerly owned by the company, the Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd., after it found the management was in arrears paying 13 crew members and had kept them onboard the ship for more than 12 months, well beyond their nine-month contracts. In 2020, an inspection of the same ship in Australia found that eight sailors had been onboard it for more than 11 months.

Another ship owned by Grace Ocean, the Furness Southern Cross, had 10 seafarers onboard for more than 14 months. The infractions were “serious and shameful” violations of an international convention on maritime labor, Michael Drake, the executive director of operations for the authority, said at the time, in October 2021.

“This type of behavior is unethical and in complete contravention to the Maritime Labor Convention,” Mr. Drake said. “The international conventions that protect seafarers’ rights are very clear.”

Any factors about the crew of the Dali, the Grace-owned container ship that crashed into the Key Bridge, including fatigue, will likely be among the many items the National Transportation Safety Board examines as it looks for the cause or causes of the crash.

Grace Ocean owns 55 ships, according to Equasis, a public database of ship information. While global companies such as Maersk charter the vessels, the owners and the ship managers are generally responsible for managing the crew and maintaining the ships. The management company for the Dali, Synergy Marine, was not the company managing the two vessels cited by Australia.