There are fears that twelve seafarers manning the FWN Rapide general cargo vessel may have been taken by pirates within the West African sub region, Dutch company ForestWave, managers of the vessel,have said.

FWN Rapide has meanwhile been moved to a safe position by two of the remaining seafarers, who are reported to be safe and unhurt.

The Company states that “ForestWave would like to stress its main priority is to establish contact with the missing seafarers and secure their earliest and secure return. The company’s emergency response team is working around the clock and is liaising with the local and international authorities. ForestWave together with its local organizations are in close contact with the families of the valued seafarers to support them in these difficult times,”.

FWN Rapide is a 2005-built vessel flying the Dutch flag and was on its way from Takoradi, Ghana to Port Harourt, Nigeria went it came under attack.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has reported a rise in armed attacks against ships in the Western Africa since the beginning of this year. There have been 22 incidents recorded in Nigeria alone, of 66 reported incidents in the first quarter of this year.

Of the 11 vessels fired upon worldwide, eight were off Nigeria, including a 300,000 dwt VLCC tanker more than 40 nautical miles off Brass.

Meanwhile, Governments around the world are looking into unmanned shipping as a way to move more cargo to sea in order to contain the spiraling costs of road maintenance caused by heavy truck traffic, not to mention air pollution. Norway is one of the countries taking a lead in exploring this issue: Norwegian distribution and transportation companies need to be able to bridge the country’s many fjords and sea passages in order to ease transit, and cost is a key consideration in this. In 2016, Norwegian government agencies and industry bodies established the Norwegian Forum for Autonomous Ships (NFAS) to promote the concept of unmanned shipping and, in support of these efforts, the Norwegian government has turned Trondheim Fjord into a test bed for autonomous ship trials. Other nations, most notably Finland and Singapore, are pursuing similar goals.

DNV GL is heavily involved in this development, with a mission to ensure that the technologies that enable ships to operate autonomously will benefit human society and the environment: If we look at recent advances in driverless car technology, the thought of trying something similar with ships does not appear too far-fetched, said Sames. After all, water has at least one great advantage: there is less traffic than on roads and reaction times are usually longer. Automation reduces the potential for human error and, in addition, water transportation can be cheaper and more energy efficient than moving goods on land. DNV GL has initiated or is taking part in several autonomous operation projects and its ReVolt project is one example: here, using a 1:20 scale model of DNV GL’s concept vessel ReVolt, students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim are investigating how advanced control systems and navigation software could control an unmanned vessel and, once all aspects of t
he autonomous control technology are mature, how such a design could possibly be built and deployed as a feeder vessel on fixed routes in coastal waters.

Another project in which DNV GL is taking part is the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications initiative (AAWA) led by Rolls-Royce: this project is investigating a wide range of technological, safety, legal, economic and societal issues related to the development of commercial-scale unmanned shipping. At DNV GL, we are doing a lot of work to understand the potential risks that come with autonomous ship systems in order to set new standards for them, said Sames. We are already working on developing requirements to be able to test and classify unmanned vessels in the future. In one project nearing completion, Rolls-Royce is supplying automatic crossing systems for two DNV GL-classed double-ended, battery-powered vessels for Norwegian ferry operator Fjord1, scheduled for commissioning this year. The vessels will navigate autonomously under the supervision of a human captain who will be able to take over control of the ship at any time. One of these ferries will still require human-controlled berthing, but the other has been designed to be able to berth itself automatically.

There is no known African country thinking nor venturing into exploring possibilities in autonomous ships for now but as the days go by, it is not unlikely that Africa could key into this revolutionary programme.