After months trapped in the Gulf, 11,000 seafarers start heading home

On 24 June, the first crews began leaving the Persian Gulf after months stuck at anchor. Many had been aboard since late winter, when traffic through the Strait of Hormuz seized up and there was nowhere safe to send the ships. The number of people now being moved out runs past 11,000.

They are not going home the easy way. The deep channel in the middle of the strait is still salted with mines, somewhere around 80 of them, and clearing it is expected to take six weeks or more. So the evacuation runs along two thin corridors instead, one hugging the Iranian side and one down along the Oman coast, both worked out with the countries on either shore.

Denmark has joined the effort, adding ships and coordination to a mission the International Maritime Organization is steering. The work is slow by design. Crews and pilots move on cleared lanes, in daylight, in order, because the alternative in mined water is not worth the time saved.

Cargo is starting to move again too. Tankers holding tens of millions of barrels of oil have slipped out since the route partly reopened, though the flow is far below what the strait carried before the closure. Captains describe it as a trickle rather than a rush, and nobody is treating the lanes as fully safe yet.

For the people on board, the math is simpler. After months of watching the same stretch of water, they are finally pointed at a port and a way off the ship.