Bulk Carrier Ocean Winner Sinks in Bay of Bengal With 22 Crew Missing

The Panama-flagged bulk carrier Ocean Winner sank in the Bay of Bengal on August 21, 2026, leaving 22 of its 24 crew missing. Two were pulled from the water. The rest have not been found.

The vessel left Paradip Port on India's Odisha coast a day earlier. It was carrying roughly 72,000 tonnes of iron ore fines bound for China. At some point on the evening of August 21, it developed a severe list and went under in approximately eight minutes, according to the two people who survived.

Those two were spotted on a life raft by an Indian Navy patrol aircraft and recovered by a passing vessel. The crew of 24 included 20 Chinese nationals, three from Myanmar, and one Bangladeshi.

India's Coast Guard and Navy launched a joint search and rescue operation across the Bay of Bengal, centred around 240 nautical miles off Paradip. By late August 24, no further survivors had been found.

Iron ore fines are classified as a Group A bulk cargo under international maritime rules. That classification exists because, in certain conditions, the cargo can liquefy. When moisture content is too high, vibration from a vessel's engines causes the fine particles to lose their solid structure, behaving suddenly like a fluid and displacing the ship's centre of gravity. Whether that happened aboard Ocean Winner is the main question investigators are now looking at.

The ship was built in 1998, registered in Panama, and had a deadweight tonnage of 72,928.