Dominican Republic-Flagged Cargo Ship Sinks in Romania’s Black Sea EEZ After Reported Strike

A cargo ship went down in Romanian waters on Thursday evening. All twelve crew members made it off alive.

The Dominican Republic-flagged PROGRESS IV was approximately fifteen miles south-east of Sfântu Gheorghe when Romanian authorities received a distress alert at 17:55. Within hours, rescue vessels SAR Ares, SAR Artemis, ARSVOM and the Border Police ship MAI 0201 reached the area. Waves were running at about two and a half metres, making the operation difficult. Border Police recovered ten sailors; a nearby merchant vessel, the Mohamad B, picked up the remaining two. One crew member was injured.

Romania's president, Nicuşor Dan, confirmed the ship had been struck. "The vessel was hit, and it seems to have sunk," he said on August 27. "But for the moment we do not know by whom, by what kind of..." He called for restraint, urging the public not to circulate speculation while an investigation gets underway.

The incident unfolded against an uneasy backdrop. Earlier the same day, Romanian radar picked up an unidentified aerial object roughly 33 kilometres north of Snake Island. Spanish F-18s attached to NATO's air-policing mission were scrambled. The day before, drone debris had turned up in both Romania and Bulgaria.

No attacker has been named. Investigators have not said what struck the PROGRESS IV or confirmed whether the vessel sank entirely.

The Black Sea has seen a run of commercial shipping casualties in recent weeks. Five drones destroyed the grain carrier Anna S off Novorossiysk less than two weeks ago, with all twenty-one crew rescued. Days earlier, a Ukrainian drone struck the tanker Skiros at a Black Sea crude terminal, sparking a fire before the vessel could clear the berth.

MarineRadar has seen active vessel-tracking in the western Black Sea and Turkish Straits corridor over the past 48 hours.