Ship Plans Emergency Stop; Stowaways May Be Trapped

A San Pedro-bound ship planned an emergency stop in Alaska late Wednesday to investigate a pounding noise heard from a container deep within its hold. It is feared the noise came from one or more stowaways trapped inside.

Crew members of the MV Manoa, en route from China and other points in Asia, said that they heard the pounding Sunday night during a power outage aboard the ship but had not been able to elicit any response from inside the 40-foot container since then.

But with Chinese smuggling rings increasingly using cargo containers to transport people to the United States, officials of the shipping company and the agency said they considered it likely that Chinese nationals would be discovered when the boat docks and the container is opened.

“The captain believes that one of the containers has human beings inside,” said Robert Eddy, Alaska district director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which sent officials to meet the ship upon its arrival in the fishing port of Dutch Harbor.

The boat was expected to enter port around 11 p.m. PDT, but it was not clear how long it would take to determine whether anybody is inside the container.

The ship, leased by an Oakland company, left port Aug. 27 from Quingdao, China, home of a number of gangs known for smuggling Chinese desperate for work into the United States. Since February 1999, 306 people have been discovered inside containers in the holds of cargo ships arriving from Asia in ports in California and Washington state. Three were dead.

A crew member on the MV Manoa heard the pounding after a lengthy power outage silenced the refrigeration units that cool some of the containers. The crew member traced the sound to an unrefrigerated container packed underneath a stack of about 35 others near the middle of the ship, Eddy said.

As other crew members gathered around, one pounded on the container with a hammer. They heard more tapping in response, Eddy said.

The crew cut a small hole in the metal container but heard nothing more. All they could make out inside the container were rows of cardboard boxes. The ship’s manifest said only that the container contained 30 tons of dry goods, Eddy said.

The container, one of 280 loaded at Quingdao, was packed so tightly among 2,700 others on the 861-foot vessel that opening it while the ship was at sea was impossible, said Jennifer Bronson, spokeswoman for the shipping company, American President Lines.

Although the captain could have ordered the crew to cut a larger hole in the container, he opted not to do so, citing concerns about the safety of his crew and electing to wait until the ship reached land, Bronson said.

As the ship sped toward the Aleutian Islands port, the crew dropped packets of food and water inside and set up a ventilation system to pump air into the container, Bronson said.

“While this kind of thing has been happening more and more, what is unusual is to be aware of potential stowaways while the ship is in transit,” Bronson said. “To have the knowledge that there could be someone alive in a container, well, there’s a responsibility and a concern to respond to that.”

In many of the cases of smuggling aboard container ships, Chinese nationals were discovered inside containers that were stocked with ladders, lights, provisions, human waste receptacles, and, in one case, a cellular telephone.

“The smuggling of aliens by Chinese smuggling syndicates by container is in vogue right now,” Eddy said. “It is often a quite sophisticated setup.”

Immigration, Customs and Coast Guard officials all planned to meet the ship when it arrives in port, Eddy said. An ambulance was also to be on hand.

“Every precaution is being taken to ensure safety should migrants be on board,” said Nancy Cohen, a spokeswoman for the INS in Washington.

The boat is owned by Matson Navigation Co. of San Francisco and was chartered by American President Lines to take on cargo at a number of Asian ports, Bronson said.

If illegal immigrants are found inside the container, they would be given medical attention and then be detained by the INS. They could be granted political asylum or deported, Eddy said.