An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the rob­bery of a car­go ves­sel and its crew, af­ter armed men board­ed the ship while it was docked in the Port-of-Spain Har­bour over the week­end.

The ves­sel, the Sea Eliz­a­beth II, cap­tained by a Grena­di­an na­tion­al, ar­rived in Trinidad on April 12.

Re­ports in­di­cate that the cap­tain re­port­ed to the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fice at the Cari­com Jet­ty up­on ar­rival, be­fore dock­ing the ves­sel at the Mar­itime Preser­va­tion Lim­it­ed fa­cil­i­ty, ad­ja­cent to the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) To­ba­go ter­mi­nal. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ves­sel was sched­uled to un­der­go re­pairs and dry-dock­ing at the pri­vate­ly owned fa­cil­i­ty be­fore de­part­ing.

The cap­tain and two crew mem­bers, from St Vin­cent and Mal­ick, Barataria, re­mained on board.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the men were awak­ened around 10.30 pm af­ter 12 armed men board­ed the ves­sel from a pirogue that had come along­side. The as­sailants were re­port­ed­ly armed with firearms, cut­lass­es and ax­es.

The crew was robbed of sev­er­al cell­phones, jew­ellery, a GPS sys­tem val­ued at $16,000, a 100-pound oxy­gen tank, a 100-pound gas tank, an in­flat­able dinghy val­ued at $35,000, and a small en­gine val­ued at $20,000 be­fore the at­tack­ers es­caped.

The cap­tain lat­er re­port­ed that around 5 am on Mon­day, he ob­served an­oth­er pirogue ap­proach­ing the ves­sel. The oc­cu­pants al­leged­ly tied the stolen dinghy to their boat and left the area.

Up­on in­spec­tion, the crew dis­cov­ered the dinghy con­tained sev­er­al of the stolen items, in­clud­ing the en­gine, gas tank, a tur­bo com­po­nent, a black mo­tor and a red oil pump.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T yes­ter­day con­firmed it is aware of the in­ci­dent but said it oc­curred at a pri­vate dry-dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty and not with­in ar­eas un­der its op­er­a­tional con­trol.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Mar­itime Preser­va­tion Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial con­firmed the mat­ter was un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion and said the ves­sel and crew re­main docked in Port-of-Spain. The of­fi­cial de­clined to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.