The T&T Ex­press fast fer­ry which was sold in Feb­ru­ary sunk off the Azores on Sat­ur­day while en route to its new own­ers in Spain.

The in­for­ma­tion was con­firmed by in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping re­ports and al­so by Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan. He said he had seen the re­ports on the sink­ing. But he said the ves­sel does not be­long to T&T any­more since it was sold re­cent­ly.

Built in 1997 T&T Ex­press was bought by the Gov­ern­ment in 2006 for US$20 mil­lion. It was 91.3 me­tres long and 26 me­tres wide with a ca­pac­i­ty for 765 pas­sen­gers and 200 ve­hi­cles.

It served the To­ba­go seabridge for 12 years—along­side the T&T Spir­it—but was pulled from ser­vice in 2018 af­ter me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal is­sues. That year Gov­ern­ment stat­ed it would be sold “as is” since high main­te­nance cost es­ti­mat­ed at over US $7 mil­lion was need­ed to fix its is­sues. Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley had said then, the time was ripe to sell it. It was berthed at the POS port for two years af­ter.

In March this year, NID­CO chair­man Her­bert George was quot­ed as say­ing the ves­sel was sold for US$3 mil­lion. The con­tract was signed on Feb­ru­ary 25. It was re­port­ed to have been sold to a Span­ish book­ing trans­port/ve­hi­cle rental/mar­itime com­pa­ny, Ser­vi­cios Y Con­ce­siones Mar­iti­mas Ibi­cen­cas of Spain.

But the Fer­ry­balear mar­itime re­port stat­ed the T&T Ex­press had sunk ear­li­er, 800 miles from the Azores Is­lands, off Por­tu­gal.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed the fer­ry was re­cent­ly ac­quired by “Transmapi” and left T&T on April 11 towed by Monte Da Luz tug­boat. It was due to ar­rive in Vi­go, Spain, on May 3.

Transmapi is de­scribed in In­ter­net re­ports as a lead­ing fer­ry provider be­tween the is­lands of Ibiza and For­mentera in Spain.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed the tug­boat’s cap­tain con­firmed they had “lost their car­go” off the Azores.

The cause of the in­ci­dent was said to be un­known. The ar­ti­cle stat­ed Trasmapi is wait­ing for “them” to re­port since that com­pa­ny was re­spon­si­ble for the ship and its trans­fer from Port-of-Spain to its ar­rival in Vi­go.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that no da­ta was of­fered on the col­lapse of the ves­sel, but ma­te­ri­als that could have re­mained afloat were col­lect­ed and there was no type of spillage. They said the sit­u­a­tion was not rep­re­sent­ing any dan­ger to nav­i­ga­tion.

The ar­ti­cle said a de­tailed re­port was be­ing await­ed “with all the facts and ac­tions car­ried out by the shipown­er to avoid this mis­for­tune.” Some mariners com­ment­ing on the post said it was a “huge set­back” for Transmapi.

Op­po­si­tion MP Dave Tan­coo called for more in­for­ma­tion on the sale.

“We want to know if there was any con­tin­ued li­a­bil­i­ty on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment that may be as­so­ci­at­ed with T&T still. Al­so, was the sale pay­ment re­ceived?

“T&T Ex­press served T&T faith­ful­ly. It had, how­ev­er, de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to such as state due to Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to meet sched­uled main­te­nance and dry dock­ing, that it seems it was sold es­sen­tial­ly as scrap iron. Its sink­ing may be an omi­nous sign of the state of our coun­try un­der the present regime.“

NID­CO of­fi­cials were not avail­able for com­ment.