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THE UNLUCKIEST SHIP IN THE WORLD

SÃO TOMÉ AND PRÍNCIPE, SEPTEMBER 2015

As Peter Hammarstedt walks down towards the Palace of Justice in São Tomé, a light pink colonial building by the Ana Chavez Bay, he feels slightly uncomfortable. He is dressed in a black suit and tie, the only suit he owns. He found it in a dustbin in Söder in Stockholm and paid a tailor a few kroner to repair the lining. Five months after the shipwreck of the Thunder he will stand face to face with Luis Alfonso Rubio Cataldo for the first time. On the beach below the Palace of Justice he observes the remains of abandoned ships sticking up out of the sand like rusty bones.

Hammarstedt and Sea Shepherd’s photographer Simon Ager are the first to arrive at the courtroom. The tall windows and heavy wooden benches give the room the appearance of a church. Hammarstedt ponders over whether or not he should shake Cataldo’s hand but he believes the man may interpret this as a sarcastic gesture. He decides to refrain.

As Cataldo enters the courtroom, Simon Ager raises his camera. The Thunder captain rushes towards him but Ager wards off the attack by placing one hand against Cataldo’s chest. Then the Thunder captain continues towards Hammarstedt. With his chest pushed forward and clenched fists, he leans over him. Hammarstedt raises his hands above his head. In the background he hears Cataldo’s defence attorney scream and he leans back in his chair. The attack will appear even more violent if he demonstrates the he’s not going to defend himself, he thinks.

But the blow never comes; mumbling, Cataldo returns to the dock, where he sits staring into the shimmering hot and humid air.

During his testimony the Thunder shipmaster states that he feared for his life for 110 consecutive days.

“You were two days from port and you feared for your life. Why didn’t you go into land?” the judge asks.

“I had my orders.”

“But you are the one responsible for safety on board. For you that must be the most important thing?”

“I had my orders,” Cataldo repeats.

But he refuses to reveal whom his orders come from.

The judge shakes his head in resignation before asking the next question.

“Who do you work for?”

“I don’t know,” Cataldo replies.

After the first day of the trial, when Hammarstedt returns to the secluded bungalow by the beach, he notices that the hotel grounds are not properly fenced in. In his room he checks the window and wonders if he would hear it should somebody try to break it open.

After the incident earlier in the day, four policemen carrying MP5 machine pistols and wearing bulletproof vests stood guard in their respective corners of the courtroom. But on the way out, when Cataldo laid eyes on the Sea Shepherd activists in the cool patio on the courthouse’s ground floor, he launched another attack. Now Hammarstedt is starting to worry about his own safety. Cataldo and his men are staying at a hotel not far away.

The thought of an inebriated and vindictive Cataldo causes Hammarstedt to call the public prosecutor Kelve Nobre de Carvalho and request police protection. They agree that an agent from the federal police force will keep an eye on Cataldo, see how much he consumes at the bar and call if he should leave the hotel.

Hammarstedt is just about to fall asleep when somebody knocks on the door. He can’t see who it is, but he is sure that it is Cataldo. Gripped by fear, he picks up the water pitcher on the nightstand and jumps out of bed. For 110 days they were separated by an abysmal sea and a few tons of steel. Now there was only a thin wall.

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Open the door,” is the reply from the other side while the knocking continues.

“Who is it?” he repeats.

“Tranquilo,” is the reply from the other side of the door.

It turns out to be the police agent, a giant of a man who went by the nickname “Africa”.

“Tomorrow I will follow you to court. When the pirates see us together they will never touch you again,” he reassures him.

When Hammarstedt crawls into bed again, it’s as if the sheets are vibrating in time with the hammering of his pulse.

On the second day of the trial, Peter Hammarstedt is the first witness called to testify. The three defendants seem far less tense. They enter the courtroom joking and laughing. Chief engineer Agustín Dosil Rey sits leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and keeps his eyes glued to Hammarstedt. The first engineer Luis Miguel Pérez Fernández stares mainly at his own shoes, and does not look up all day. Captain Cataldo allows his gaze to rest on the view outside the window. For seven hours they will continue, without a recess, without lunch and without water.

Hammarstedt has decided to paint a picture of the fish poachers as a criminal organization and mentions the fishing captain Lampon’s business partner, who was apprehended in possession of two tons of cocaine.

“These three were not involved. Somebody on the ship was,” Hammarstedt stresses.

Chief engineer Agustín Dosil Rey looks at Hammarstedt as if he is a leper. Every time Hammarstedt mentions Interpol, the chief engineer rolls his eyes.

“You don’t represent Interpol. What gave you the right to follow this ship? Did Interpol ask you to follow them?” the defence attorney asks.

“No, we came across a criminal act and followed the ship,” Hammarstedt answers.

To the question of the consequences of the Thunder’s wreck, Hammarstedt replies that the oil will start leaking out of the wreck.

“You sell fishing permits to the EU. This destroys the opportunity to do so. São Tomé is a natural habitat for sea turtles and you are investing in ecotourism. These people are destroying that for you. How can you put a price on the country’s ecotourism?” Hammarstedt asks.

At that moment, Hammarstedt is sure that the chief engineer is going to stand up and knock him down. A stenographer is seated on a wooden bench against the wall and diligently writing down every word with a ballpoint pen.

The Thunder officers’ defence attorney Pascoal Daio got his education at the prestigious university La Sorbonne in Paris, has formerly been a Supreme Court Judge and is a highly esteemed man in São Tomé. His strategy is to discredit Sea Shepherd, to portray the organization as terrorists and a kind of ISIS of the environmental movement. He accomplishes this by showing a series of YouTube videos of Sea Shepherd and the Bob Barker in confrontations. Many of the videos have been published by Sea Shepherd supporters. When he shows the near-collision between the Bob Barker and the Thunder in February, Cataldo gets to his feet, clicks the heels of his shoes together, and holding his hands behind his back, he takes the floor.

“I have never been so afraid. I was sure that my crew and I would die,” he says.

Then Hammarstedt speaks up.

“What Cataldo is saying is absurd. The film shows that the Bob Barker is sailing at full throttle astern to avoid being hit. We saved them! It’s not certain they would be here had it not been for us. Every day for 110 days we reported to the police. We saved them. We gave all the evidence to Interpol. We came to São Tomé at our own expense to testify. Captain Warredi Enisuoh of the Nigerian coast guard stated that never before have two ships sacrificed so much to stop a ship. That is why we are here,” Hammarstedt says.

“Why didn’t you put in at port?” the judge asks Cataldo again.

“I had my orders,” he answers.

“Who did you report to?”

“I don’t know.”

After their initial optimism the three defendants seem battered and resigned. There is no Spanish or Chilean consul present during the trial. Also Cataldo’s attire surprised Hammarstedt. He has come dressed in dungarees and a blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Beforehand he had imagined the ship owner would hire a local tailor to sew the captain a suit. The first engineer Luis Miguel Pérez Fernández scarcely utters a word. Most of the time he stares at the floor, now and then he glances up to send Hammarstedt a look of contempt. The impression is that the three have been left to manage on their own. Nonetheless, they are clearly protecting the ship owner.

Throughout the entire trial they categorically deny having sunk the Thunder, but cannot give any sensible explanation for why the ship is now resting on the bottom of the ocean off the coast of São Tomé.

“Why did the Thunder sink?” the judge asks in closing.

“It was a perfect day to sink a ship,” Hammarstedt replies. “And they thought they could get away with it. Either the Thunder was sunk intentionally, or it was the unluckiest ship in the world,” he continues.

During his entire testimony the three defendants listened to Hammarstedt’s explanation without moving. Now all three of them nod in approval. As if they want to say: Yes. The Thunder was the unluckiest ship in the world.