What History Tells Us About Anchor Dragging Incidents And Sabotage

Naive speculators including a large part of the foreign policy establishment have pushed the idea that Russia is paying Chinese ships to drag their anchors to damage NATO members in the Baltic Sea.

Historical records clearly debunk the notion that anchor dragging is a sure sign of intent to sabotage.

***The Chilean flag container ship Aconcagua dragged its anchor while sailing from Philadelphia to New York in 2008. It severed three high capacity Trans-Atlantic cables. The anchor had not been properly secured, which requires doing three separate tasks, and it dropped back into the water. An anchor typically weighs 5 to 10 tons versus 50,000 to 200,000 tons for a cargo ship. This means a ship can drift dragging an anchor even if propulsion has been halted and the anchor dropped. A good example is the infamous Rubymar, an abandoned freight ship, that drifted across the Red Sea for 31 kilometers in the Spring of 2024 causing three key subsea cable outages. In the case of the Aconcagua, the captain was unaware the anchor was in the water due to a strong gale to which he attributed the ship's relatively slow speed. The sabotage theory makes no sense in this case. The New Cold War with Russia and China had not yet begun. In fact, relations were pretty good. Indeed, Putin has not yet turned Russia into a full-fledged pseudo-democracy. 

***An often cited case involves a ship off Sicily's coast which dragged its anchor for 300 kilometers resulting in six fibre optic cables outages. The well known Falcon cable connecting Europe to the Middle East was a victim. As usual, an 'analyst' at the Ovum consulting firm, pointed to sabotage: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23068571. This is the default explanation among ignorant people, including high ranking government officials, policy groups, and police officers. A common thread running through anchor dragging incidents is rough weather. I had assumed that this meant the ships had dropped anchor to steady the ship. But the correct explanation is twofold, namely that an anchor not properly secured is more likely to fall back into the water if the ship is tossing about, and secondly, bad weather makes it more likely the crew does notice anchor dragging because the ship's slow speed is attributed to the currents and wind. The fact that three separate tasks must be performed to secure anchors (including the windlass brake, bar stopper, and pelican hook/devil’s claws, tightened with bottle screws) means that an inexperienced or distracted crew often leads to the anchor falling back into the water. Given that cargo and tug boats are very long, it is quite easy for the ship's anchor to end up back in the water without anyone noticing. Indeed, some shipping companies now require cameras focused on the anchors in order to prevent these accidents from happening.