By Richard Khavkine and Steve Strunsky/Star-Ledger Staff
NEWARK — Nearly 12 hours after U.S. Coast Guard officers boarded a cargo vessel suspected to be carrying stowaways, authorities have yet to find anyone and say the search could take another 12 hours.
The Cyprus-flagged freighter, named the Ville D'Aquarius, was escorted to the Port Newark Container Terminal earlier this morning, when a boarding team out of New York conducting a random search thought they heard knocking from a container buried deep inside the ship.
Since its arrival, crews have been working to unload part of the ship to get to the area where the boarding crews believe the knocking sounds originated.
"At the moment, we're still examining containers," said Coast Guard spokesman Charles Rowe from the port dock.
Rowe said that it takes about eight minutes to both X-ray and physically inspect each container.
With about 80 to 90 of the 200 containers of the batch where the Coast Guard suspects the purported knocking came from already inspected, it will take another 11 to 12 hours to complete the task, he said at 1:40 p.m.
The ship can carry more than 2,000 cargo containers. If anyone were hiding inside a container, they would be trapped until other containers—stacked and fastened together like Lego blocks—are removed.
There have been a number of incidents in the past where stowaways have been found trapped in shipping containers, sometimes dead from stifling heat, lack of air, food or water on ships whose voyages can last weeks at sea.
Authorities have not heard any more knocking from the containers since the initial incident, Rowe said
Michelle Krupa, a civilian spokeswoman for the Coast Guard New York Command Center, said the Coast Guard conducted a random boarding of the vessel at 1 a.m. today as it approached New York Harbor in waters near the Ambrose Light, off Sandy Hook. During an inspection, Krupa said the boarding team was conducting a sound check of containers when it encountered one that apparently contained stowaways.
"It was a random boarding, and they were doing a sound check and they knocked on this one and they heard a knocking back," she said.
The freighter Ville D'Aquarius docked in Port Newark. Authorities are searching the ship for possible stowaways.Drew Barry, a veteran pilot with the New York Sandy Hook Pilots Association, boarded the container ship around 5 a.m. to guide it into Port Newark, when he was informed by Coast Guard investigators of a possible stowaway. The ship was about 20 miles off shore when, Barry said, Coast Guard officials told him they heard banging below the deck.
"They heard banging, and so then (the Coast Guard) banged, and there was more banging … they were communicating back and forth it seems," Barry said.
Barry said the container was loaded onto the boat when it left India 22 days ago, and then made a stop in Egypt before departing for Port Newark. The Coast Guard had stopped the ship before Barry's arrival for a routine inspection. He suggested the sound of the anchor dropping and then lifting again for Barry to guide the boat to port may have scared them into crying out for help.
"They probably heard the anchor go down before the inspection," Barry said. "Maybe they thought they were in there too long and they wanted to get out."
While Barry has been guiding boats to harbor for nearly 27 years, he said he's only seen about a half-dozen stowaway situations.
Other containers were stacked on top of that one, and crew was unable to open it on board, Krupa said, so the vessel went to the Port Newark Container Terminal in Newark to be unloaded.
According to Barry, there were between 30 and 40 containers on top of the one where the noises were believed to have originated.
"The container was below decks," he said. "It’s not just sitting there where you could open it up."
At a news conference in Newark this afternoon, Andrew M. McLees, the head of the Newark division of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said federal agents were still actively searching the freighter. He added that the swift and seriousness investigation was prompted, at least in part, by the route the vessel was taking as it moved close to New York Harbor.
Michael Ward, the FBI's top official in New Jersey, would not comment at the about the stowaway investigation specifically, or the federal response it, but noted that the problem of foreigners attempting to enter the U.S. illegally—including stowaways—goes to vulnerabilities that need to be shut down and watched closely throughout the United States.
EMS personnel with ambulances line up in a staging area on Tyler Street in Port Newark earlier this morning."We're talking about people trying to enter the country illegally," he said.
He said the aggressive law-enforcement response was set in motion “in an abundance of caution.”
New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman referred specific questions on the stowaway investigation to McLees, but added, "If hypothetically there is a stowaway, you want to know who it was, and why they are here.”
After the ship docked, nearly a dozen ambulances responded to the terminal.
"If there are people or other material, and we don't know what they are, we are simply covering all the bases," Rowe said.
But as the search did not immediately turn up any evidence that there were in fact stowaways on board, most of the emergency vehicles departed. Only one ambulance remained on the scene as of 12:45 p.m., the Associated Press reported.
The ship's current voyage originated in the United Arab Emirates and made stops in Pakistan and India before heading to Egypt and then across the Atlantic, Rowe said. The ship's next scheduled port of call is Norfolk, Va., he said.
"There's rumors going around that there's 20 to 25 Pakistanis, but we do not have that report," said Krupa.
Port Authority police responded to the dock with officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Coast Guard and State Police for a potential stowaway situation, port officials said.
Officers from the federal Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the Coast Guard and the Port Authority are on board the ship determining when and where the container can be safely unloaded and opened, Rowe said.
Longshoremen DeShea Best said she and other longshoremen who arrived for their 8 a.m. shifts learned of the stowaway situation before the ship docked at 8:30 a.m. There were two dozen officers at the dock waiting for the container to be offloaded.
She said she and her co-workers hear about stowaways "periodically" but word of several inside a container is unusual.
As of 3:30 p.m., the lone ambulance was gone.
Star-Ledger staff writers James Queally, Jason Grant and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
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