By Richard Khavkine and Steve Strunsky/Star-Ledger Staff
NEWARK — Federal and local authorities are investigating a suspected group of stowaways inside a shipping container on board the freighter Ville D'Aquarius, which is docked at Port Newark Container Terminal, a Coast Guard spokesman said.
Customs authorities are overseeing the maneuvering of containers aboard the cargo ship, Coast Guard spokesman Charles Rowe said.
As of about 12:30 p.m., 210 of the roughly 2,000 containers aboard the ship had been isolated for inspection. So far, 130 containers had been X-rayed with negative results, with 80 containers remaining, a source at the port said.
Walter Arsenault, executive director of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, said he was told that inspectors focused on the 210 containers to X-ray based on their location on board the ship, where Coast Guard crew members said they believed they heard noises from the stowaways originated.
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.
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, and 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.
Barry said there were between 30 and 40 containers on top of the one where the noises were coming off, and that it would take several hours to free the stowaways.
"The container was below decks," he said. "It's not just sitting there where you could open it up."
The Ville D'Aquarius, registered in Cyprus, docked in Newark at 8:30 a.m.
View full sizeThe Ville D'Aquarius is seen docked at Port Newark today as containers are unloaded. One container is holding stowaways, officials say.Only one ambulance remains on the scene as of 12:45 p.m., the Associated Press reported. Nearly a dozen ambulances from surrounding jurisdictions had been parked along Tyler Street, at the intersection of Mohawk Street, which leads to the docks.
"If there are people or other material, and we don't know what they are, we are simply covering all the bases," Rowe said.
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 Authority police 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.
Star-Ledger staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
• Ship docking at Port Newark might contain stowaways in container