A 30-year-old cargo ship has fallen victim to heavy weather in Greek waters as it was heading towards Libya.

IHS Markit and VesselsValue already list the 5,054-dwt built (1982) Manassa Rose M as “dead” or a “total loss”, just three days after the Comoros-flagged ship grounded on a beach at the island of Crete.

Pictures published by Greek state broadcaster ERT suggest the vessel was cut in two after it was caught in a snowstorm that swept through much of the Eastern Mediterranean earlier this week.

Greek coastguards announced on 27 January that they observed a “thin film” of “iridescent, self-decomposing” petroleum in an area of about 500 square metres (5,380 square feet) around the ship.

Efforts to retrieve the oil are underway, coastguards said.

George Mylonakis, mayor of the nearby local town of Kissamos, told ERT that the Manassa Rose M was carrying about 50 tonnes of fuel and that pollution from it has been “limited” so far.

The master and chief engineer of the ship, however, have been arrested for questioning following the fuel leak in line with standard Greek procedure.

The two men and another eight crew members had been evacuated safely after the grounding on Tuesday.

Storms, explosions, RPG attacks

The ship’s owners are now said to be focusing on retrieving the scrap iron and machine equipment cargo that the Manassa Rose M was carrying from Iskenderun, Turkey, to Misrata in civil war-torn Libya.

Officials at Sward Marine Co, the Lebanon-based outfit listed as the registered owner of the Manassa Rose M, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

IHS Markit shows the Sward Marine to be an affiliate of Cedar Marine Services, another Lebanese-based outfit.

Managers at Cedar, however, told TradeWinds that they are no longer involved with the ship since January last year, when it was sold to clients of International Marine Shipping, a company based in Egypt.

Cedar has had an unlucky hand with some of its ships recently.

Another one of its vessels that was flying the Comoros flag, the 6,300-dwt tweendecker Raouf H (built 1985), was destroyed in the devastating explosion that wrecked Beirut port in August 2020.

One month after the Beirut explosion, armed guards at the Libyan port of Ras Lanuf fired live rounds and rocket-propelled grenades on Cedar’s 11,300-dwt Mohammed Bey (built 1991), in a bid to deter the general cargo ship from loading scrap metal.

(This article was amended since original publication to include a comment by Cedar Marine Services that it is no longer involved with the Manassa Rose M)