“This may be the last message, I write,” the captain of the MV Kenan Mete emailed on 11 February after the emergency generator on board failed, plunging his ship into darkness.
“I repeat. There is no electricity, water or food on board,” he wrote three days later. Turkish captain Vehbi Kara was the last man standing on the 8,897 gross tonne abandoned bulk carrier in the Egyptian port of Adabiya, in the Suez Canal. But Captain Kara was not entirely alone.
“There are too many mice on board,” he...