Four men slipped aboard in the darkness. Armed with knives and moving fast, they descended into the engine room of the Taipan as the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker threaded its way through the Singapore Strait on the night of April 22.
The crew managed to raise the alarm in time and thankfully no one was hurt. But by the time the vessel was searched the intruders were gone, vanished back into the water with a clutch of spare engine parts in tow.
It was a modest haul. It was also the 16th such incident recorded in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore so far this year. Across the wider region, the number was 26.
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The nighttime raid on the Taipan was the latest in a steady drumbeat of low-level robberies along one of the world’s most consequential shipping corridors: a narrow, reef-strewn passage through which an estimated 70 per cent of Asia’s oil imports flow, alongside trillions of dollars in annual cargo.
Analysts are careful to stress that the attacks are not signs of a looming security collapse. But they are a symptom of nagging vulnerabilities in a globally important shipping chokepoint.
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