Bangkok, Thailand
CNN
—
A Royal Thai Navy warship sank early Monday morning in bad weather, leaving 33 of its 106 crew members missing in stormy waters in the Gulf of Thailand, Thai officials said.
The three rescued crew members are in critical condition and a search operation for the missing crew members is underway, officials said.
A Thai Navy statement said the strong winds caused the 252-foot-long (76.8-meter) corvette HTMS Sukhothai to tip, causing seawater to enter the exhaust pipes and subsequently shut down the ship’s electrical systems.
The electrical outage caused the ship’s main power system to fail, leaving the crew unable to operate the hull or pump out seawater that had entered the hull.
Attempts to transfer pumps to Sukhothai from other naval vessels responding to the incident for more than three hours had failed, the statement said.
“At 12:12 am on Monday, the Sukhothai listed further and then sank,” the report said.
Bad weather in the Gulf of Thailand, about 20 miles (32 km) from the Bang Saphan district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, continued late Monday morning, hampering search efforts for the missing crew members, officials said.
The 960-ton Sukhothai was built in the United States and entered service with the Thai Navy in 1987.
Carl Schuster, a former U.S. Navy captain, said the Thai crew faced a difficult situation on such an old ship.
“With the loss of power, you end up doing everything in the dark with portable diesel pumps and buckets,” he said.
“For a small (almost) 40-year-old ship in rough seas, then it’s unlikely to succeed.”
