Watch item; reports were still consolidating as this edition went to press. The Ocean Winner, a Panama-flagged bulk carrier, went down in the Bay of Bengal roughly 445 kilometers from Paradip port on India's eastern coast, leaving twenty-two of its twenty-four crew missing, the Indian Coast Guard said. [1] Two sailors were pulled alive from liferafts by a commercial vessel. [1]

The ship had loaded about 72,100 tonnes of iron ore fines at Paradip and sailed Thursday; contact with maritime authorities was lost Saturday before it sank. [1] The crew list reads like the shipping world it comes from — twenty Chinese nationals, three from Myanmar, one Bangladeshi. [1] The coast guard dispatched patrol ships Varad, Anmol and Vijay, joined by navy assets, into a search box of gray water. [1][2] Why the ship died is unrecorded. Indian authorities have said only that severe weather, mechanical failure and other causes remain open, and no mayday explanation has surfaced. [1]

So the watch begins. Whether more liferafts are found, whether the wreck is ever located and mapped, and what a formal inquiry concludes about a laden ship that lost contact with rescuers on Saturday before it went down — none of that was knowable by press time. The operators reached Indian authorities once the silence started; the answers have not arrived. The sea gives up such facts slowly, and to particular families first.

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo