Stowaway Search at Port Newark

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER And HEATHER HADDON

Associated Press

The container ship Ville D' Aquarius docked at Port Newark after an inspection revealed evidence of stowaways.

Federal authorities vowed to continue searching through the night Wednesday for stowaways believed to be hidden aboard a freight ship at the Port Newark Container Terminal, hours after Coast Guard officials first reported suspicious noises during a routine inspection.

A Coast Guard team boarded the Ville D'Aquarius cargo ship at 3 a.m. as it entered New York Harbor just below the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Inspectors heard banging coming from inside a shipping container buried deep within the cargo stacks, which had been loaded in India nearly three weeks ago.

The sounds were "consistent with the possibility of people being inside," said Coast Guard spokesman Charles Rowe.

More than 15 hours later, no stowaways had been found despite a search of some 150 containers on the ship. Mr. Rowe dismissed published reports claiming that dead bodies had been discovered, calling them "completely erroneous."

Although there are 2,039 containers on board the ship, the initial search focused on a group of about 170 containers, officials said. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said they weren't giving up.

"Officials will continue to examine containers overnight," said U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Anthony Bucci in a statement.

Still, there were signs that expectations of finding stowaways had waned over a long day.

In the morning, vehicles from hazardous-materials teams, state emergency-medical crews and local personnel from nearby towns had rushed to the site, ready to help people who might have spent desperate weeks trapped in a container.

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Associated Press

Emergency officials arrived at Port Newark on Wednesday morning.

By evening, however, only a lone Port Authority police car and a single ambulance remained on standby. Three agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the Coast Guard and the Port Authority Police Department, continued the search.

Picking through the cargo is a slow and painstaking process, officials said, noting that the containers are about the size of a tractor-trailer truck. Each search takes about eight minutes, including lifting the container out of the ship by overhead crane and cutting it open.

The container suspected of carrying people was buried at the bottom of the pile when the ship arrived at Port Newark around 8:45 a.m. "It makes it harder," Mr. Rowe said.

Inspectors became suspicious during the search early Wednesday morning after they heard a tapping response to their own raps against the containers.

"We tapped twice, we heard two taps in response. We tapped three times, we heard three taps in response," Mr. Rowe said. "So that's an indication that there's humans inside."

Hours later he reported: "It's gone silent."

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Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

Ambulances stand by at the Port of Newark as the cargo ship Ville D'Aquarius is searched for suspected stowaways on Wednesday.

The docking in Newark marked the ship's first stop in U.S. during this voyage. The vessel's journey began in the United Arab Emirates on May 30, with stops in Pakistan, India and Egypt. The container ship is registered in Cyprus.

The container believed to be holding stowaways was loaded on June 7 in Mundra, India. It was labeled as holding manufacturing parts bound for Norfolk, Va., the ship's final U.S. stop, Mr. Rowe said.

The ship had most recently stopped in Egypt on June 15.

If stowaways are found on board and they don't claim asylum, federal authorities could send them back to their countries of origin, with the vessel owner paying expenses, officials said. A claim of asylum would send any stowaways to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for processing and a possible hearing.

A version of this article appeared June 28, 2012, on page A19 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Stowaway Search At Port Newark.