ANCHOR

Click the Magazine Cover to Read Issue 02 Independent Maritime Review

ANCHOR

INDEPENDENT MARITIME REVIEW

SHOW SOME GUTS

WHILE 20,000 SEAFARERS WERE STRANDED IN HORMUZ,

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TOLD THEM TO

SAIL ANYWAY.

ISSUE 02

MAY 2026

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

THE OFFICER

SHORTAGE THAT

WILL NOT FIX

ITSELF

WHO OWNS THE

CADET?

WHAT I LEARNED

ON ARTHUR

MAERSK

Table Of

Contents

SHOW SOME GUTS

WHY THE OFFICER SHORTAGE IS NOT

GOING TO RESOLVE ITSELF

20,000 seafarers stranded west of Hormuz. Seven dead. Three of them

Indian. And the question the industry is hoping to outlast.

The global shortfall of 89,510 officers is not a recruitment problem. It is

a retention problem - and wages alone are no longer the answer.

20 WHO OWNS THE CADET?

Manning companies now own the institutes that train their cadets. The

model works. The question is what it costs, and to whom.

63 YEARS LATER: WHAT NATIONAL

MARITIME DAY ASKS OF US

India has observed National Maritime Day for six decades. The harder

question is what the day actually asks of the country that observes it.

WHAT I LEARNED ON ARTHUR MAERSK

A CE looks back at his first ship, late 2008 - the boiler room mistake, the

officer who took the cadets ashore, and the first alarm he faced alone.

38 JOINING THE MERCHANT NAVY IN 2026

A clear path after Class 12 - IMUCET dates, sponsorship realities, and

an honest view of the profession you are choosing to enter.

Anchor

Magazine

By 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel

had launched an air war against Iran. The Strait of

Hormuz was effectively closed within hours. Eight

weeks later, three thousand ships are stuck west

of the choke point. Twenty thousand seafarers

are on board them. At least seven have been

killed. Three were Indian.

We could not, in good conscience, publish a

maritime magazine in May 2026 that did not lead

with this. Issue 02 therefore opens with "Show

Some Guts" - a cover feature on the human cost of

the Hormuz crisis, and the question the industry

is hoping to outlast.

The rest of the issue carries on the work this

magazine began - pieces on training, retention,

commemoration, and one personal reflection on a

first ship in late 2008.

The thread running through them is a question

the issue kept arriving at: what does the maritime

industry owe the people who work in it?

We do not pretend to have the answer. We do

believe it is worth asking.

When ANCHOR was being

assembled this month, Issue 02

was meant to carry a different

cover. The piece behind it - a

structural examination of how

India's maritime training institutes

have come to be owned by the

manning companies their cadets

later sail with - is now Issue 02's

second feature, and it deserves to

be read.

But while we were finalising the

layout, the world we are publishing

into changed.

Editor

Notes

WELCOME TO

ANCHOR MAGAZINE

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

C/E Amit Khareta

Editor, ANCHOR

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

SHOW SOME GUTS

On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel

launched an air war against Iran. Within hours,

the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moved to

close the Strait of Hormuz, through which

roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and

a fifth of its liquefied natural gas had passed

every day before the war began.

Approximately 3,200 vessels are stuck west of

the choke point. On board them, by industry

estimates, are more than 20,000 seafarers. The

Joint Maritime Information Center, operating

under the 47-nation Combined Maritime Forces

partnership, has confirmed at least seven

seafarer deaths and more than twenty attacks on

commercial vessels since the conflict began.

ANCHOR was scheduled to publish Issue 02 with

a different cover. We changed it. We could not, in

good conscience, send a maritime magazine to

print in April 2026 that did not lead with what is

happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

While twenty thousand seafarers were stranded in Hormuz, the President of the United States told

them to sail anyway. Seven were already dead.

Eight weeks later, as ANCHOR goes to press, the

strait remains effectively shut. The United States

imposed a counter-blockade of Iranian ports on

13 April. By Lloyd's List Intelligence figures, only

around 80 ships transited the strait during the

entire week of 13–19 April - compared with 130-

plus transits per day before the war.

This is the maritime story of 2026. It is also, in a

deeper sense, the maritime story this magazine

was created for.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

THE NAMES THAT SHOULD BE

REMEMBERED

The remaining 21 crew were evacuated onto the

Panama-flagged MV Sand.

Experience at sea should not

retire with the officer who

earned it

There is, in moments of war, a tendency for the

dead to become numbers. Seven seafarers killed.

Three Indians among them. The numbers travel

through

wire

reports,

through

company

communiqués, through ministerial statements,

and they harden into accounting before the

families have even understood what they have

lost.

ANCHOR will try, in the small space available to

a single magazine feature, to refuse this

hardening.

Four of the dead were on the tug assisting the

damaged container ship SAFEEN PRESTIGE,

struck by projectiles approximately six nautical

miles north of Oman in early March. They were

doing the most ordinary maritime work in the

world: helping a wounded ship.

One was a crew member of the product tanker

MKD VYOM, killed when the vessel was struck

above the waterline 44 nautical miles northwest

of Muscat, triggering an explosion and an engine-

room fire.

Two were on the tanker SkyLight, an Indian

captain and an Indian oiler, killed when their

vessel was attacked off the Omani coast. Their

colleague Rehman, an Indian seafarer who

survived because Omani authorities reached the

wreckage within hours, told Foreign Policy

magazine in early April: "I was in a state of

shock. My brain stopped working." He returned

to India on 18 March with nothing but the

clothes he was wearing. His documents had

burned with the ship.

A further Indian seafarer was reported critically

wounded on the LCT Ayeh.

These are the names of the ships. The names of

the men, in most reports, have not yet been

published.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

ANCHOR believes they should be - not as

content for the magazine, but as a matter of

dignity that the industry owes itself. We will

continue to seek confirmation of the more

identities and will publish them, with the

consent of their families, in a forthcoming

issue.

By the time those words were spoken, the four

seafarers on the SAFEEN PRESTIGE tug were

already dead. The crew of MKD VYOM were

already injured, their colleague already killed in

the engine-room fire. The crew of SkyLight were

already struggling for survival off the Omani

coast.

For now, the record stands like this: at least

seven working seafarers, on at least four

different vessels, in separate incidents during

one war, did not come home.

SHOW SOME GUTS

On 9 March 2026, in a Fox News interview, the

President of the United States addressed the

spike in oil prices and the maritime crisis in

the Persian Gulf.

THESE SHIPS SHOULD GO

THROUGH THE STRAIT OF

HORMUZ AND SHOW SOME

GUTS, TRUMP SAID. THERE'S

NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF,

THEY HAVE NO NAVY, WE

SUNK ALL THEIR SHIPS.

The President of the most powerful navy in the

world, addressing a maritime crisis that had

already

produced

seafarer

fatalities,

told

commercial shipping crews to show some guts.

ANCHOR will record that quote, exactly as

spoken, for as long as Issue 02 remains in

archive. The men who were dying that week

were Indian, Filipino, and other nationalities.

They were not Americans. They were not parties

to this war. They were carrying steel and urea

and crude oil between ports because that is

what they had signed contracts to do.

They were not lacking in courage. They were

lacking in the protection that the international

system of maritime trade is supposed to extend

to its workers in moments exactly like this one.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

Ankit Yadav is in his early thirties. Before 28

February, he was working as a junior crew

member on a small steel-carrying vessel running

between Iran, Kuwait, and Oman. After 28

February, he and three colleagues became

something else: men trapped at an inland Iranian

port, surviving on tomatoes and potatoes,

watching projectiles cross the sky at night,

waiting for someone, somewhere, to issue them

permission to go home.

Salman Siddiqui, another Indian seafarer, is at

the Iranian port of Khorramshahr on a Comoros-

flagged cargo vessel that was bound for Oman

before the war began. "The only thing we do here

is plan how to spend the night and pray to God

that we do not get hit during an attack," he told

Reuters by phone. "We have heard more than 100

explosions. It is scary when you see projectiles

flying and exploding very near your vessel."

By mid-March, a deeper layer of the crisis was

becoming

visible.

Maritime

analyst

Sal

Mercogliano publicly relayed a first-hand

report from a crew member on one of the

trapped vessels: the ship had run out of

drinking water, called the local port authority

for permission to dock, and was denied. The

same was happening to multiple other ships,

with stores, food, and fuel running low.

WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE

TRAPPED ON A SHIP

IN A WAR

His situation, as the figures now confirm, is not

exceptional. It is what twenty thousand seafarers

in the Gulf are now experiencing in some form.

Captain Arun kumar Rajendran, also Indian, has

been

stranded

with

his

tanker

crew

for

approximately eight weeks. "Seafarers are the

backbone of global trade," he told Euronews on 27

April, "yet we are often the most affected by

regional geopolitical conflicts."

This is what the Hormuz crisis became in its

second month. Not just a security crisis. A

humanitarian one.

These men are working professionals. They

are not parties to the war. They are inside it.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

On 19 March, the IMO held its 36th Extraordinary

Council session in London. Secretary-General

Arsenio

Dominguez

warned

the

assembled

delegations that the situation posed a "grave

danger to life," and condemned attacks on

commercial vessels in language unusually direct

for an inter-governmental body. "Seafarers must

not become victims of broader geopolitical

tensions," he said. "This is not an abstract

geopolitical crisis. It is a human crisis."

THE INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE - AND

WHAT IT REVEALS

To its credit, the international maritime system has not been silent.

The IMO Council backed the creation of a safe

maritime corridor to allow ships and crews to

exit the high-risk area. The World Shipping

Council endorsed it. The International Chamber

of Shipping called on governments to ensure

continuous provision of food, water, fuel, and

medical care to vessels unable to leave.

The International Bargaining Forum - the global

agreement

between

maritime

unions

and

shipowners - formally designated the Strait of

Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf

as a Warlike Operations Area.

The designation triggers, for seafarers working

under IBF contracts, three protections: a 100%

wage bonus, enhanced death and disability

compensation,

and

the

right

refuse

assignment into the conflict zone.

The ITF's Lydia Ferrad framed it directly:

"Seafarers are civilian workers. They are not

parties to this conflict. They must never be

treated as expendable."

These institutional responses are real, and they

matter. But here is the structural reality the

responses also reveal: not every seafarer is on

an IBF contract. Not every shipping company is

signatory

the

Sustainable

Crewing

Guidelines.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

Not every flag state is participating in the safe-

corridor framework. The protections that work,

work for the seafarers fortunate enough to be

employed by companies and operating under

contracts that include them.

For the rest - and the rest are many - Ankit

Yadav's

quote

stands

the

operative

description of what is actually happening:

Read Ankit's words again. Strip away the war for

a moment. Strip away the geopolitics, the missile

strikes, the blockades, the sea mines, the tanker

seizures. What is being said, in his own voice, is

this: the company that sent him to sea will not

pay to bring him home.

The 2025 International Transport Workers'

Federation data - published months before the

first missile fell - recorded 6,223 seafarers

abandoned by shipping companies across 410

ships in a single year.

THE

SHIPPING

COMPANY

WORK FOR IS NOT READY TO

GIVE

THE

SIGN-OFF

BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WANT

TO PAY HIGHER AIR TICKET

PRICES,

AND

CANNOT

AFFORD TO BUY THEM ON OUR

OWN. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS

THE GOVERNMENT'S HELP.

THE QUESTION SHIPPING IS

HOPING TO OUTLAST

That sentence describes a problem the maritime

industry had long before this war began.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

Indians accounted for 1,125 of them. "This

reflects a systemic problem," Rakesh Ranjan,

South Asia regional coordinator at the

Institute for Human Rights and Business, told

Foreign Policy in early April. "Indians are the

most victimised group of workers."

What none of this fully addresses is the

foundational question: who pays when an Ankit

Yadav, three weeks into surviving on tomatoes

and potatoes, needs an air ticket?

What the Hormuz crisis has done is take a

pre-existing structural failure - seafarer

abandonment - and apply a war's pressure to

it. Companies that were already willing to

leave seafarers stranded for unpaid wages or

expired contracts are, predictably, willing to

leave them stranded under shellfire to avoid

an economy-class airfare.

The

Indian

government

has

facilitated

approximately 2,680 repatriations since 28

February. The Indian Navy escorted five

Indian-flagged LPG carriers out of the strait

under Operation Sankalp between 14 and 24

March. Iran has, after diplomatic engagement,

granted

passage

ships

multiple

nationalities including India, China, Russia,

Iraq, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and

Thailand. The IBF has activated war-risk wage

bonuses. The IMO has called for a corridor.

The contracts say one thing. The behaviour says

another. And in the gap between them sits the

seafarer.

ANCHOR was founded on the belief that the

maritime world deserves a space where stories

are told without agenda, without noise, and

without hierarchy. Issue 02 was meant to carry a

different cover. We changed it because we

cannot, in good conscience, publish a maritime

magazine in April 2026 that does not lead with

what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

There

will

other

coverage.

Reuters,

Bloomberg, gCaptain, Splash247, Foreign Policy,

Lloyd's List, Al Jazeera, Euronews - the global

maritime press is doing the work of breaking

news.

THE ANCHOR PERSPECTIVE

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

And when the war is over, and the wage bonuses

have lapsed, and the safe corridors have closed -

will the industry remember which of its members

lived up to the moment, and which ones did not?

The war will end. The ceasefires will hold or

break. The diplomats will reach an arrangement,

or they will fail, and the markets will adjust. Oil

will eventually flow again. The Strait of Hormuz,

like every other choke point in maritime history,

will reopen.

The answers are being written, in real time, on

three thousand ships.

We owe them, at minimum, the willingness to

read what they are telling us.

ANCHOR is not in that race and should not

pretend to be.

What we can do is sit with what the news reports

leave out: the human cost; the names that should

be recorded; the structural questions about

company duty of care that the industry is hoping

to outlast; and the basic, durable truth that every

seafarer at this moment trapped in the Gulf,

eating limited rations, hearing explosions across

water, was sent there by a system that has not

yet decided what it owes them.

The men writing them are the ones eating

tomatoes and potatoes at Iranian ports.

When it does, the questions that will outlast the

war are the ones ANCHOR believes Issue 02 must

put on the record:

Did the industry, when its workers were stranded

under fire, treat them as professionals it had a

duty to protect - or as inventory it was reluctant

to retrieve?

Did the President of the most powerful navy in

the world, in the moment that civilian seafarers

were dying, tell them to take cover - or did he tell

them to "show some guts"?

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

2,500–3,000 - Estimated number of those who

are Indian (Foreign Policy)

~2,680 - Indian seafarers repatriated by the

Government of India since 28 February (India's

Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways)

At least 7 - Confirmed seafarer deaths (Joint

Maritime

Information

Center,

Combined

Maritime Forces — 47-nation partnership)

3 - Indian seafarers killed (Reuters, multiple

sources)

20+ - Confirmed attacks on commercial vessels

since the war began (Joint Maritime Information

Center)

130+ - Daily ship transits through the Strait of

Hormuz before the war began

~80 - Total ship transits through the strait

during the entire week of 13–19 April 2026

(Lloyd's List Intelligence)

100% - Wage bonus activated for IBF-contract

seafarers in the designated Warlike Operations

Area

6,223

Seafarers

abandoned

globally

shipping companies in 2025 alone, before this

war (ITF)

1,125 - Indians among the abandoned seafarers

of 2025 (ITF)

THE NUMBERS, AS THEY

STAND

~3,200 - Vessels trapped west of the Strait of

Hormuz (United Nations / IMO)

~20,000 - Seafarers on board those vessels

(Industry estimates / Lloyd's List Intelligence)

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

WHY THE OFFICER

SHORTAGE IS NOT GOING

TO RESOLVE ITSELF

The 2021 BIMCO/ICS Seafarer Workforce Report

projected a global shortfall of 89,510 officers by

2026.

Drewry's

2023/24

Manning

Review

described seafarer shortages at a seventeen-year

high, with the gap expected to persist through

2028. The 2026 BIMCO/ICS update is due

imminently; early industry indicators suggest the

figure will not have meaningfully improved.

The honest reading of the data is harder. The

shortage is not going to resolve itself, because

the conditions producing it are structural - and

most of the responses being attempted

address symptoms rather than causes.

The numbers are clear. The honest reading of them is what the industry keeps avoiding.

Most coverage of these numbers reaches the

same conclusion: the industry must do more.

More training. More recruitment. More career

promotion. More wellness initiatives. More

flexible contracts.

THE SHORTAGE IS NOT,

PRIMARILY, A RECRUITMENT

PROBLEM. IT IS A RETENTION

PROBLEM.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

WHAT THE

NUMBERS

ACTUALLY

SAY

The

officer

shortage

not,

primarily,

recruitment problem. It is a retention problem.

The 2021 report noted, with some optimism, that

officer turnover had dropped from 8% to 6% over

five years. That sentence has been read for four

years as good news. Read more carefully, it says

something else: even at 6%, the industry is losing

roughly one in seventeen officers per year, every

year, while the global fleet expands and demand

for STCW-certified personnel grows.

Danica Crewing Specialists' 2024 survey of crew

managers reported that nearly 90% of shipping

companies raised seafarer salaries that year. The

2025

follow-up

found

that

despite

those

increases, only four in ten ship managers

reported any actual improvement in keeping

crew. Wages are up. The exodus continues.

What this tells us is that the lever the industry

has historically pulled - pay - is no longer

producing the response it used to. Something

else is driving officers off ships, and it is not

being fixed by a salary review.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY DRIVING IT

Three structural factors deserve naming honestly.

The career arithmetic has shifted. A young

officer in India, the Philippines, China, or

Indonesia today entering the profession at 18 to

19 must spend roughly a decade reaching senior

management rank. During that decade, family

formation

pressures

intensify,

ageing-parent

obligations grow, and in major cities, shore-side

opportunities in logistics, supply chain, technical

sales, and shipping company shore offices have

multiplied. The opportunity cost of staying at sea

has risen faster than seafaring wages.

WAGES ARE UP. THE EXODUS

CONTINUES.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

Connectivity

has

changed

everything,

including expectations. A junior officer in 2010

was largely cut off from home. A junior officer in

2026, when satellite connectivity functions, is in

continuous contact with what he or she is

missing. The psychological distance between

ship and shore has narrowed in one direction

only - the seafarer is more aware of home, but

home is no closer. Companies that have invested

in connectivity have improved welfare. Many

also report that it has increased turnover,

because the officer who can see his child's

birthday in real time is also the officer most

likely to plan an early exit.

The decarbonisation transition has added a

skills

burden

without

yet

adding

corresponding career upside. The Maritime Just

Transition Task Force launched its first interim

training frameworks for ammonia, methanol, and

hydrogen in September 2025. The IMO's STCW

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

"Wages are up. The exodus

continues."

WHAT THE INDUSTRY IS DOING

- AND WHY MOST OF IT WILL

NOT WORK

The

current

wave

responses

well-

intentioned and largely insufficient.

Wellness apps and counselling helplines treat

mental health as an individual problem when its

drivers

are

structural

contract

length,

watchkeeping schedules, isolation, and the

absence of meaningful shore leave. The ITF

Seafarer’s Trust and World Maritime University

reported in 2024 that more than a quarter of

surveyed seafarers received no shore leave at all

during their contracts. An app does not fix this.

review

ongoing.

The

Lloyd's

orderbook now shows 1,942 alternative-fuel-

capable ships ordered or in service. Every officer

who stays in the profession is being asked to

retrain - for fuels with elevated safety risk, on

vessels with limited operational data - without

yet seeing a clear premium in wages, contract

terms, or career structure for doing so. The

industry is asking more, faster, while offering the

same career proposition.

Flexible contract policies, where they exist, are

often optional and concentrated among a handful

of premium operators. The cadet sailing on a

tanker out of West Africa is not the cadet whose

company has signed the Global Maritime Forum's

Sustainable Crewing Guidelines. The bottom 60%

of the market continues to operate on the

assumptions of 1995.

And the recruitment campaigns aimed at

attracting Generation Z to maritime careers -

promoted heavily in India, the Philippines, and

increasingly Vietnam and Indonesia - are working

at one end of the funnel while the leak at the

other end widens. The pipeline brings cadets in.

The first decade pushes them out.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

For an 18-year-old in Mumbai, Manila,

Jakarta, or Ho Chi Minh City with reasonable

English,

technical

aptitude,

and

basic

mobility, the alternatives in 2026 are real.

Tech sector roles, logistics management

positions, offshore wind, port operations,

third-party shipping company shore offices,

and even non-maritime professional services

compete directly for the same talent. Many

these

alternatives

offer

comparable

starting compensation, full home presence,

structured promotions, and no requirement

to spend half of every year unreachable.

THE QUESTION THE

INDUSTRY KEEPS

AVOIDING

There is one question that the

seafarer shortage conversation

continues to dance around: is the

modern

shipping

career

still

competitive

against

the

alternatives now available to its

target recruits?

The maritime industry has historically won

this

competition

three

things:

international exposure, comparatively high

young-career earnings, and the prospect of

senior officer wages by the early 30s. All

three propositions remain valid. None are as

differentiated as they were a decade ago.

The shortage will not resolve itself because

the underlying competitive position of the

career has eroded - and the industry's

response has been to defend the existing

model rather than rebuild it.

THE ANCHOR PERSPECTIVE

The coming BIMCO/ICS 2026 update will produce

another wave of conferences, statements, and

commitments. Most of them will repeat the formula

of the past four years: more training, more

wellness, more diversity, more digital tools.

These responses are not wrong. They are simply

not sufficient.

A serious response would name what the industry

has been reluctant to say in public: that the

modern shipping company is competing for

officers against industries that have rebuilt their

employment offer for the connected, family-

conscious, career-mobile generation that now

constitutes the recruitment pool. Shipping has not.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

"Wages are up. The exodus

continues."

The companies that recognise this and rebuild

accordingly will have crews in 2035. The companies

that respond with another wellness app will not.

The shortage of 89,510 officers is, in the end, not a

manpower problem. It is a market signal. The

industry is being told, by its own workforce, that

the deal on offer no longer competes for the long-

term loyalty it once commanded.

The contract structure, the rotation pattern, the

leave economics, and the shore-side career bridge

for ex-seafarers all reflect assumptions that were

already aging in 2015.

The data is not the problem. The data has been

clear for a decade. The willingness to read it

honestly is what the industry still owes itself.

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

THE NUMBERS, IN BRIEF

89,510 - Additional officers needed by 2026 to

operate the world merchant fleet (BIMCO/ICS

2021)

1.89 million - Total seafarers serving the world

fleet, operating 74,000+ vessels (BIMCO/ICS

2021)

6% - Officer turnover rate, down from 8% in

2015 - but still equivalent to losing one in

seventeen officers per year (BIMCO/ICS 2021)

~90% - Shipping companies that raised seafarer

wages in 2024 (Danica Crew Managers' Survey

2024)

~40% - Ship managers reporting any actual

improvement in retention despite wage rises

(Danica 2025)

1,942 - Alternative-fuel-capable vessels ordered or

in service, requiring new officer skill sets (Lloyd's

>25% - Seafarers reporting no shore leave at all

during their last contract (ITF Seafarers' Trust /

World Maritime University, 2024)

Top

officer-supplying

countries:

India,

Philippines, China, Indonesia, Russian Federation

(BIMCO/ICS)

MAY 2026

Anchor Magazine

WHO OWNS THE CADET?

On manning companies,

maritime training, and

the architecture of a

cadet's first decade

Anglo Eastern Ship Management owns Anglo

Eastern Maritime Academy in Karjat. Great

Eastern Shipping owns Great Eastern Institute of

Maritime Studies in Lonavala. Samundra Institute

of Maritime Studies, also in Lonavala, is owned

by Executive Ship Management, Singapore.

Tolani Maritime Institute in Pune sits within the

Tolani Group, which operates Tolani Shipping.

The Shipping Corporation of India runs its own

Maritime Training Institute.

The question, then, is not whether manning-

company

ownership

maritime

training

institutes is happening in India.

The question is what it means for the cadet at

the centre of it.

The announcement was framed as a milestone: investment,

integration, expanded career pathways, a refreshed brand

identity bringing the institute visually closer to its sister

manning company.

The framing is accurate. It is also, in the

longer view of Indian maritime training,

unremarkable.

In March 2026, the Caravel Group

marked the first anniversary of the

International Maritime Institute, Greater

Noida, becoming part of its corporate

family - joining sister company Fleet

Management Ltd., one of the world's

largest third-party ship managers, under

shared ownership.

MOL's Indian subsidiary operates training

centres in Mumbai and Pune. Maersk has

formalised an exclusive cadet recruitment

arrangement with AMET University in Chennai.