An MSC containership, MSC Antonia (85,760 dwt) has been aground in the Red Sea for the past several days while a growing mystery is swirling around the vessel’s location and the cause of the incident. Speculation is growing that the vessel is possibly the victim of GPS jamming as multiple reports surface of widespread disruptions in the Red Sea region.
The interference is familiar to the industry with multiple warnings. It can cause vessels to deviate from their course or misinterpret their current location.
Well-known industry analyst Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime, mentioned the grounding in an online update writing, “the vessel track on AIS appears highly erratic, likely due to the GPS interference reported in recent days by UKMTO.”
The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) on May 9 issued a warning that multiple vessels had experienced disruptions and electronic interference lasting up to several hours in the Red Sea across a broad area encompassing Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to Port Sudan. They warned it was “affecting navigation systems and requiring vessels to rely on backup methods.”
“This is a clear and present danger for shipping,” wrote Ami Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO of predictive data analytics firm Windward. He warns of a “significant escalation in jamming capability,” citing Windward’s data that shows “that the average distance vessels ‘jump’ to when their AIS is jammed grew dramatically from 600km in Q4 2024 to 6,300km in Q1 2025.” Windward warns of GPS jamming incidents ranging from the Baltic to the Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Aden, Sudan’s coastline, and China’s coastal waters.
MSC’s published schedule for the MSC Antonia shows the vessel traveling between Jeddah and the King Abdullah Port in Saudi Arabia. MarineTraffic’s AIS tracking, however, shows the ship made a stop at Port Sudan and was bound for Jeddah. The reports say the ship, which is 997 feet (304 meters) in length with a capacity of 7,000 TEU, is aground approximal 100 nautical miles from Jeddah.
Videos online show tugs attempting to move the vessel, which is sitting at an angle. MSC has not released any details or commented on whether the vessel sustained damage.
Databases indicate the ship, which was built in 2009 and is registered in Liberia, has been operating for MSC since 2018. It recently received a good report in mid-April after undergoing a Port State inspection in Spain. No deficiencies were reported by the authorities, but the ship did make headlines at the end of August 2024 when it lost 46 containers overboard off the coast of South Africa in bad wintry weather. Another 305 boxes were reported damaged forcing the ship to divert to Cape Town to recover.
Source: The Maritime Executive
