Did British insurance sink this ship?
Outdated information, tenuous links sealed this vessel’s fate | When the 19,000 gross ton bulk carrier MV Rubymar entered the Red Sea just a few weeks ago, the captain knew that the area was dangerous, but he also knew that the Houthi rebels were targeting UK and US owned ships. His vessel was Belize flagged, and Lebanese owned. His assessment was that the risks offered by the Houthis were worth avoiding the 3,000-6,000 mile detour offered by a trip around the Cape of Good Hope. ● On February 18, two Houthi missiles hit the ship, forcing the entire crew to abandon the terminally stricken vessel. What the captain didn’t realize was that the ship had two British indicators linked to it - it was insured by Thomas Miller Specialty, a commercial managing general agency (MGA) which manages a GWP of over $1.6 billion writing a variety of niche and specialist lines of business, and that the ship’s Lebanese operator was inaccurately connected to a UK residential address in the Equasis public database. The Department for Transport criticized the attack, acknowledging Rubymar’s minimal connections to the UK.