What happened to the crew of the Angoche?
Jul 5, 2021 19:39:28 GMT
politicidal, forca84, and 2 more like this
Post by hi224 on Jul 5, 2021 19:39:28 GMT
April 24th, 1971, the Mozambican cargo ship Angoche was found adrift in the Indian Ocean, some 30 nautical miles off the coast of Mozambique. The ship was found on fire, with no sign of the crew but with a cat and a dog left unharmed. The last time it had been seen it carried 24 people on board, 23 crew members and 1 civilian passenger, and a heavy cargo of military equipment.
Context
At the time of these events, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony where a war was raging between the Portuguese army and Mozambican rebels/freedom fighters. Most of these belonged to Frelimo, a political party/terrorist group originally founded in Tanzania, Mozambique's northern neighboring country. At the time Portugal had been ruled by a dictatorship for almost half a century.
The story
The Angoche was a cargo ship from Mozambique which routinely sailed up and down the coast, carrying everything from food, fuel to military equipment. Its crew was made up of 9 Portuguese men and 14 Mozambicans, but on the 23rd of April, 1971, it carried an additional passenger, a middle aged railway clerk who embarked, along with his car, as a favor from the ship's captain. On that day, the Angoche left the port of Nacala, Mozambique, with its hull full of ordinary supplies like flour, sugar and petrol, but also military equipment, including 100 bombs weighing 50kg each, aeronautical material and machine parts.
The Angoche should have reached Porto Amélia in the north the very next day, where all the military equipment would have been unloaded, ready to be transported by land to where the fighting against Frelimo was raging. It never did.
On the 24th of April it was found adrift and on fire by Esso Port Dickson, an oil tanker sailing under the Panama flag, some 30 nautical miles off the coast of Mozambique and over 300 miles south from its destination. There was no sign of the crew, only bloodstains. The only living things inside the ship were a cat and a dog, the crews’ pets, who seemed unharmed.
The Angoche was eventually confiscated by Portuguese authorities, and was towed to Lourenço Marques (current day Maputo, capital of Mozambique). The first Portuguese authority to set foot on the phantom ship was Casimiro Monteiro, a PIDE official (state police), renowned as an explosives expert and infamous for being a violent, ruthless man.
The Official version
He went on to write a preliminary report on may 6th, stating that there was evidence of two explosive charges going off. The first was near the starboard chimney, which also destroyed the command bridge and thus the ship's communication equipment. The second one was inside the machine ventilator.
He added that the ship had separate crew quarters divided by race. The stern area, where the white quarters were, had been completely destroyed by the explosions, while the black quarters, on the prow, were left unscathed. Instead what they found there were clothes and other everyday items thrown in disarray, as if the crew members had jumped ship in panic.
This was accepted by Marcello Caetano, Portugal's leader at the time after the death of António Salazar, who publicly claimed the explosions had killed part of the crew, with the rest jumping ship and presumably having been eaten by sharks. He failed to mention that one of the Angoche's life boats was missing.
Who set up the explosives?
An initial theory by PIDE was that the culprits were from Tanzania, Mozambique’s neighbor to the north. South-Africa, in the south, had sent forces to fight Frelimo near the border with Tanzania, so this could have been a retaliatory attack.
A second, more far-fetched theory was that the cargo ship had been boarded by a soviet submarine, which stole the military equipment onboard and took the crew captive. The crewmen had then been transported north to Tanzania, to be kept as prisoners in a Frelimo base near the border with Mozambique and eventually be put to death.
Finally the state police would turn to rogue Portuguese soldiers stationed in Nacala (where the Angoche left port before the incident) with ties to ARA - Ação Revolucionária Armada [Armed Revolutionary Action, the armed branch of the Portuguese Communist Party]. Explosive residue from the Angoche supposedly matched the bombs used by ARA on an attack in Portugal earlier that year.
After this report, rumors abounded about sightings of the missing crewmen, in Mozambique and Tanzania, and of the missing lifeboat being found near Pemba, another city in Mozambique.
After the dictatorship ended in 1974, there was another inquest made into the matter, but it led nowhere. The original files and reports on the incident made by PIDE, presumably including many details left out of the official version, had apparently been lost.
What others say
Among the alternative theories, the most prominent are those that put the blame squarely on the Portuguese military, who carried it out as a false-flag attack. Colonel Carlos Matos Gomes, a former commando operative who fought in the colonial war, points out the careful selection of location for the explosive charges, strong proof of it having been done by experts and not just a ragtag group of rebels.
The goal? Putting the blame on Tanzania, thus justifying military action inside its borders. Frelimo, the Mozambican rebel fighters, had bases in Tanzania from where they launched attacks, but because Tanzania wasn’t officially involved in the war, Portuguese troops couldn’t rightfully pursue the attackers across the border. Colonel Gomes speculates that the South-African government could also have been involved. At the time, the country’s leaders were afraid that the Portuguese colonial war could spread south from Angola and Mozambique and into South-Africa, so the farthest away the war raged, up into the north, the better.
What really happened?
That’s all speculation, though. There were no more official breakthroughs in the investigation, and to this day, 50 years later, we still don’t know what happened. 24 people have vanished. Sailors, cooks, engineers, and an unlucky railway clerk who only wanted to get to his new work place on time. Friends and family members of the missing crew have died with no resolution. All they know is that they never saw their loved ones again.
What do you think happened to the crew of the Angoche?
Photo album imgur.com/a/ZS8vRd0
sol.sapo.pt/artigo/732445/angoche-o-maior-misterio-da-guerra-colonial
visao.sapo.pt/atualidade/sociedade/2021-04-21-continua-por-resolver-o-ultimo-e-tragico-enigma-do-imperio-colonial-portugues/
Context
At the time of these events, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony where a war was raging between the Portuguese army and Mozambican rebels/freedom fighters. Most of these belonged to Frelimo, a political party/terrorist group originally founded in Tanzania, Mozambique's northern neighboring country. At the time Portugal had been ruled by a dictatorship for almost half a century.
The story
The Angoche was a cargo ship from Mozambique which routinely sailed up and down the coast, carrying everything from food, fuel to military equipment. Its crew was made up of 9 Portuguese men and 14 Mozambicans, but on the 23rd of April, 1971, it carried an additional passenger, a middle aged railway clerk who embarked, along with his car, as a favor from the ship's captain. On that day, the Angoche left the port of Nacala, Mozambique, with its hull full of ordinary supplies like flour, sugar and petrol, but also military equipment, including 100 bombs weighing 50kg each, aeronautical material and machine parts.
The Angoche should have reached Porto Amélia in the north the very next day, where all the military equipment would have been unloaded, ready to be transported by land to where the fighting against Frelimo was raging. It never did.
On the 24th of April it was found adrift and on fire by Esso Port Dickson, an oil tanker sailing under the Panama flag, some 30 nautical miles off the coast of Mozambique and over 300 miles south from its destination. There was no sign of the crew, only bloodstains. The only living things inside the ship were a cat and a dog, the crews’ pets, who seemed unharmed.
The Angoche was eventually confiscated by Portuguese authorities, and was towed to Lourenço Marques (current day Maputo, capital of Mozambique). The first Portuguese authority to set foot on the phantom ship was Casimiro Monteiro, a PIDE official (state police), renowned as an explosives expert and infamous for being a violent, ruthless man.
The Official version
He went on to write a preliminary report on may 6th, stating that there was evidence of two explosive charges going off. The first was near the starboard chimney, which also destroyed the command bridge and thus the ship's communication equipment. The second one was inside the machine ventilator.
He added that the ship had separate crew quarters divided by race. The stern area, where the white quarters were, had been completely destroyed by the explosions, while the black quarters, on the prow, were left unscathed. Instead what they found there were clothes and other everyday items thrown in disarray, as if the crew members had jumped ship in panic.
This was accepted by Marcello Caetano, Portugal's leader at the time after the death of António Salazar, who publicly claimed the explosions had killed part of the crew, with the rest jumping ship and presumably having been eaten by sharks. He failed to mention that one of the Angoche's life boats was missing.
Who set up the explosives?
An initial theory by PIDE was that the culprits were from Tanzania, Mozambique’s neighbor to the north. South-Africa, in the south, had sent forces to fight Frelimo near the border with Tanzania, so this could have been a retaliatory attack.
A second, more far-fetched theory was that the cargo ship had been boarded by a soviet submarine, which stole the military equipment onboard and took the crew captive. The crewmen had then been transported north to Tanzania, to be kept as prisoners in a Frelimo base near the border with Mozambique and eventually be put to death.
Finally the state police would turn to rogue Portuguese soldiers stationed in Nacala (where the Angoche left port before the incident) with ties to ARA - Ação Revolucionária Armada [Armed Revolutionary Action, the armed branch of the Portuguese Communist Party]. Explosive residue from the Angoche supposedly matched the bombs used by ARA on an attack in Portugal earlier that year.
After this report, rumors abounded about sightings of the missing crewmen, in Mozambique and Tanzania, and of the missing lifeboat being found near Pemba, another city in Mozambique.
After the dictatorship ended in 1974, there was another inquest made into the matter, but it led nowhere. The original files and reports on the incident made by PIDE, presumably including many details left out of the official version, had apparently been lost.
What others say
Among the alternative theories, the most prominent are those that put the blame squarely on the Portuguese military, who carried it out as a false-flag attack. Colonel Carlos Matos Gomes, a former commando operative who fought in the colonial war, points out the careful selection of location for the explosive charges, strong proof of it having been done by experts and not just a ragtag group of rebels.
The goal? Putting the blame on Tanzania, thus justifying military action inside its borders. Frelimo, the Mozambican rebel fighters, had bases in Tanzania from where they launched attacks, but because Tanzania wasn’t officially involved in the war, Portuguese troops couldn’t rightfully pursue the attackers across the border. Colonel Gomes speculates that the South-African government could also have been involved. At the time, the country’s leaders were afraid that the Portuguese colonial war could spread south from Angola and Mozambique and into South-Africa, so the farthest away the war raged, up into the north, the better.
What really happened?
That’s all speculation, though. There were no more official breakthroughs in the investigation, and to this day, 50 years later, we still don’t know what happened. 24 people have vanished. Sailors, cooks, engineers, and an unlucky railway clerk who only wanted to get to his new work place on time. Friends and family members of the missing crew have died with no resolution. All they know is that they never saw their loved ones again.
What do you think happened to the crew of the Angoche?
Photo album imgur.com/a/ZS8vRd0
sol.sapo.pt/artigo/732445/angoche-o-maior-misterio-da-guerra-colonial
visao.sapo.pt/atualidade/sociedade/2021-04-21-continua-por-resolver-o-ultimo-e-tragico-enigma-do-imperio-colonial-portugues/