“Darkness became our ally,” recalled Capt Jamshed Appoo, who worked in the Merchant Navy for two decades and has traversed the Strait of Hormuz — a passage between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman — numerous times. Today, this strait has become front and centre of the Iran-US-Israel war. 

“It was the 1980s, and the Iran-Iraq war had broken out. It was a very bloody war. I used to sail for a Norwegian company then, and our route was through the strait of Hormuz. The vessel was a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC). We used to sail from Rastan Nura [in Saudi Arabia], picking up the oil and offloading in Europe, most of the time in Amsterdam,” said Capt Appoo.