There were 61 incidents involving 120 stowaways reported in 2014, according to International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO’s) statistics.
Cape Town and Lagos were the most common ports of embankment. Some 81% of the total amount of cases were from Africa, the most common nationalities involved in the incidents being Nigerian, Ghana and Tanzanian.
The ships that were most boarded by stowaways were containerships with 25 incidents, followed by bulk carriers with 10 reported incidents and oil tankers with 7 cases, followed by other ship types with considerably fewer incidents.
According to the statistics of marine insurer Swedish Club, the average cost for a stowaway case is USD38,500 although the costs for one case can escalate to several hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the legal and practical difficulties to repatriate the stowaway involving, inter alia, teams of security personnel.
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