The Constanţa port received an S.O.S from the Evangelia cargo ship on the 14th of October. They sent out a rescue ship called Salvator Voinicul to help them with their troubles. This rescue ship was sent out for a fool’s errand, the Evangelia crew giving them bad coordinates twice on where they were located. Mircea Ionescu, the person in charge of the rescue operation and the master of the Voinicul ship, figured out that something was wrong and went in the opposite direction of what they were telling him. This is how he eventually found the ship after an entire night of searching, stranded on the single sand bench in the area, in the Costineşti village
This is where the story gets more interesting. With the help of another rescue ship, Albatros, Mircea Ionescu pulled the Evangelia off of the sandbank, and its crew seemed eager to continue the voyage. Yet, the next day, Voinicul found Evangelia on the same sandbank. After an investigation, it turned out that the crew of Evangelia purposefully damaged the ship by guiding it with full force towards the shore. The navigation right of the ship had expired two years previously, and the owner convinced the crew to wreck it so that they could get the money from the insurance. This wasn’t possible in the end since the Romanian rescue crew figured it all out and wouldn’t take a bribe from Evangelia’s owner. The Greeks abandoned the ship and were also left with no insurance.
While Evangelia’s stranding story is interesting on its own, there are a few extra things worth mentioning. The ship was built in the same shipyard as the Titanic, in 1942, and its first name was Empire Strength. The ship remained 44 years stranded in one piece in extreme winter weather conditions before breaking in two. This happened due to an intense storm on the 20th of December, 2012 when the temperatures dropped very low. This was the ultimate fate of all shipwrecks in time, the erosion deteriorating a ship gravely. One local story also mentions there being oranges all over the Costineşti beach, the day after the ship stranded, to the delight of all passerby
Drone Footage by Marian Ionut Moraru Flydronetube owner