The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations agency responsible for the safety of international shipping, added three merchant casualties to its confirmed-incident record through 10 September1. Horizon 1 was damaged on 8 September. Hercules Star was damaged on 9 September, and its charterer reported one crew member killed and a second missing2. New Andros was damaged the same day while carrying fuel oil3.
Every entry on that register carries a vessel name, a date and a location, and neither US Central Command nor the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compiles it. That independence is the whole of its value. Both belligerents issued competing accounts of the same water this week, and an underwriter setting a war-risk premium for the Strait of Hormuz cannot price either one. The register's limits show up in its own entries. An unclaimed projectile killed a crew member aboard an outbound vessel on 18 August, and no name, flag or operator was ever published for the ship. A casualty that can be counted but not attributed tells an owner what happened and nothing about what to avoid.
Horizon 1 is the awkward case. CENTCOM named it as one of the crude carriers its forces disabled, and the IMO recorded it as damaged on the same date, which means a single hull is counted as a victory in Tampa and as a casualty in London. Neither entry is wrong. They are two institutions measuring different things about one event, and the gap between them is where the human cost of this war goes uncounted: a disabled vessel is an achieved military objective to one and a crew in a lifeboat to the other.
