The Channel has always been a stage for maritime theatre, from Spanish Armadas to D-Day flotillas. But the vessel that slipped through the Dover Strait this morning was not flying a flag of any recognised navy. It was a rust-streaked tanker, one of dozens in the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ Russia has assembled to bypass sanctions.
Its arrival, following the Royal Navy’s boarding of HMS Smyrtos last week, has triggered a quiet mobilisation off the Kent coast. This is not a blockade. It is a game of nerves played with oil and insurance loopholes.
The human cost is harder to see: the crews on these ships often work in squalid conditions, afraid to dock. The cultural shift is this: we now accept that the sea lanes around our shores are a grey zone, where the line between commerce and confrontation has dissolved. Locals in Dover watch the destroyers with a grim familiarity.
‘It’s like the Cold War, but with more paperwork,’ a fisherman told me. The government insists it is prepared. But the real story is the slow erosion of maritime norms, leaving everyone guessing where the next shadow will surface.
