492 ships at anchor, and a tanker reported three days late

The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre, UKMTO, said it had received a “verified, time-late report” of a tanker struck by an unknown projectile while sailing outbound through the Strait of Hormuz on 23 October at 08:39 UTC¹. The ship was disabled; the crew are safe¹. The report surfaced three days after the event. On Monday UKMTO also passed on third-party reports of a vessel on fire about 63 nautical miles southeast of Al-Faw, Iraq, in the northern Gulf, classed as suspicious activity rather than a confirmed attack^1,3.

The queue. The Joint Maritime Information Center estimated on 25 October that about 492 vessels were waiting outside the strait: about 194 near Fujairah and Khor Fakkan, 178 off Dubai, 55 near Musandam and Sohar and 32 off Bandar Abbas and Qeshm². It said the backlog was expected to persist². The centre keeps its threat level for Hormuz at “severe”, with further deliberate attacks “highly likely”, and counts 156 confirmed maritime security incidents in the region since 1 March¹.

The traffic. JMIC recorded 101 US-facilitated transits between 22 and 24 October, against a 2025 average of about 138 vessels a day; the two figures are measured differently¹. Desk arithmetic: about 34 assisted transits a day, roughly a quarter of the old daily average. Outside the US-assisted system, tracking showed single-digit daily transits¹.

The machinery. Navigation interference is part of the picture: Windward counted 293 vessels affected by jamming in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman on 21 October, and UKMTO’s weekly overview logged 18,049 anomalous position reports². JMIC also warns that ships sitting still at anchor with their transponders on face higher targeting risk².

None of this cancels Monday’s talks in Tehran; it tells you what they are up against. Insurers, charterers and port agents will believe a ceasefire when the anchorage count falls, and that is a fair test. A queue of 492 ships is also a queue of crews, cargoes and invoices waiting to move the day the lane is safe.