New Delhi, June 14 -- WEYMOUTH, England - The tanker that Royal Marine Commandos seized in the English Channel on Sunday had already changed its name once and its flag at least twice before anyone stopped it. The Smyrtos, now anchored in Weymouth Bay under watch from HMS Ledbury and HMS Sutherland, was sanctioned by Britain in July 2025. It spent the ten months between that listing and Sunday morning sailing anyway, under a Cameroon flag, through some of the world's busiest shipping lanes, carrying what vessel-tracking data suggests was a cargo of crude oil loaded at Russia's Ust-Luga terminal on June 1.

The operation that stopped it lasted six hours, running from the dark hours of early Sunday morning until mid-morning, and involved Chi...