According to reports from the Portuguese Navy, on the night of September 3rd, local time, at around 11 p.m, a container ship named Odysseus (with a deadweight of 39,420 tons), while en route from the Port of Vigo to the of Malaga, sent out an emergency distress signal in the Algarve waters near the city of Lagos, Portugal. The ship reported an unknown person boarding the vessel, andconfirmed reports suggest that at least two crew members were trapped in the engine room.

Built in 2006, the vessel has a capacity of ,824 standard boxes and is registered in Liberia, managed by the Greek company Cosmoship.

At around 11 p.m. local, the ship deviated from its original route to about 6 nautical miles from the shore. The Portuguese Navy, in conjunction with the National Maritime Authority, dispatched patrol and helicopters for search and rescue operations. The military confirmed that the crew members had been released from the engine room, and the initial search did not find any traces of the boarders

The ship is being diverted to the Port of Sines for further investigation.

The Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias quoted as saying that two armed masked individuals fled before the authorities arrived, and the preliminary speculation is that a drug trafficking gang attempted to hijack the ship to transport drugs (as the sea is an important channel for drug smuggling in Europe).

As the largest import hub for liquefied natural gas in Europe, the Port of Sines has a target for drug smugglers in recent years, and this incident once again exposes the security loopholes in the maritime traffic arteries of Western Europe