It's a scam: the tanker beached at Sheffield Beach is not the Phoenix. Instead it is the Concel Pride, a ship that was deliberately run aground as part of an elaborate insurance rip-off aimed at netting millions of rands for the mystery owners.

That's the story that the Durban shipping community was awash with this week.

It is claimed that Concel Pride, alternatively named Evrenye 1, was purposely dashed on the rocks.

The Phoenix was a longer vessel that was actually scrapped in India last year.

Now the SA Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) is embroiled in a legal battle to recoup the costs of the salvage operation, believed to have run into millions.

No one has claimed ownership of the vessel, which ran aground near Ballito last week, after initially experiencing engine trouble earlier in July.

Now Samsa and several maritime experts have questioned the circumstances under which the ship ran aground, alluding to a series of events that occurred in the immediate run-up to the ship's grounding, including that:

l The salvage ship, the Smit Amandla, fired eight rocket lines to the vessel while trying to reconnect as it slid off - but six of these lines have been found on board the Phoenix.

l The "Phoenix" reported on two occasions that the messenger rope "slipped off" the drum end of the winch - several maritime experts could not recall this happening in previous operations.

l The master of the Smit Amandla had to instruct the master of the "Phoenix" to extend the anchor cable when the vessel started dragging - standard procedure that even a junior officer should know.

Captain Nigel Campbell, manager of Samsa's southern region, said although no conclusive findings had been made, maritime history was riddled with scams in which ship owners colluded with unscrupulous insurance brokers to make fraudulent claims.

"It would not be the first time an unscrupulous ship owner was prepared to sacrifice a vessel in an attempt to realise the insured value.

"Nobody is going to admit to it, but in this case there's enough circumstantial evidence to suggest this might have happened. These things have happened, there's a history of them happening…"

International Transport Workers' Federation inspector Sprite Zungu disputed the claim of an insurance scam, saying he had been told by the captain that the ship was not covered by insurance.

"I fail to understand why someone would deliberately ground a ship when they have nothing to gain from it."

Samsa attorney Mark van Velden of Velden, Pike and Partners, said the identity of the owners of the ship was not yet known.

"Samsa had initially made contact with someone who claimed to be the manager of the ship, a person from Noha Maritime in India. But he went quiet a bit before the ship went aground," he said.

Van Velden said the ship had no traceable history and that registries did not provide any clues.

"It's an old ship that's in terrible condition and could well have been rotting off the coast of Nigeria.

"The Phoenix might not even be its name," he said.

Responding to claims that the Phoenix might have been deliberately run aground as part of an insurance scam, Van Velden said that while the circumstances surrounding the grounding had been suspicious, there was no specific evidence to prove the fraud claims.

"Samsa has said that there are indications that something is not quite right… that this might have been an insurance scam and it certainly does look suspicious, but there is no evidence to prove this."

There is also no evidence of an insurance claim having being made on the ship.

Campbell is quoted, in an e-mail forwarded to the Tribune, as saying: "The documentation in our possession indicates that the owners of the vessel are either A & L Shipping Inc of Panama or A & L Shipping of Belize.

"We have also been contacted by Lloyd's Casualty Intelligence of London as they can find no record of the Phoenix. However, a vessel of the same type, size and name was scrapped in India in November 2010."

Maritime expert and shipping journalist Terry Hutson said the ship might have come from Nigeria, where a lot of ships were abandoned off the coast.

Hutson said a Durban ship enthusiast, Trevor Jones, had driven up to Sheffield Beach and photographed the ship.

Among his findings (and corroborated by another ship enthusiast in Britain, Steven Smith), was that a name, Evrenye 1, had been painted out on the ship's side.

Smith said Evrenye 1 was the former name of a vessel that arrived in Algeciras, a port city south of Spain, on April 6, 2005 under a different name, the Concel Pride, but was subsequently abandoned.

Reference records further showed that the ship's name had been changed to Concel in August 2008, said Hutson.

Hutson said that photographic evidence from Jones and Smith strongly suggest the Phoenix is, indeed, the Concel Pride.

Jones and Smith said descriptions of the Phoenix were incorrect.

The ship beached in Durban is 134.55m long. The Phoenix they know to have been scrapped in India was 164m long.

They said the vessel wrecked at Sheffield resembles a ship built in Japan and which had been abandoned and since reported as sold. Concel Pride was abandoned in Algeciras, southern Spain.

It is 134.55m long.

Jones said, "It seems at some stage the vessel went to Nigeria and was disposed of by the ship owner whom, one would think, is associated with a scrap merchant.

"She was going from West Africa to India for breaking and had a series of unfortunate events. What I can't tell you is why the agents would want it either sunk or beached, unless the insurance value was higher than the scrap value."

Jones said it was unknown when or how the name Phoenix came about, but it was not unusual for ships to be renamed when going on their last voyage.

Hutson said he believed the ship was worth about R400 000 as scrap. However, it would fetch millions from an insurance claim.

"It's basically worth scrap value. I don't think the owners would ask for much for it." But he said R3 million or more from an insurance company was "a lot more attractive than R400 000 or R500 000 from a scrap metal dealer."

Jones said the possibility of an insurance scam was not far-fetched.

"A number of vessels, particularly on the South African coast, have foundered, often in quite good weather and in inexplicable circumstances."

For now, getting the vessel off the rocks of Sheffield Beach remains a priority.

Two potential buyers have lined up to purchase the vessel. One of the buyers has offered R2.9m, provided the ship can be refloated.

Van Velden said that with no owner coming forward, Samsa was entitled to any and all funds generated from the deal.

"They will grab anything they can get and anything that they do get will be swallowed up as part of the salvage costs."

Samsa reportedly spent an estimated R10m on the salvage operation.