‘Saw missiles for first time’: For Paanch Saab, baptism by fire at sea near Hormuz

It was on one of those drifting mornings, stepping onto the deck for fresh air before her engine room rounds, that she heard a sound from the sky and looked up to see the flashes.

“This was the first time I saw missiles in real life. My hands started shivering,” she says. Terrified, she ran below to the mess room and considered asking to sign off. But once there, she found her crewmates eating breakfast, laughing, entirely at ease and something in her perspective shifted.

“If my seniors could carry their own fear and still show up for work, so could I,” says Salim.

She heard the main engine starting — a small kick ahead for position adjustment. “I heard the starting sound. ‘Tak Tak Tak.’ I hear that sound every time. But that morning it felt different. It felt like the heartbeat of the ship. And that time I realised the ship is alive. We are not alone,” wrote Salim later in an essay published in the  magazine of Synergy Marine Group that manages her ship.

She went down to have a cup of tea with the Second Engineer, the officer she reported to. “He took one look at me and could read that something is not right and  when I said that I want to stay on board and be part of the team instead of quitting, he smiled and said in Malayalam, ‘5 saab ippo strong aayi, Vaa namuk oru fuel valve overhaul cheyyam, appo ellam sheryavum’ which translated to ‘5 saab had become strong now. Come, let’s overhaul one fuel valve, then everything will be alright.’ In the middle of uncertainty, those simple words gave me comfort, strength and the confidence to carry on with my work.”

As a fifth engineer everyone on board called her “Paanch Saab”, the traditional title for the ship’s youngest engineer. “I liked the name. It made me feel like I belonged, even though I didn’t have a watch yet,” says Salim who also made the decision to not  tell her family at home the full extent of what was happening — she didn’t want them to panic. It was only after the ship had safely cleared the area that she learned her parents had been doing the very same thing for her: staying composed on their calls, masking their own fear so she wouldn’t carry the weight of theirs.

“We were all trying to protect one another in our own way,” she reflects.

Hailing from Edakkazhiyur, a small town in Thrissur district, her close-knit family had always taught her to dream big while staying grounded, she says. She had once dreamed of the Indian Navy, but the engineering side of the Merchant Navy pulled her in, partly because almost no one at home could tell her what the profession even involved.

“Nobody could tell me what the merchant navy actually was,” she recalls. “This blank space was my spark. I resolved to become the first person from my town to walk that path, so that anyone who came looking for answers afterwards could look at me, and I could show them exactly what’s possible,” she says.

With 3.23 lakh sailors (as of 2024), India ranks among the top three global suppliers of seafarers, alongside the Philippines and China, holding approximately 17% of global crew share. Today, nearly one in five seafarers worldwide is Indian.

During the Iran war, 13 India-flagged vessels, with close to 550 Indian sailors on board, were stuck in the Strait of Hormuz for more than 100 days. Across the broader Gulf region, more than 18,000 Indian seafarers were caught up in the uncertainty.

Women however make up just 1% of the total number of seafarers globally. Salim was one of the two women (the other being a deck cadet) amongst the crew of 24  on board her vessel as it drifted near the war zone.

Salim completed her B.Tech in Marine Engineering at the Indian Maritime University in Chennai, and on October 15, 2025, she joined her first vessel in Houston, a moment she describes as a mix of “excitement, nervousness, and curiosity.”

All of it continued until those fleeting moments of fear overtook these emotions in the war zone. But finally as the heartbeats from deep below the ship won over the sounds of the missiles above, Salim responded to the challenges of the sea like a true sailor.

Three months after the Hormuz crossing, Salim signed off in Japan. “The first thing I wanted wasn’t rest or celebration, it was just my mother’s home-cooked food,” smiles the girl who is now preparing for her exams for the next level of rank at sea.