It sounds like a bad horror movie plot. A squid jigging ship leaves port with 33 men, sails into the dark expanse of the North Pacific, and returns months later with only 11 people left on board. This isn't fiction. The story of the Lurongyu 2682, often referred to in maritime circles as the deep sea liner 2682 case, is one of the most chilling examples of a total breakdown in human social order.
When the ship was finally towed back to Shidao port in 2011, the hull was battered. The men who walked off were silent. They weren't just survivors of a shipwreck; they were the victors of a month-long bloodbath that saw two-thirds of the crew murdered, thrown overboard, or "disappeared" into the black water. To understand how a fishing boat turned into a floating slaughterhouse, you have to look at the pressure cooker environment of illegal deep-sea fishing.
The Voyage of the Lurongyu 2682
The ship set off in December 2010.
Most of the crew were migrant workers. Some didn't even have the proper seafaring permits. They were promised a steady salary and a share of the profits from the squid catch near Chile. But once they were thousands of miles from the coast, the reality of the contract set in. The work was grueling. It was 20-hour shifts of pulling heavy lines in freezing spray. The "guaranteed" pay turned out to be tied to impossible performance quotas.
Liu Guiang, the man who would eventually lead the first mutiny, realized they were essentially indentured servants.
He wasn't a man to take that sitting down. Liu was a physical powerhouse, a former soldier who had a certain charisma that drew the more desperate crew members to his side. By June 2011, the ship was fueled up and ready to head to its next fishing spot. That's when Liu and a group of about a dozen men decided they were taking the ship back to China. They weren't asking.
The First Blood
It started with the engine room. They needed to control the power. When the captain, Li Chengquan, tried to resist, they tied him up.
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But things went sideways almost immediately.
One of the ship’s cooks, Xia Qixun, tried to intervene or perhaps just stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. He became the first casualty. He was stabbed and thrown into the sea. Once that line was crossed—once the crew realized there was no going back from a murder charge—the psychology of the boat shifted. It wasn't about a strike anymore. It was about survival and elimination.
A Spiral Into Paranoia
If you've ever spent time in a confined space with people you don't trust, you know how quickly the air sours. Now imagine that space is a rusted metal deck in the middle of the Pacific.
After the first murder, the Lurongyu 2682 became a fractured society. You had the original mutineers, the "neutral" crew members who just wanted to live, and the management loyalists. Liu Guiang ruled through fear, but he was also incredibly paranoid. He started hearing rumors. He thought people were plotting a counter-mutiny.
He was right, kinda.
The ship’s management and a few others were indeed looking for a way to retake control. When Liu found out, he didn't just punish them. He orchestrated a systematic "cleansing" of the ship. This wasn't a heat-of-the-moment fight. It was a calculated series of executions. They would call men to the deck one by one. Some were stabbed. Others were tied with heavy weights and pushed over the side while they were still alive.
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The sheer scale of the violence is hard to wrap your head around.
- Six men were killed in the first wave of the "cleansing."
- Another group disappeared during a foggy night.
- The captain, remarkably, joined the mutineers to save his own skin, eventually participating in the killing of his own loyal crew.
The Technical Failure that Ended the Nightmare
The ship didn't make it back to China on its own.
The engine room, poorly maintained during the chaos, eventually gave out. The ship began to leak. It was a sinking tomb. The survivors were forced to send out a distress signal, which was picked up by the Japanese Coast Guard. By the time the Chinese authorities intercepted the boat and towed it back, the 11 survivors had coordinated a story.
They claimed they were attacked by pirates. They claimed they had nothing to do with the disappearances.
But investigators aren't stupid. They found traces of blood under the deck plates that hadn't been scrubbed well enough. They found the inconsistencies in the testimonies. Under the pressure of interrogation, the "brotherhood" of the survivors crumbled. They started pointing fingers at each other to avoid the death penalty.
What the Trials Revealed
The 2013 trial in Weihai was a media sensation in China, though it didn't get nearly enough coverage in the West. It revealed a terrifying level of cruelty. One of the survivors testified that they had reached a point where killing was "natural."
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The court didn't show much mercy.
- Liu Guiang and the captain, Li Chengquan, were sentenced to death.
- Several others received death sentences with a two-year reprieve (which usually means life in prison).
- The remaining crew members got various prison terms based on their level of involvement.
The case of the Lurongyu 2682 remains a landmark in maritime law because it highlights the "lawless" nature of the high seas. When you are outside a country's Exclusive Economic Zone, you are in a vacuum. The only law is the one the guy with the knife says it is.
Why This Case Matters Today
We like to think of the modern world as fully connected and monitored. We have GPS, satellite phones, and AIS tracking. But the deep sea is still a wilderness.
The Lurongyu 2682 wasn't just a freak occurrence; it was a symptom of the "Blue Economy" gone wrong. Overfishing means boats have to stay out longer and go further. That leads to higher costs, which leads to companies cutting corners on labor. When you trap desperate, untrained men on a boat for two years with no escape, you aren't running a business. You're building a bomb.
Honestly, the most haunting part of the whole thing is the silence of the Pacific. No one heard the screams. No one saw the bodies hit the water. It was only the mechanical failure of the ship itself that brought the truth to light.
Key Takeaways for Maritime Safety and Awareness
If you are researching maritime history or the darker side of the fishing industry, the Lurongyu 2682 serves as a grim case study. Here is what we can learn from the disaster:
- Contract Transparency: The primary catalyst was the deceptive pay structure. Modern maritime labor laws (like the Maritime Labour Convention) are designed to prevent this, but enforcement on small fishing vessels is notoriously difficult.
- Psychological Screening: Long-haul fishing requires intense psychological resilience. The mix of a dominant, aggressive leader like Liu and a group of vulnerable men was a recipe for disaster.
- The Role of Technology: Today, many vessels are required to have VMS (Vessel Monitoring Systems). If a ship deviates from its course or stops for long periods, it triggers red flags. On the Lurongyu 2682, they simply turned the radio off.
- Legal Jurisdiction: The trial proved that even crimes committed in international waters can be prosecuted heavily if the vessel is flagged to a specific country.
To dig deeper into the actual legal transcripts or the cultural impact of this event, look for the non-fiction book The Murders on the Lurongyu 2682 or the various long-form investigative reports published by Chinese outlets like Caixin. These sources provide a granular look at the interrogation phases that simple news blurbs often miss.
The tragedy of the Lurongyu 2682 stands as a reminder that the ocean doesn't just hold shipwrecks—it holds secrets that some people would kill to keep submerged. Awareness of these "dark fleets" is the first step toward ensuring that the deep sea stops being a place where human rights go to die.