Two "Resolute" ships

The Resolute, showing her slightly-dented bow

It's a storied name. The original HMS "Resolute," one of the ships of Belcher's ill-fated Franklin search squadron, was abandoned in the Arctic, and none of her officers and crew expected to see her again -- and yet, against all odds, she found her own way free, drifted down to the Davis Strait, where she was retrieved by an American whaler. Refurbished by an Act of Congress, she was sailed back across the sea by the gallant Captain Hartstene and presented to Queen Victoria. Years later, when she was retired and broken up, her Majesty caused several desks to be made from her timbers, the best-known of which was presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes, and sits now in the Oval Office of the White House.

Fast forward a hundred and forty years. Once again we have a doughty ship,  the Resolute, and once more she's stranded far from home. Most recently the flagship of the now-defunct One Ocean Expeditions, she'd cruised both the Arctic and Antarctic, parting those icy waters with her reinforced bow -- but now she lay at the port of Buenos Aires, arrested for unpaid debts. Word of her ultimate destiny remains uncertain; apparently she was purchased or leased by a German ship management company, Columbia Cruise Services GmbH, and shifted to Portuguese registry before being sailed north. It seems she was on her way to a port call in the Caribbean when -- in international waters off the island of Tortuga -- she was suddenly challenged by a patrol boat from the Venezuelan navy, the Naiguatá.

The Naiguatá

Although far outside Venezuela's territorial waters, the captain of the Naiguatá apparently challenged the Resolute and attempted to order it into a Venezuelan port. The captain of the Resolute refused this order, at which point shots were fired from the Naiguatá, and she attempted to ram the bow of the Resolute to force her to turn shoreward. Doubtless the captain of the Naiguatá was unaware that this was an ice-strengthened vessel, originally built in 1991 as the Society Adventurer and later the Hanseatic; her bow was more than a match for such efforts. Instead, after repeated, deliberate collisions, the Naiguatá suffered severe damage to her bow, and began taking on water.  The Resolute alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Curaçao, who initiated a rescue operation; not long after, the Naiguatá sank, but all hands were saved. It may be the only known engagement in which a naval war vessel was sunk by a polar cruise ship -- and the Resolute once again proved that she was aptly named.