> Could you elaborate a bit on this part? Intentional sinking for insurance purposes, or to avoid having to pay for it to be scrapped?

Sorry for late reply. Yeah, I was thinking of the latter, though both might be possible. Contriving a marine accident, collision, fire. loss in a storm etc would be physically dangerous and legally very risky. A less serious but still illegal caper would be dodging the scrapage costs by holing it. But when a registered vessel "disappears" that can trigger serious investigations for all sorts of reasons I am sure you can imagine.