Revisions
Every change made to this site since first publication: what was added, what was corrected, and what a change was based on.
Why this page exists
This record was compiled while the facts were still moving, so it will keep changing. A record that revises itself silently cannot be checked. Every entry below states what changed, when, and on what source.
This page lists every change made to this site since it was first built, newest first. Each entry states what changed and what the change rests on. Where a revision closed a gap that the site had previously recorded as open, that is stated too, because the gap statement itself was a published finding.
26 July 2026 — second build
The Commission of Inquiry was named
The site previously recorded that no commissioners had been named, no chair appointed and no terms of reference published. That is no longer the case, and those statements have been revised wherever they appeared: on the overview, on the positions page, and in the method and gaps page.
President Ali announced the five-member commission on Sunday 26 July. It is chaired by Justice Godfrey Phillip Smith of Belize, with Capt. Hamada Fouda of Jamaica, Nyree Dawn Alfonso of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Andrzej Jasionowski of Poland, and Rear Admiral (Ret'd) Hayden Pritchard of Trinidad and Tobago. Terms of reference were announced in substance at the same time.
Single source at the time of this build, the commissioners' names and the terms of reference rest on the Guyana Chronicle's report of the announcement. No second outlet had published the names when this page was written. The badge will be removed once a second independent source is on the record.
Three related gaps remain open and are still recorded as open: the legal instruments were described in the announcement as "currently being finalised," so nothing is gazetted; no statutory basis was cited; and no secretary or reporting deadline has been named.
The Guyana Chronicle gap was closed
The first build recorded the state-owned Guyana Chronicle as the largest single gap in the corpus — the outlet was absent entirely, because every retrieval attempt hit a JavaScript redirect wall. Forty Chronicle articles have now been retrieved through a browser session and added, of which thirty-eight carry full text. Two are flagged as incomplete captures and are marked as such on their source pages.
This changes the shape of the corpus. The first build noted that the state's entire published output on the disaster ran through the Department of Public Information and ministers' social media accounts. With the Chronicle present, that is no longer accurate, and the observation has been revised.
The government responded on the IMO question
The first build recorded the demand for an International Maritime Organization investigation — from Transparency Institute Guyana, Rescue Guyana and the joint opposition parties — as unanswered by government. A Chronicle report of 25 July carries the Prime Minister saying: "If contacting the International Maritime Organization will help in this inquiry, we will do it." The positions page has been updated and the claim of no government response withdrawn.
Other additions
The Shipping Association of Guyana's statement welcoming the inquiry has been added to the positions page. Chronicle coverage of the search operation, the psychosocial support programme, the interfaith services, and the possibility of a full salvage as a last resort has been added to the chronology.
Source count rises from 152 to 192.
26 July 2026 — first build
Initial publication. 152 sources, compiled eight days after the sinking. Method, retrieval failures and the eighteen corrections made during an adversarial verification pass are set out on the method and gaps page.