Container vessel abandoned mid atlantic.

[lenseman]

Oh dear about to leave the Azores heading for the UK, had better keep a good look out. Is there a site that updates it's position that I could look at?

You will also have a greater risk of running into a deepening low pressure system with its squalls and heavy seas!

Have a safe passage.

 

[taz]

Seems an unusual sort of accident nowadays, from what little I know of merchant shipping; very sad they've already lost 1 crew, doesn't sound much fun at all.

I'll go with that, seajet, very sad indeed.

What has happened to the word "have"? Is it too difficult to pronounce because of the "v" and hence gets mis-spelled?

Mike.

One missing crew and all you can come up with is incorrect grammar

Get a life.

 

[30boat]

It was on the news here.A Portuguese navy helicopter was called to lift three injured crew.They didn't say anything about the ship having been abandoned

 

[lenseman]

It was on the news here.A Portuguese navy helicopter was called to lift three injured crew.They didn't say anything about the ship having been abandoned

Well, if the first ship attending picked up 24 crew out of a life raft with one missing and there was only a crew of 25 in the first place, I would say that the ship is abandoned?

 

[halcyon]

Well, if the first ship attending picked up 24 crew out of a life raft with one missing and there was only a crew of 25 in the first place, I would say that the ship is abandoned?

Falmouth CG said on the radio this morning that 3 injured crew were on fast transit to the Azors for helicopter pick-up. One crew has died of injuries, one missing, remainder on route for Falmouth, vessel still heavily on fire when last seen.

Brian

 

[lenseman]

. . . . . . Allot depends on circumstance, tugs eta will depend on what equipment is sitting round available for work and how much fuel they have available to burn to get there (and back)...

Two fire-fighting tugs are on passage but are not expected until late Tuesday.

The fire started in Number 4 hold and I have heard unofficially that the cause just might be Calcium Hypochlorite which carries the great known risk of self combustion. Apparently, it has been the most common form of fire on box ships over the past decades!

Currently, she is dead in the water with a huge pall of smoke rising from her which can be seen for many miles.

One of the injured crew who was rescued and on route to the Azores, has since died of his/her wounds. There were also two fare paying passengers on board counted in the total of 25 POB. Five German, three Polish, thirteen Phillapino and two fare paying passengers.

 

[Roberto]

Falmouth Coastguard received the relayed mayday broadcast

Does "relayed mayday" mean that the original mayday was not sent from an epirb but form other means, possibly a radio mayday call ?

If a ship sends an Epirb message, by the time it arrives to the MRCC it goes through all sort of land stations, is that called a "relayed mayday" as well ?

 

[lenseman]

Does "relayed mayday" mean that the original mayday was not sent from an epirb but form other means, possibly a radio mayday call ?

If a ship sends an Epirb message, by the time it arrives to the MRCC it goes through all sort of land stations, is that called a "relayed mayday" as well ?

I suspect that the explosion was so sudden that the crew has no time to send an HF DSC Mayday and just sent either a VHF or MF distress call which was heard by the DS Crown, a VLCC travelling in the same area and that was relayed to MRCC Falmouth.

Of course it could be just bad reporting of the incident by poor press officers getting the information incorrectly written down?

 

[lenseman]

Update:

NORTH ATLANTIC.

1. DERELICT 300 METER M/V MSC FLAMINIA ON FIRE AND NUMEROUS CONTAINERS ADRIFT VICINITY 48° 13'N 027° 56'W AT 141600Z JUL.

 

[Slave11]

mmmmm msc napoli springs to mind and we only got rid of that last year

 

[Slave11]

related to the msc napoli i suspect ?

 

[Seajet]

It gets worse, another fatality; I wonder if they were fire fighting or caught up in it, either way it shouldn't be happening in the 21st century, life is still cheap when profits ashore are a factor.

I've sometimes wondered if a warship, of whichever nationality applies or happens to be closest, could be tasked to sink such containers, hopefully while they are clustered in a relatively small area.

I doubt they'd get all of them, and it would be difficult to accomplish - but maybe good training because of that ?

As it is there are a lot of hazards let loose on the ocean again, I should think a semi-submerged container could significantly disimprove most ships, let alone yachts.

 

[lenseman]

UPDATE:

It is a big fire and she is slowly drifting east with a number of containers in the water.

Smit has won the salvage contract with the two fire fighting tugs. Fairmount Expedition which will arrive in theatre by late Tuesday and the Anglian Sovereign which is expected to arrive late Thursday or early Friday morning.

 

[Twister_Ken]

MSC?

Make Smoke, Carruthers.

 

[mjcoon]

I'll go with that, seajet, very sad indeed.
...
One missing crew and all you can come up with is incorrect grammar

Get a life.

I can't work out whether expressing sadness at an unknown sailor dying many miles away (in which radius there must be many hundreds of deaths per day) is a tear-jerk or knee-jerk reaction. Either way it seems pretty meaningless unless accompanied by a donation to some seamens' charity...

Mike.

 

[Kukri]

Fires in containerised cargo are sadly all too common - shippers* try to avoid paying the slightly higher rate for "DG" (dangerous goods) cargo which is charged because of the special handling required, by mis-labelling the contents of the container.

Then they stuff the container without any thought of the rolling, pitching and acceleration motions that the container will be subject to...

Oh and the other little trick is lying about the weight.

* Since The Economist regularly calls the ship owner "the shipper" others may make the same mistake. The shipper is the exporter - the seller of the goods. If the shipment is "FCL" (full container load) and shipper packed, or indeed "LCL" and stuffed by a wide boy forwarder, the shipowners and their crew have no control over what is in the box.

 

[penfold]

It gets worse, another fatality; I wonder if they were fire fighting or caught up in it, either way it shouldn't be happening in the 21st century, life is still cheap when profits ashore are a factor.

I've sometimes wondered if a warship, of whichever nationality applies or happens to be closest, could be tasked to sink such containers, hopefully while they are clustered in a relatively small area.

I doubt they'd get all of them, and it would be difficult to accomplish - but maybe good training because of that ?

As it is there are a lot of hazards let loose on the ocean again, I should think a semi-submerged container could significantly disimprove most ships, let alone yachts.

Interesting observations; certainly while seafarers are trained in basic firefighting we are not firemen and should not think of ourselves as such. In circumstances such as this where there has been an explosion you're pretty much on a loser from the start; if you're lucky the integrity of the hold is intact, you can shut the fire flaps and conduct boundary cooling. So far, so straight forward. Except there's only 2 fireteams and you need to cool from fore and aft, the sidedeck is maybe 4-5ft wide and one team needs to walk past the now glowing hold to get in position; its at this point I'd start to ponder if I get paid enough for this, if it goes pearshaped will we be able to get back aft where the LSA is?

If the integrity of the hold is breached all bets are off; there is no means of controlling airflow to whatever is combustible and with usually only 4 sets of firefighters gear and 3 BA bottles per set(often no compressor for refills), controlling it is going to be an uphill fight. With the limited BA bottle supply and only enough AFFF for maybe 20 minutes firefighting, putting it out is not likely in this case.

As to sinking stray containers the problem is that the floating ones often float because they are stuffed with things like tellys, which are encased in polystyrene; unless you blast the container to atoms it won't sink. The other habitual floaters are the reefer boxes and they are insulated with foam so are similarly resistant to being deep-sixed.

 

[Seajet]

Penfold,

thanks for that, several very good points.

I don't know what the answer to sinking such containers may be, but surely something must be done; presumably it will take the sinking of a vessel with a lot of people - or a few 'important' ones - to make it happen...

The obvious answer would be better restraints to stop the things going overboard ( and if the ship sinks they go down with it ) but presumably this has been studied, as the container contents represent money !

 

[Kukri]

Interesting observations; certainly while seafarers are trained in basic firefighting we are not firemen and should not think of ourselves as such. In circumstances such as this where there has been an explosion you're pretty much on a loser from the start; if you're lucky the integrity of the hold is intact, you can shut the fire flaps and conduct boundary cooling. So far, so straight forward. Except there's only 2 fireteams and you need to cool from fore and aft, the sidedeck is maybe 4-5ft wide and one team needs to walk past the now glowing hold to get in position; its at this point I'd start to ponder if I get paid enough for this, if it goes pearshaped will we be able to get back aft where the LSA is?

If the integrity of the hold is breached all bets are off; there is no means of controlling airflow to whatever is combustible and with usually only 4 sets of firefighters gear and 3 BA bottles per set(often no compressor for refills), controlling it is going to be an uphill fight. With the limited BA bottle supply and only enough AFFF for maybe 20 minutes firefighting, putting it out is not likely in this case.

As to sinking stray containers the problem is that the floating ones often float because they are stuffed with things like tellys, which are encased in polystyrene; unless you blast the container to atoms it won't sink. The other habitual floaters are the reefer boxes and they are insulated with foam so are similarly resistant to being deep-sixed.

Agree with that of course.

Looking at the picture above there is a stow collapse in way of what looks like no 4 hold which tells us that the pontoon covers must have been displaced by the initial explosion. So the integrity of the hold is lost.

There certainly should be a BA compressor on board - SOLAS since the 80's, iirc. But don't ask me to find the chapter and verse!

Seajet - containers are held down by twistlocks, bottlescrews and lashing bars typicallywith an SWL of 50 tons at least. The problem comes when the containers distort or the ship under them distorts.

 

[Kelpie]

Idle speculation here, but I wonder if the gradual shift away from polystyrene towards paper-based packaging materials will coincidentally lead to less floating containers?