It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, February 16, 2024
Search Underway After Shadowy Turkish Cargo Ship Sinks South of Istanbul
An empty raft and life preserver were found during the search (Turkish Minister of Internal Affairs/Twitter)
Turkish officials are highlighting that an intensive search and rescue operation was launched this morning after a distress signal was received from a small cargo vessel in the Sea of Marmara. The vessel, the Bathuhan A (1,000 dwt) appears to have been operating in a domestic service largely outside international shipping regulations.
The Transport Ministry along with the Navy and the Governor of Busa each issued statements as the search continued in the area. They reported receiving a distress signal shortly after 06:00 this morning but the signal was lost in just over an hour.
The 226-foot (69 meter) cargo ship had departed last night from the Badalalan port and was reported lost south of Istanbul. Its way to Gemlik transporting 1,250 tons of dolomite, a type of limestone used in the manufacturing of cement.
Officials are blaming the casualty on heavy weather. They are reporting waves up to 10 feet in the area as well as wind and rain.
“Intensive efforts are underway to rescue the crew of six people, believed to be Turkish nationals, on the Batuhan A that took on water and sank,” reported Mahmut Demirtas, the governor of Bursa. A total of 275 personnel were involved in the effort which included a Coast Guard corvette as well as three other patrol boats, and boats from the Coastal Safety team as well as a mine hunter and a rescue ship from the Navy. Initial efforts to dispatch a helicopter and search plan were hampered by bad weather.
Search teams located an empty inflatable life raft and a life preserver marked with the name of the ship. The Naval force later reported that its team detected the ship at a depth of 51 meters (167 feet) with a sonar device.
Naval Forces report they found the wreckage on sonar (Turkish Naval Forces)
Built in 1971, the ship had been acquired by its current owner in 2018 and according to media reports the owner is among the six missing crewmembers. The vessel appears to have been shuttling back and forth between the Turkish ports operating outside international regulation. Her class society was listed as the Dromon Bureau of Shipping, however it is marked as overdue and withdrawn in 2015. There are no port state inspections on file since 2001, and that one lists 17 deficiencies.
The ship had a prior incident in April 2021 when it went aground. It was inbound to the Turkish port in Karabiga in the Canakkale Province also on the Sea of Marmara. It was reportedly attempting to dock to unload an unspecified cargo when it grounded. The ship remained stranded for two days before the crew could be rescued in that incident.
Korean Coast Guard Rescues 11 From Sinking Cargo Ship
Cargo ship Keum Yang 6 issued a distress call in a strong storm south of Korea (Korea Coast Guard)
South Korea’s Coast Guard is reporting the rescue of 11 sailors from a small cargo ship that was caught in a strong storm south of the Korean peninsular. According to the report, the crew was safely aboard a Coast Guard rescue vessel less than two hours after the distress call was received.
The vessel, the 3,500-dwt Keum Yang 6 departed Gwangyang, South Korea with a cargo of steel plate bound for Zhoushan, China. The vessel was built in 2017 and is owned by a South Korean shipping company, Keum Yang Shipping which has a fleet of small cargo ships operating in the region.
The ship reportedly encountered a strong storm with 16-foot seas. Winds were reported at 35 to 40 mph. The cargo ship, which was 262 feet (80 meters) in length began taking on water and issued a distress call while approximately 40 miles southwest of Jeju Island at around 22:00 local time on February 15.
Coast Guard said the evacuation was completed in less than two hours after the distress call was received (Korea Coast Guard)
The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter and rescue ship and reported by the time it reached the cargo ship it had a 25-degree list to port with water washing over the deck. There was a total of 11 crewmembers aboard, consisting of two Koreans, six from Myanmar, and three from Indonesia.
Despite the adverse weather conditions, the Coast Guard reported that all the crewmembers were rescued by shortly before midnight local time.
An investigation is underway into the cause of the incident.
Sweden Closes Case of MV Estonia Sinking
A simulation of Estonia's sinking from the original 1997 report (MS Estonia investigation)
Prosecutors in Sweden have decided not to reopen a new investigation into the fate of the ferry Estonia, which went down in the Baltic with massive loss of life in 1994. The ferry's loss has been the subject of controversy for 30 years, and researchers and family members have proposed competing theories that challenge the official explanation.
On the night of September 27, 1994, the ro/pax ferry Estonia got under way from Tallinn to Stockholm. The weather was rough, with winds of up to 40 knots and waves of up to 20 feet. The vessel would never arrive.
At about 0055 hours on the 28th, passengers heard a loud bang. 15 minutes later, the vessel's bow visor came loose, leading to flooding in her wide-open vehicle decks. She rapidly listed to starboard, reaching 60 degrees over the course of 15 minutes. At 0150, less than an hour after the first signs of trouble, she slipped below. Only 137 out of the 989 people on board Estonia survived.
The official investigation blamed the sinking on the mechanical failure of the ship's bow visor, the hinged shield that protected the car ramp and gave access to the ro/ro decks on the interior. The ship's designer had used the load calculations for typical non-opening bows for its construction, and called for mild steel components throughout - even for the attachment mechanisms, which were subject to high loads.
During the initial site dives in the 1990s, the bow visor was found torn off the ship at a distance from the rest of the wreck; it was recovered and photographed, then scrapped. In a widely-watched report by news outlet Fokus Estonia, demolition experts suggested that photographs of the (now-scrapped) bow visor showed damage patterns that would only be consistent with an explosion. However, a joint Estonian, Finnish and Swedish report released in 2023 pushed back on these controversial claims and endorsed the original conclusion: the bow visor failed due to mechanical fatigue.
Swedish prosecutors have now accepted this conclusion as well, and have declined to reopen the case, citing lack of evidence for an alternative explanation.
"Based on the actions of the investigative bodies, there is no indication that a collision with a ship or floating object or an explosion on the bow occurred. There's also nothing else to suspect that a crime was committed. Therefore, preliminary investigations will not start, and the case will be closed," said lead prosecutor Karolina Wieslander.
Leak in a Void Space Likely Caused Sinking off Prince of Wales Island
The NTSB has finished its investigation into the loss of the fishing vessel Hotspur off Prince of Wales Island in 2022, and it has concluded that an undetected leak in an unoccupied space probably sent the ship down.
Hotspur was built in 1988 and fitted as a purse seiner. Stability regulations do not apply to vessels of Hotspur's size and age, so the vessel's design was not required to comply with any stability criteria.
The master was the owner of the vessel, and he had nearly 40 years of experience in the industry. He was the only credentialed mariner on the crew.
On July 29, 2022, the vessel left Port Townsend, laden with its nets and gear. It headed north up the Inside Passage, bound for Sitka. The weather conditions were favorable.
On August 2, the vessel was crossing the Clarence Strait. At about 1935 hours in the evening, the master and senior deckhand noticed that Hotspur was listing to port. The master went below to check the engine room and the bilges. He told investigators that "everything looked normal" on inspection, so he tried to correct the list by transferring fuel from a tank on the port side to a day tank on the starboard side.
However, the list continued to increase, and the senior deckhand noticed that the water was running up onto the aft deck at the port quarter.
Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, the captain sent the senior deckhand to gather the other crewmembers and prepare the life raft. He made a distress call via VHF, and two nearby good samaritan boats responded.
The Hotspur continued to list further to port as the crew launched the liferaft. The captain and his crewmembers rowed safely away from the boat as it rolled over, and they set off several signal flares to show their position. Within minutes, Hotspur was fully inverted, according to the captain.
The two good samaritan boats arrived shortly after and retrieved all five crewmembers for transport to Ketchikan. No injuries were reported.
Hotspur ultimately sank with about 1,100 gallons of fuel on board. The vessel was declared a total loss at a value of about $1.2 million. No salvage efforts were attempted.
NTSB noted that the master had "poked a hole in the hull" while cleaning sludge out of the engine room bilges earlier in the season, requiring a drydocking for wasted and corroded steel. This was three weeks before the accident voyage. NTSB could not rule out that deteriorated hull plating could have caused flooding in another area, like the lazarette or the port side void space, where it could have gone undetected.
After the accident, the master told NTSB that he could not remember when the bilge alarms for the lazarette and the void spaces had last been tested. The last recorded test was in 2015, when a Coast Guard exam found that the alarms were in good condition. NTSB's investigators reasoned that these two bilge alarms may have been inoperable on the accident voyage because they did not sound until it was too late.
NTSB also left open the possibility that the deck load of nets and gear may have exceeded the margin of safety for stability, but as the vessel had no stability booklet, it is not possible to calculate.
Hotspur also had slack tanks, and it was carrying just 1,100 gallons of diesel out of 8,000 gallons of capacity. This raises the prospect that free surface effect may have played a role in accelerating the capsizing, the agency said.
NTSB concluded that flooding from an unknown source in the lazarette or port void space likely caused the casualty. The agency advised operators to test their bilge alarms regularly, since the devices provide the only available early warning of void space flooding.
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