Disasters at Sea

by Liz Mechem

  From an environmental point of view, though, the loss is measured in terms of life and death—mostly death for the myriad species affected by an oil spill. Birds, fish, and marine mammals such as otters, seals, dolphins, and whales die immediately, as their bodies are coated with toxic oil. Later generations of these animals often have increased mortality, because their food supply and habitat remain contaminated. There is a human cost as well, especially in regions that rely heavily on local fishery. With their prime source of income cut off, such communities can simply vanish.

  The Prestige was not the only tanker to spill off Europe’s shores. In 1978, the Amoco Cadiz, a single-hulled tanker, wrecked off the coast of France, splitting into two.

  The worst marine oil spills in history—measured in gallons of oil spilled—were not the results of shipping accidents. The 1991 Gulf War oil spill and the 1980 Ixtoc I oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico claim this distinction. But shipping disasters account for the bulk of oil spills worldwide. Among the most notorious of these, and still the worst oil spill in U.S. history, is the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Still, the total oil released (about 10 million gallons, or 38 million liters) from the Valdez pales in comparison with at least a dozen other oil tanker wrecks since the mid-twentieth century. The Greek tanker Atlantic Empress, which wrecked off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago in 1979, for example, spilled nine times that much oil.

  Scores of volunteers participated in cleanup efforts after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which contaminated 700 miles (1, 125 km) of coastline with crude oil.

  From June 3, 1979, to March 23, 1980, the Ixtoc I oil well exuded the equivalent of 10 to 30 thousand barrels of toxic crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico.

  IN THE LONG TERM

  SCIENTISTS HAVE WIDELY STUDIED the short-and long-term consequences of marine oil spills. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that the area affected by the Exxon Valdez may take up to three decades to recover from the devastating spill. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has instituted regulations that attempt to abate future oil spills, such as a ban on single-hulled tankers that will take effect in 2012. The IMO and other organizations are also focusing attention on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping industry, in an effort to strike a balance between the commercial needs met by shipping and the environmental health of the planet.

  MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98

  BETRAYAL ON THE RED SEA

  Design flaws, severe overcrowding, poor maintenance, and large, open cargo bays: a recipe for disaster. And so it was when the MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98 caught fire, capsized, and sank in the Red Sea on February 3, 2006. The death toll was close to 1,000 people.

  The MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98 had been built in 1970, but, in 1991, the owners added two additional passenger decks on top, while the cargo area was enlarged to hold 320 automobiles. Some 1,300 passengers could now travel in the Boccaccio 98, but the additional height of her superstructure made her more vulnerable to wind and waves. As a RO/RO (roll-on/roll-off) ferry, Boccaccio 98 had an open deck that ran the entire length of the ship, was close to the waterline to ease boarding and egress of automotive cargo, and hosted doors large enough to admit enough water to destabilize the ship.

  HUMAN ERROR WRIT LARGE

  The MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98 departed Duba, Saudi Arabia, en route to Safaga, Egypt, on schedule at 7:00 PM. Within two hours, a fire broke out in a storeroom. The crew brought the fire under control, but noticed a list to the ship, perhaps induced by the failure of pumps to eliminate the seawater used to douse the fire. Over the next several hours, crews repeatedly got the fire under control only to have it reignite. Passengers were instructed to move to the top of the ship and crowd to the port side to try to counteract the ever-worsening list. As the captain turned the ship back toward its port of origin, the Boccaccio 98 heeled over farther still, until she suddenly rolled completely to starboard.

  Many ferries ply the waters of the Red Sea and her canals. Unfortunately, poor maintenance, uncertain politics, and piracy threaten all too many of these ships.

  As horrible as the accident was, the aftermath was worse. No SOS was ever sent out, and rescue didn’t arrive for many hours after the Boccaccio 98 capsized. Though most passengers had donned life jackets before the sinking, they had been given no instructions on how to inflate rubber rafts, nor were any of the 10 large lifeboats (which held 100 people each) launched. The ship’s crew reportedly saved themselves first, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. Arriving rescuers found more dead bodies than people to save.

  Experts cited several possible causes for the disaster: an overbuilt superstructure; water from firefighting sloshing around the huge void of the auto deck; or a possible tie-down that failed, allowing a car to fly across the deck and pierce the hull. Whatever the cause, human error was certainly at the root. The MS al-Salam Boccaccio 98 did not have to sink that dark February night on the Red Sea.

  Numerous shipwrecks and extensive reefs make the Red Sea a wreck diver’s mecca. Shown above is the wreck of the Salem Express, a roll-on/roll-off ferry that sank during a violent storm in the Red Sea December 1995, killing at least 470.

  LORD JIM REDUX?

  ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE SCENES of Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim is a fire aboard ship. The crew conceals the fire so they can flee, leaving the passengers to their doom. The captain and crew of the Boccaccio 98 made comparisons to Conrad’s tale only too easy. Captain Sayed Omar was not only derelict in his duties, but besmirched the honor of generations of sea captains when he was witnessed leaping into one of the first life rafts launched. Captain Omar’s crew followed his lead, reportedly instructing passengers on the sinking ship to “just relax; go back to your cabin,” all the while donning their own life jackets.

  3 · COLLISION COURSE

  Marine by Carl Wilhelm Barth, 1885

  The Tek Sing

  THE ILL-FATED TRUE STAR

  Junks date back at least as far as the Han Dynasty (220 BCE–200 CE). Contrary to popular belief, they are not just small harbor boats, but also world travelers. Here, the Keying, a three-masted junk similiar to the Tek Sing, draws a crowd at the Battery in Manhattan. The Keying was the first ship from China to visit New York.

  Many modern observers picture Chinese junks as small square-rigged ships capable of nothing more than creeping along the shore, barely venturing beyond sight of land, heading only downwind. In fact, junks sailed all over the world, battling high seas, bad weather, and contrary winds along China’s widespread trade routes. The Tek Sing, or True Star, was huge for her time, a 164-foot (50 m) three-masted oceangoing junk of more than 1,000 tons (900 metric tons) displacement.

  On her final voyage in February 1822, the Tek Sing carried a vast cargo of goods: ink pads, iron and brass cannons, padlocks, candlesticks, and pocket watches. But all that was nothing compared to the prodigious cache of porcelain—some 350,000 pieces comprising several tons of plates, cups, utensils, and figurines, both contemporary and ancient. At the time, porcelain was so highly prized that it was more valuable than gold.

  The Tek Sing may have been loaded down with cargo, but she was even more heavily laden with humans. In cabins and even on the open deck, the junk carried between 1,400 and 1,600 passengers, mostly laborers headed for work in the cane fields of Indonesia. The vast majority of them would never arrive.

  SHORT CUT TO DISASTER

  Sailing out of Amoy (present-day Xiamen), China, and bound for Jakarta, Indonesia, the Tek Sing had sailed uneventfully at sea for several weeks. But the overwhelming number of passengers onboard strained the ship’s reserves. Captain Io Tauko made the fateful decision to try to take a shortcut through the Gaspar Strait. Had he steered but 100 yards (94 m) to either side, he would have cleared the Belvidere Shoals, but whitecaps concealed the shallow reef, and the Tek Sing hit ground hard, splintering apart almost at once. Within minutes, she had sunk in 100 feet (30
m) of water, leaving at least 1,600 dead bodies floating in her wreckage.

  The high death toll has led modern observers to christen the Tek Sing “The Titanic of the East.” A day after the wreck, Captain James Pearl, commanding the HMS Indiana, came upon an area of rocks not on his charts. To his crew’s amazement, as the “rocks” drew closer, they turned out to be wood, bamboo, and all manner of flotsam and jetsam. And on each piece of floating debris lay one or more dead or dying man. “I discovered the sea covered with humans for many miles,” reported Captain Pearl, as he immediately lowered boats and set about rescuing as many survivors as he could. He was able to rescue only 190, while other boats in the area saved another 18. The rest died there, on the Belvidere Shoals of the South China Sea.

  In January 2001, Mike Hatcher took a dive in a display tank at a boat show in Düsseldorf, Germany, to display a porcelain vase and a blue and white plate that were both part of his huge find on the wreck of the Tek Sing. Just a couple of months earlier, a nine-day auction of 350,000 of the antique pieces had taken place in Stuttgart.

  BLUE AND WHITE GOLD

  THE TEK SING IS PERHAPS BEST KNOWN due to events that took place almost 200 years after the sinking, when treasure hunter Mike Hatcher and his boat, the Restless M, tracked down the wreck in 1999. Following the faintest of sonar traces, Hatcher and his team first located huge iron rings, which had once strengthened a gargantuan mast. Following the rings’ trail, the divers zeroed in on a coral-covered mound approximately the reported size and shape of the lost Tek Sing. Standing perfectly packed where the ship had virtually decayed around them were towers of porcelain—row upon row of precious blue and white, celadon, and monochrome pieces. Historians estimate that the oldest of these date from the 1660s. The haul of the Restless M turned out to be the largest amount of porcelain ever obtained from a single shipwreck.

  HMS Birkenhead

  CHIVALRY TO THE LAST MAN

  The HMS Birkenhead was a three-masted sailing frigate fitted with two steam-driven paddle wheels. Built in 1845 as the Vulcan, an iron-hulled warship, the Birkenhead was renamed and reclassified as a troopship before her first commission. When she departed Ireland on January 7, 1852, the Birkenhead carried soldiers bound for the Xhosa wars in South Africa. She was never to make land, but the stoic bravery of the men aboard the sinking Birkenhead profoundly impacted both naval protocol and British cultural identity.

  In the only known contemporary image of the frigate HMS Birkenhead, she takes to the sea with sails down, using her steam-driven paddle wheels.

  ON THE ROCKS

  Captain Robert Salmond, of a long line of Royal Navy officers, commanded the Birkenhead on her final voyage. Of the 634 aboard, most were soldiers, but there were a number of officers’ families as well. The ship made good time to Simon’s Town, close to Cape Town, where she took on cavalry horses and fresh water. On February 25, she departed for Algoa Bay on a calm sea. In the wee hours of February 26, as the ship approached Danger Point, the leadman took a sounding of 12 fathoms. Suddenly, the Birkenhead rammed into an uncharted rock. The huge gash in the hull allowed water to rush in, and hundreds of soldiers drowned belowdecks, barely awake for their final moments. The rest rushed to the deck, where the officers and passengers assembled. The ship was sinking fast.

  WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST

  Discipline was the order of the hour, as Captain Salmond issued clear and firm commands. Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton of the 73rd Regiment of Foot, whose men made up the bulk of the troops aboard, was the commanding military officer. The men fell into orderly ranks, as sailors attempted to lower the lifeboats. Of the eight boats, only three were seaworthy. Untried soldiers and decorated officers alike stood aside to allow all the women and children to board the lifeboats first.

  When the boats were safely launched, Captain Salmond ordered all men who could swim to jump overboard and make for shore. Colonel Seton immediately overruled him, fearing that the men would overwhelm the lifeboats and imperil the women and children. So the men stood firm and silent, arrayed on deck as their ship broke apart and sank, 25 minutes after striking the rock. The horses, released from the hold, struggled to make shore, but many fell victim to the sharks that now swarmed to the scene.

  The following morning, the British schooner Lioness reached the scene. After rescuing those on the lifeboats, she proceeded to the wreck of the Birkenhead, whose topmast just protruded above the water. About 40 men were rescued, while some 60 had made it to shore by clinging to floating wreckage and fighting off the rapacious sharks. In all, only 193 survived the wreck of the Birkenhead. The memory of those who perished is burnished by their heroism, which saved every woman and child aboard the doomed ship.

  Erected in 1936, a plaque affixed to the Danger Point Lighthouse recalls the tragedy of the Birkenhead, honoring those men who bravely gave their lives so others could survive.

  A poignant illustration from 1887 depicts the despondency, altruism, and, ultimately, resolution, shown by the soldiers and sailors onboard the Birkenhead.

  THE BIRKENHEAD DRILL

  THE HEROISM OF THE MEN aboard the Birkenhead was immortalized by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, “Soldier an’ Sailor Too,” with the lines: “But stand an’ be still to the Birken’ead drill/is a damn tough bullet to chew.” The protocol of allowing women and children to disembark first is still recognized today. Many feel the “Birkenhead Drill” exemplifies the British world view, placing high values on stoicism, calm under fire, and death before dishonor.

  RMS Titanic

  PRIDE GOES BEFORE A FALL

  An artist’s rendition of the RMS Titanic plowing into a deadly iceberg. It took 2 hours and 40 minutes for the last part of the ship to vanish into the sea after she struck the iceberg.

  FLOTSAM & JETSAM

  Was it a bad omen? On pushing off from the pier at Southampton, the Titanic came within feet of striking the SS City of New York, which was docked nearby. The New York had been cast off her moorings by Titanic’s powerful wake.

  Any loss of life at sea is a tragedy for those involved. In general, the greater the loss, the greater the tragedy. But one shipwreck, though its casualty count is lower than some, towers above all others. The 1912 wreck of the RMS Titanic has all the hallmarks of tragedy in its original sense. In classical Greek drama, a tragedy depicts a noble who falls from a great height, done in by his hubris, or pride. The storied Titanic, the largest vehicle at the time of her launch and deemed “practically unsinkable” by the Royal Navy, embodied both greatness and hubris. Her fall to ruin from these soaring heights may help explain the unique place the Titanic has held in the public imagination for a century.

  The Titanic’s maiden voyage ranked among the most anticipated events of her day. Her passenger list included legions of the rich and famous. Less celebrated were the hundreds of third-class passengers, many poor emigrants headed optimistically for America. On April 10, 1912, the Titanic welcomed her first passengers and the bulk of her crew at Southampton, England. Additional passengers boarded at Cherbourg, France, and at Queenstown, Ireland. On April 11, 1912, she sailed for New York. Close to midnight on April 14, the Titanic struck an iceberg. She sank in the wee hours of April 15 into the icy waters off Newfoundland. The total death toll from the disaster was 1,517 people.

  STYLE AND SAFETY

  The Titanic was the gem of the White Star Line, built to outdo any other passenger liner of her class. Everything about her was superlative. She was the largest, at 882.5 feet (269 m), and displaced some 52,000 tons (47,175 metric tons). Her 11 decks and 840 staterooms could house more than 3,500 passengers and crew. Three years in the building in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she cost £1.5 million, funded by American financier J. P. Morgan. Her fittings were the most luxurious available, with hand-carved woodwork and stained glass skylights. The Titanic’s onboard amenities included a swimming pool, a gymnasium, Turkish baths, and a squash court. Thoroughly modern for her time, the Titanic came equipped with powerful generator
s that supplied electricity for 10,000 lamps, 50 telephones, heaters in every cabin, and elevators between decks.

  But the Titanic had more than luxury to boast about. Her safety statistics were on par with her opulence. Chief among these was her compartmentalized hull. Fifteen bulkheads separated 16 watertight compartments, which could be sealed off by watertight doors. If water breached one or more of the compartments, the flooding would then be localized. Engineers asserted that the Titanic could float with as many as four flooded compartments, giving life to the “unsinkable” moniker. This theory was never tested; the iceberg tore through and flooded five compartments at once.

  THE FATEFUL NIGHT

  April 14 was calm and clear. During the course of the day, radio operators received messages from several other ships, warning that there were icebergs ahead. Then, at around 10:00 PM, the SS Californian sent a more urgent message. Instead of slowing down, though, Titanic Captain Edward J. Smith inexplicably ordered “full steam ahead.”

  SPEED QUEEN?

  DESPITE HER OTHER ATTRIBUTES, the Titanic was not the fastest ship afloat, nor was she designed to be. Her two steam-driven and one turbine propeller (with power totaling 46,000 horsepower) enabled a maximum cruising speed of 21 knots, a figure well under the 25 knots claimed by the Mauritania, holder of the Blue Riband for fastest Atlantic crossing. Titanic’s statelier pace puts to rest notions that she was trying to set a speed record. This theory has been advanced to help explain why she plowed at full speed through the deadly field of icebergs.

  Although lavishly fitted, the Titanic, as many other White Star ocean liners, was designed to profit from the European poor flocking to America in the early twentieth century. Not all passengers enjoyed the ship’s more opulent settings, and many of these would die in the bowels of the ship.

  An artist’s rendition of the sinking of the Titanic. With so few lifeboats, nearly 70 percent of the people she carried onboard died when she went down.