members and two of their wives were
killed in the sinking. At 91 655 GRT, she
was – and remains – the largest British
ship ever to have been lost at sea.
Douglas Faulkner, Professor of Marine
Architecture and Ocean Engineering at
the (University of Glasgow), concluded:
“Beyond any reasonable doubt, the
direct cause of the loss of the
MV Derbyshire
was the quite inadequate
strength of her cargo hatch covers
[emphasis added] to withstand the
forces of Typhoon Orchid.”
IOLCOS VICTORY
The capesize bulker
IOLCOS VICTORY
(74 278 GRT, 132 597 DWT), loaded with
iron ore from Tubarao to Singapore, sank
on 9 September 1996 one hour and
twenty minutes
after the crew ascertained
the flooding of forward holds during bad
weather off South Africa
[emphasis
added]. Most crewmembers were saved
by a fishing boat, but five died.
Christopher
Late on the night of 22 December 2001,
a mammoth merchant vessel, the
Christopher
, was caught in a
North Atlantic storm. Captain Deepak
Gulati radioed to shore that his ship
was “taking a beating” from 15 m
waves but otherwise was in good
shape. On that or a later call, he said
the
hatch cover closest to the ship’s bow had
become dislodged
. [emphasis added].
Soon after, contact was lost; no mayday
call was ever received.
1
Focusing on ship safety
The International Association of
Classification Societies Ltd (IACS) is
dedicated to safe ships and clean seas.
IACS makes a unique contribution to
maritime safety and regulation through
technical support, compliance
verification and R&D. With respect to
the loss of bulk carriers at sea, the IACS
offered the following:
“[R]esearch showed that many of the
vessels had carried heavy cargo and
had been in bad weather at the time of
accident. The sequence of events for a
majority of the bulk carrier casualties
was identified as
water ingress to cargo
holds and progressive flooding through the
collapse of bulkheads
[emphasis added].
In more than 40% of the casualties,
water was known to have entered the
No. 1 cargo hold. In such a situation,
with the loss of freeboard at the
forward end of a fully loaded ship, the
pressure on the aft bulkhead of hold
No. 1 may lead to a collapse. Following
a subsequent flooding of hold No. 2, a
fully loaded vessel is likely to sink as a
result of loss of buoyancy, or by
collapse of the hull girder due to
excessive hogging. Such a scenario is
believed to progress very rapidly,
leaving the crew with very little
warning and time to abandon the ship.
As such a scenario is most likely to
develop in bad weather, sometimes at
night, it may not immediately become
apparent to those on the bridge.”
Hatches and hatch covers on
ocean-going coal carriers are a now
Figure 3. Ocean wave breaking.
Figure 4. Self-loading and unloading bulk carrier.
June 2016
|
World Coal
|
51
