The Alva Cape was a British flag oil tanker . It was built in 1953 by the Greenock Dockyard Company in Greenock for the Alva Steamship Company in London . The ship was measured at 11,252 gross tons and was 546 feet long.
accident
Loaded with more than 130,000 barrels of naphtha, the ship collided on June 16, 1966 in Kill Van Kull near Staten Island with the empty tanker Texaco Massachusetts . A tug set the petrol that had leaked out on fire. In the following fire disaster, 33 people were killed. When unloading thirteen days after the accident , the Alva Cape exploded after about 120,000 barrels of the cargo could be unloaded. Another four people were killed. The tanker was then sunk by the US Coast Guard on July 3, 1966 in the open sea southeast of New York by shell fire.
With a total of 37 fatalities and 71 injuries, it is the worst tank accident that has ever occurred in the port of New York .
