Mountains Vanga
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Die Berge Vanga was a tank bulk carrier ( OBO-Carrier ) of the Norwegian shipping company Sigval Bergesen dy ASA (today BW Group) operating under the Liberian flag . The ship, which is over 300 meters long, was built at the Uljanik shipyard in Pula ( Yugoslavia , now Croatia ), launched in March 1974 and put into service on June 14, 1974. The name of the freighter was derived from the surname of the owner of the shipping company, Bergesen, and the island of Vanga off Pula (see Brijuni Islands ). The Liberian General Ore International Corp. ( Monrovia ) chartered freighter was lost in the South Atlantic at the end of October 1979 for reasons that are still unknown to this day, killing the entire crew.
Technical details
The Vanga mountains were a maximum of 314.01 meters long and 50.07 meters wide. When fully loaded, the draft was 23.47 meters. The tank bulk carrier had ten holds for bulk goods and a total of 22 tanks for mineral oil attached to the side of these . Two 7-cylinder Burmeister & Wain - marine diesel engines of the type SC2SA with a total of 35,500 horsepower, each wave maximum of 114 revolutions per minute could afford, enabled the mountains Vanga a top speed of 16.5 knots (about 31 km / h). The load capacity was 227,912 dwt.
use
The ship was used until its sinking on the route between South America , South Africa and Japan , whereby the Brazilian ore loading ports Porto de Itaqui , Ponta da Madeira and Sepetiba (see Vale SA ) were served primarily . The destinations were either the port of Saldanha in South Africa or the ports of Ōita , Hikari and partly Kitakyūshū in Japan. A trip from Brazil to Japan usually took around 22 days. On the way back from Japan, the mountains called at Vanga oil loading ports in the Persian Gulf and loaded oil there, which was later shipped to ports in Europe .
Downfall
The mountains Vanga left Sepetiba (a district in the west of Rio de Janeiro ) on October 24, 1979 with a cargo of around 190,000 tons of iron ore and 40 crew members (including nine Norwegians) on board. The destination of the trip was the Japanese port city of Ōita . A last contact with the ship took place on October 29, 1979, at which time the freighter was in the South Atlantic , about 210 nautical miles northwest of the island of Tristan da Cunha .
After that, the Vanga mountains stopped reporting . An emergency call was not made. There were also no reports of a storm in that region. Although fragments were later found by search forces (around 34 ° 33 ′ S, 15 ° 20 ′ W), which may have come from the ship, it remains unclear to this day (2017) what happened to the ship and when and where exactly it sank. With the Vanga mountains , the entire crew of 40 sailors was lost.
Root cause research
It has been speculated that the loss of the Vanga Mountains , as well as the sinking of the virtually identical sister ship Berge Istra, built at the same shipyard at the turn of the year 1975/76 off the Philippines , was due to a surprising explosion of an oil vapor-air mixture in the void Side oil tanks of the ship could be returned. Survivors of the Berge Istra disaster reported that their ship broke after three severe explosions and sank within a few minutes as a result of the ore cargo. A similar situation may have happened in the case of the Vanga Mountains . This theory would also be supported by statements by former employees of the Bergesen shipping company, who had claimed that the ventilation systems of the oil tanks on both ships were prone to failure and were unreliable. The Sigval Bergesen dy ASA shipping company (or the BW Group) has still not released details of the accident investigation even after almost 40 years. Even if the cause could possibly become known through a publication, it would still be unclear when and where the ship sank.
To this day, the Vanga Mountains are one of the largest merchant ships that have disappeared without a trace.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Berge Vanga , Auke Visser's International Super Tankers.
- ↑ a b Astrid Meland: Skipet som forsvant , Dagbladet, January 3, 2006.
- ↑ http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?108559
- ↑ Note: 30 sailors died when the mountains of Istra went down , two survivors were discovered by accident by a Japanese ship and rescued after 20 days at sea.
- ↑ http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/01/21/magasinet/berge_istra/berge_vanga/skipsfart/bergesen/15151445/
Web links
- Technical data & pictures of the ship. (Norwegian) (accessed April 30, 2017)