Cemfjord
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The Cemfjord was a cargo ship from the shipping company Baltrader Schifffahrtsgesellschaft, part of the Hamburg Brise Group, which specializes in the sea transport of cement and the management of corresponding ships.
The Cemfjord last sailed under the Cypriot flag . The ship wrecked on January 3, 2015 off the Orkney Islands in heavy seas and sank completely on January 4. The eight-man crew was never found and is believed to be dead.
history
Construction, commissioning and renovation
The ship was built in 1984 by Detlef Hegemann Rolandwerft in Bremen . The keel of the ship was laid on February 15, the launch on August 31, 1984. The ship put into service as Margareta was completed in November 1984 by the shipping company Thekla Schepers MS Margareta & Co. in Haren / Ems. In 1995 the Shark Shipping Company in Willemstad took over the ship. In 1998 the Morska Stocznia Remontowa in Świnoujście converted it to a cement freighter . In 2004 it was sold to the Arouno Shipping Company and renamed Cemfjord .
Ground contact 2014
The Cemfjord ran aground off the island of Læsø off the coast of Denmark in July 2014 . According to the police report, the 57-year-old Russian captain was drunk and had a blood alcohol level of twice the permitted limit. Brise Schifffahrt in Hamburg said they had dispatched an emergency team and replaced the captain and first officer with Polish seafarers who had worked for the shipping company for a long time.
According to information from Brise Schifffahrt, the Cemfjord last completed an inspection in December 2014 without any complaints.
Average 2015
The MV CEMFJORD was early January 2015, 2,000 tons of cement on the way from Aalborg in Denmark to Runcorn , a port near Liverpool on the west coast of Britain. According to the shipping company, the crew consisted of seven Poles and one Filipino at the time.
The ship was sighted for the last time on Friday, January 2, at around 1 p.m. UTC. The following Saturday at around 2 p.m., the crew of the NorthLink passenger ferry Hrossey discovered the bow of the capsized Cemfjord protruding from the water . Apparently the ship capsized in the storm in the Pentland Firth , 15 miles northeast of the Scottish port city of Wick , 10 nautical miles east of the Pentland Skerries . An emergency call was not made. Neither the Brise shipping company nor the responsible MRCC recorded a message. There were a good 24 hours between the last confirmed sighting and the discovery, which were characterized by occasional storms in this area. On Sunday, January 4th, the ship sank completely.
The Shetland Coastguard of the RNLI coordinated the search. Several ships and helicopters searched the sea and continued the search in daylight on January 4, 2015. On Sunday, January 4th, the wind had dropped significantly and visibility was much better. The wind strength was only 5 to 6 instead of 9 as the day before. Four rescue cruisers from Stromness, Scrabster, Longhope and Wick searched in a coordinated manner between the islands of South Ronaldsay in Orkney and the open sea northeast of Wick. Two SAR helicopters, a Sikorsky from the Shetland Coastguard and one from the RAF, and a number of other ships were involved in the search. The search crew assumed that the ship was being drifted westward as the wreck is near the Isle of Stroma . The search for the missing seafarers was stopped on Sunday. The wreck was located on January 4th by the multi-purpose ship Pharos about ten nautical miles east of the Pentland Skerries at a depth of about 70 meters using sonar.
Due to the depth of the water at which the wreck lies and the strong currents in the area, the wreck was not recovered. The seamen who were on board at the time of the ship's accident were never found. It is believed that they were unable to free themselves after the ship capsized and went down with the ship.
examination
An investigation of the incident by the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) found the following causes for the accident:
- The exceptionally severe sea conditions in the Pentland Firth led to the ship's sinking - they were predictable and could have been avoided.
- The travel planning was insufficient. The decision of the captain to continue the voyage instead of seeking protection was probably due to the underestimation of the severity of the impending bad weather, his personal determination to succeed and his unwillingness to turn the ship through the heavy seas.
- The stability of the ship probably did not meet the minimum requirements and did not offer sufficient protection against capsizing.
- The Cemfjord had several major safety flaws for which the flag state issued derogations that allowed the ship to begin its voyage. There were no indications that a trip interruption was considered to remedy the defect.
Technical specifications
The ship was propelled by a six - cylinder four - stroke diesel engine from the manufacturer Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz (type: SBV 6 M 628) with an output of 1175 kW . The engine worked on the propeller via a gearbox. Two diesel generators with 154 kVA apparent power each and an emergency generator with 40 kVA apparent power were available for the power supply on board . The ship was equipped with a bow thruster with 136 kW power.
The ship had two holds with a capacity of around 1100 m³ each. The floors of the holds sloped from the front and back towards the middle so that the loose cement could flow to the extinguishing system located in the middle between the two spaces. The holds could be loaded via two inlets arranged amidships in the hatch covers or with the aid of compressed air via four hose connections per hold. A manifold arranged between the two cargo holds on the port side of the ship , through which the cement cargo could be pumped , was available for discharge . Around 150 tons of cement per hour could be discharged in this way. A crane was available on the port side to take over the hoses.
The superstructures were in the aft area of the ship.
Web links
- Description of the ship by the shipping company ( Memento from January 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file, 697 kB)
- Official press releases from BALTRADER Capital GmbH & Co. KG on the sinking of the MS Cemfjord (English)
- Kai Müller: What happened to the Cemfjord? Der Tagesspiegel, April 22, 2015.
Footnotes
- ^ A b c Severin Carrell: Cargo ship's crew presumed dead after vessel sinks off northern Scotland . In: The Guardian , January 4, 2015
- ^ "Cemfjord" sunk off Scotland: search for seafarers stopped. In: tagesschau.de. January 5, 2015, archived from the original on January 7, 2015 ; accessed on January 6, 2015 .
- ^ A b Jamie Merrill: Rescue teams search for crew of overturned cargo ship Cemfjord off north coast of Scotland , The Independent, January 3, 2015
- ^ Daniel Herder, Claudia Eicke-Diekmann: Cement freighter sunk off Scotland - Hamburg shipping company fears for eight seafarers , Hamburger Abendblatt, January 4, 2014
- ↑ Freighter sinks with 2000 tons of cement . In: Daily port report from January 6, 2015
- ^ Charlie Gall, Jane Hamilton: Cargo ship sinking: Cemfjord's Polish captain went down with his favorite ship , Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail, January 5, 2015
- ↑ No plans to raise knitting ship , The Orcadian, February 18, 2015.
- ↑ Stephen Spark: Sunken Cemfjord may be left as' sea grave , IHS Fairplay, January 8, 2015.
- ↑ Cemfjord sinking: Deaths of eight crew 'could have been avoided' , BBC News , April 21, 2016.
- ↑ Capsize and sinking of cement carrier Cemfjord with loss of 8 lives , Accident Investigation Report 8/2016, Marine Accident Investigation Branch, April 26, 2016.