ELMA Tres
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The ELMA Tres was a German container ship that sank in the Atlantic on November 26, 1981, killing 23 seamen.
history
The ship was handed over to the shipping company Joachim Drescher as Corinna Drescher on December 29, 1978 by the Bremerhaven shipyard Schichau Unterweser (SUAG) . It then entered a two-year charter with Lloyd Brasileiro and went under the name Lloyd Baltimore . From 1981 it was chartered for the Argentine state shipping company Empresa Líneas Marítimas Argentinas (ELMA) as ELMA Tres .
On November 16, 1981, the ship began its voyage with containers from Ilhéus (Brazil) to Boston. Up to November 25th, the trip went without any particular incident. On the 25th the ship was in the sea area, around 200 nautical miles east of Bermuda , the weather deteriorated visibly to storm strength from the northwest. The speed was then reduced and the locking state was later established.
The next day the wind already reached full hurricane strength in gusts. The first officer estimated the wave height to be about ten to twelve meters. In the morning, the master , the first officer and the boatswain checked the securing of the containers on deck. Around noon suffered ELMA Tres machine failure, lay hard to port and then remained at about 25 ° flip side are not driven transversely into the sea. At 12:13 the following radio message was sent: “MS ELMA Tres Position 32 ° 20'N, 60 ° 40'W. Machine failure. Heavy list. Several containers lost from deck. Urgent help. ”This radio message was intercepted by the motor ship Hahnentor, 230 nautical miles away, and the motor ship Weimar . After attempts were initially made to cut container lashings in order to reduce the deck cargo, the list of the ship increased rapidly. At 12:55 p.m. Hahnentor received one last radio message: “A crew of 24 men is going into the lifeboat . Ship is sinking ”. The two ships Hahnentor and Weimar then informed several coast radio stations about the sinking of the ELMA Tres .
The first ship to reach the scene of the accident at noon on the 27th was the Liberian motor ship Royal Eagle . A search plane piloted it to the spot where it had spotted a survivor on a floating lifeboat. At 1:34 p.m., more than 24 hours after the accident, the Royal Eagle took the only survivor, 29-year-old first officer Harald Marienfeldt from Brunsbüttel, on board.
During the investigation of the cause of the accident by the Hamburg Maritime Office , the ÖTV trade union made serious allegations against the shipping company with regard to the condition of the ship and the level of training of the predominantly Filipino crew. The Institute for Shipbuilding at the University of Hamburg developed a special computer program to investigate the incident.
literature
- Günter Bossow: Mayday, Mayday ... ship accidents in the 80s and 90s. 1st edition. Pietsch Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-613-50320-4 .
- unknown: full class . In: Rudolf Augstein (Ed.): Der Spiegel , Vol. 36 (1982), No. 25 . Der Spiegel, Hamburg 1982, p. 90-91 .
- unknown: only with a trick . In: Rudolf Augstein (Ed.): Der Spiegel, Vol. 42 (1988), No. 38 . Der Spiegel, Hamburg 1988, p. 131-135 .
Web links
- Website of the shipping company Drescher, June 28, 2012 ( Memento from June 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Website of the shipping company Drescher, June 28, 2012 ( Memento of July 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
Footnotes
- ↑ http://maritime-connector.com/ship/elma-tres-7811123/
- ↑ http://www.histarmar.com.ar/BuquesMercantes/Marina%20Mercante%20Argentina/FOC/ElmaTres.htm
- ↑ Angelika Hillmer: Why ships capsize . In: Hamburger Abendblatt from March 12, 2008.