Polar crap

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Polar Mist was a Chilean trawler thathad been convertedinto a (small) cargo ship. It sank about forty kilometers from the Argentine province of Santa Cruz under previously unexplained circumstances.

On January 15, 2009, the ship left the port of Punta Quilla in Patagonia with a load of 9.3 tons of metal doré . Metal doré are bars made of ninety percent silver and ten percent gold . They came from the Cerro Vanguardia and Tritón mines in Santa Cruz and were to be transported from the destination port of Punta Arenas by plane first to Santiago de Chile and then to Switzerland . The cargo is valued at twenty million US dollars and is insured with Lloyd's of London .

On January 18, 2009 at 10:40 am, the radio station of the Chilean Navy announced the receipt of an emergency call from the Polar Mist in Punta Arenas of the Argentine sea rescue . The NUC ship was about 37 kilometers northeast of Punta Dúngenes the east exit of the Strait of Magellan at the position 52 ° 10 '  S , 67 ° 50'  W . There were eight sailors on board and the waves reached heights of seven to eight meters. At 13:15 one could helicopter type Sea King eight people save of the ship. In order to keep the ship in constant circular motion, the master let the engines run when leaving the trawler and lashed the rudder with a lateral stop.

A day later, the Chilean tug Beagle tried to bring the abandoned ship to Punta Arenas. However, when the Polar Mist began to sink, the rescue attempt was abandoned and the Polar Mist sank to a depth of eighty meters.

It was then announced that the cargo was to be recovered using divers and diving bells .

The early abandonment of the ship and what happened on the ship after it was abandoned were issues that long preoccupied the public.

Salvage

On June 21, 2009, a search expedition located the wreck off the Argentine coast on the ocean floor. The recovery ended successfully on August 2nd, 2009. Twenty divers from Chile and Argentina and a team from the Dutch company Mammoet , which was also responsible for the recovery of the Russian submarine Kursk , needed over three weeks, around 9.5 To retrieve tons of precious metal worth the equivalent of 14 million euros from the eighty-meter-deep sea. The Argentine Customs finally weighed the treasure in front of a judge. The media's speculations that the valuable cargo had previously been stolen and the ship sunk for the purpose of clearing up traces did not come true. The insurance company Lloyd's of London financed the four million dollar rescue operation.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ships Index ( Memento of November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), World Shipping Register.
  2. ↑ informador.com: El destino de la millonaria carga del Polar Mist es aún un misterio. Retrieved April 21, 2009 .
  3. ↑ A mysterious treasure ship found in the South Atlantic. Der Spiegel, June 21, 2009, accessed January 8, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Treasure trove : Shipwreck lifted off Argentina. The press, accessed November 19, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Christoph Seidler: diving robot locates gold and silver in treasure ship. Der Spiegel, June 24, 2009, accessed January 8, 2020 .