Royston Grange
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The Royston Grange was a refrigerated ship of the London Houlder Line . The ship caught fire in May 1972 after a collision on the Río de la Plata, in which all 74 people on board were killed.
history
The ship, which was launched under the British flag, was built in 1959 at the Hawthorn Leslie shipyard in Hebburn on behalf of the owner Houlder Brothers in London and operated together with the sister ship Hardwicke Grange in the South American service of the Houlder Line shipping company.
Collision and fire in front of Montevideo
In May 1972, the Royston Grange was on a journey with a cargo of chilled and frozen beef and butter from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, where further refrigerated cargo for London was to be taken on board. At 5:40 a.m. on May 11, the freighter collided in the thick fog about 35 nautical miles from the destination port of Montevideo in the Punta Indio Canal with the oncoming Liberian tanker Tien Chee , which had a cargo of around 20,000 tons of crude oil on board. Several tanks of the Tien Chee broke open and the ship immediately caught fire. The ensuing explosions and the fire on the tanker immediately spread to Royston Grange .
The fire killed all 61 crew members, the twelve passengers and the pilot on the Royston Grange . Eight sailors of the 40-strong crew died on the Tien Chee , the remaining 32 men and their pilots managed to escape into the water, where they were rescued by Argentine ships.
Neither of the two damaged ships sank in the fire accident. The Tien Chee , which initially blocked all traffic on the sea canal, was towed to Buenos Aires and scrapped there in 1976. The Royston Grange was towed to Montevideo, where the remaining charge was first unloaded. After that, the burned-out ship lay in Montevideo for several years before it was towed to Barcelona for demolition. The Royston Grange finally arrived there on May 20, 1979 for scrapping.
examination
An investigation into the marine casualty by Liberian authorities revealed that the accident was caused by the Tien Chee sailing too far south - and thus on the wrong side of the Canal . The encounter with the incoming tanker initially led to the oncoming Royston Grange to set down at the edge of the fairway and then to the subsequent collision. The report came to the conclusion that the Tien Chee , which was dependent on the deepest possible fairway due to its high draft, should not have entered the canal under the circumstances and criticized the poor maintenance of the fairway.
technology
The Royston Grange superstructure was divided by a hatch. The freighter's machinery was arranged aft. The propulsion of the ship consisted of two Hawthorn-Leslie steam turbines, which worked on a fixed pitch propeller.
Web links
- The Royston Grange at Tynebuiltships (English)