The tanker was built in 1969 as a Sea Sovereign on behalf of the Stockholm Salén shipping company at the Kockums shipyard in Malmö. In 1977 the Swedish shipping company sold the tanker to the Liberian Pimmerton Shipping Ltd. , who renamed the ship South Sun and placed the management in the hands of Wallem Ship Management in Hong Kong. Another two years later, the South Sun was sold to the US company Oxford Shipping . The ship was now named Salem , but remained under the Liberian flag.
Charge and sinking
On November 30, 1979, the Salem left the port of Piraeus for Kuwait. In the Kuwaiti port of Mina Al Ahmadi, the ship loaded about 194,000 tons of light crude oil with the destination port of Genoa on behalf of an Italian charterer. The tanker, which has meanwhile been highly insured with Lloyd's of London , left Mina Al Ahmadi on December 10th, sailed along the East African coast despite its port of destination Genoa, and met on December 27th under the name of Lema in the South African port of Durban a. There the ship unloaded 170 to 180,000 tons of cargo and took the same amount of ballast water to continue to stay at full draft. It then left the port on January 2, 1980 and was found in distress on January 17 under the name Salem off the Senegalese coast. The tanker British Trident took over the crew of the sinking tanker.
Detecting the fraud
Four days after leaving the port of Mina Al Ahmadi, the oil cargo from Kuwait was resold by its owners in Genoa for 56 million US dollars to the Shell group . When the tanker British Trident took over the shipwrecked crew of the Salem , it was first noticed that they had taken their entire belongings as well as a number of other items and even the duty-free goods and sandwiches into the lifeboat. Even though their tanker is said to have sunk so quickly after several explosions that there wasn't enough time to save the ship's diary. It was far more noticeable that the sinking tanker barely left a trace of oil despite its alleged cargo of almost 200,000 tons of crude oil. On board the British ship, a Tunisian crew member said that the tanker Salem had been sunk.
consequences
Following the loss of the Salem , Lloyd's of London received an insurance claim for $ 56,300,000 from the ship's owner. That was the highest individual demand that Lloyds had received up to that point in time. Investigation by Lloyd's revealed that the South African oil company Sasol had bought the oil from Lema / Salem in Durban for 43 million US dollars. The tanker therefore had to go under in order to conceal the misappropriation of the 170 to 180,000 tons of cargo unloaded in Durban.
literature
Stewart, IG: The World's Super Ships . 1965-1980. IGS Marine Publishers, Perth 1980, pp.84 (English).
