Shipwreck

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The ninth wave , painting by Iwan Konstantinowitsch Aiwasowski (1850)
Shipwrecked off the Philippines
Rescue operation off Great Britain

Shipwreck is a shipping incident involving a ship on the water in which the watercraft is in distress and has to be abandoned.

General

The passengers and the ship's crew who are shipwrecked must save themselves and get help. They are considered shipwrecked . The reasons for this include a. Average , capsizing , stranding , running aground on rocks or reefs , shallows , severe damage (e.g. fire , leak ) or involvement in seaweed (see Sargasso Sea ).

Numerous cases are documented from the 1970s in which shipwrecked people in life rafts or boats saw ships passing by at a distance of 0.5 to 1.5 nautical miles and were unable to make themselves noticeable and to get the ship's crew to put them on board to take. To describe z. B. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, whose sailing yacht Auralyn sank about 300 nautical miles from San Cristóbal on the Galápagos Islands on March 4, 1973 and who were taken on board by a Korean fishing boat on June 30, 1973, a total of seven encounters in their book with ships that passed them.

Maritime law

According to § 537 No. 5 HGB , shipwrecks belong to the shipping incidents as well as capsizing , a collision or stranding of the ship, an explosion or a fire in the ship or a defect in the ship. The probability of suffering a shipwreck, wherein at the outset unseaworthy vessels (such as inflatable boats on the Mediterranean Sea) is much higher than sea-going. Regardless of this, according to international law of the sea ( Geneva Convention II (GA) of 1949) all ships are obliged to interrupt their voyage in order to pick up shipwrecked people.

According to Art. 8b GA II, shipwrecked persons are “ military or civilians who are in danger at sea or in another body of water as a result of an accident that affected them or the watercraft or aircraft carrying them and who refrain from any hostile act ". You belong to the persons protected by GA II (Art. 13 GA II). Shipwrecked people are in distress, so a sea ​​rescue by merchant ships or warships in the vicinity is mandatory. However, not every case of unseaworthiness is to be equated with distress. Here, the status of the shipwrecked does not matter, because the UNCLOS refers to "any person" ( English any person ), the SAR Convention of 1979 speaks of "no matter under what circumstances the person found". However, the coastal states are not obliged to take shipwrecked people into their national territory ; there is also no obligation to actively rescue by state institutions or ships. The SOLAS and SAR conventions mean that the coastal states are obliged to cooperate and coordinate rescue efforts. Art. 33 Para. 1 GFK protects refugees / asylum seekers in distress from being deported and sent back to their unsafe country of origin , which is also applicable to refugees / asylum seekers at sea. Ships in distress are subject to the law of peaceful passage .

Rescue and medical care at sea

The search and rescue organizations around the world offer targeted help ; in Germany, the German Society for Rescue of Shipwrecked People (DGzRS) is active.

Hospital ships are usually larger ships whose main task is the medical and other care of people in distress at sea or on land. In addition to the sick and injured, this also includes shipwrecked people. Another important task of hospital ships is the transport of sick and injured people by sea. Most hospital ships belong to the military medical service. A hospital ship in the service of a civilian institution is the Spanish Esperanza del Mar . Their main area of ​​application is the Atlantic along the West African coast between Morocco or Mauritania and Ghana. The home port is Las Palmas on Gran Canaria .

literature

  • Maurice & Maralyn Bailey: 117 Days Adrift . 1974. Reprint: Sheridan House, Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1993. ISBN 0-924486-31-7
  • Dougal & Lynn Robertson: Survive the Savage Sea .
  • Bernard Robin: Survivre à la dérive . Édition R. Chaix, Paris, 1977. German: Navy Survival Manual . Pietsch Verlag, Stuttgart, 1992 (4th edition) ISBN 3-87943-942-7
  • Bernardo Gomes de Brito : Portuguese castaway reports 1552-1602. Leipzig / Weimar, Kiepenheuer, 1985 Table of Contents ( História trágico-marítima , Ger .)

Shipwreck in aesthetic literature

See: Robinsonade

See also

Web links

Commons : Shipwrecks  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: shipwreck  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maurice Bailey / Maralyn Bailey, Staying alive! 117 days adrift: The incredible saga of a courageous couple who outwitted death at sea for a longer period than any humans before , 1974, pp. 40 ff.
  2. ↑ International Committee (Ed.), The Geneva Conventions: Along with Appendices and Additional Protocols , 2010, p. 5
  3. ^ Richard Barnes, Refugee Law At Sea , in: International & Comparative Law Quarterly (ICLQ) vol. 53 issue 1, 2004, p. 60
  4. ↑ Viktor Bruns, Journal for Foreign Public Law and International Law , Volume 62, Issues 1–4, 2003, p. 842
  5. ↑ Sicco Rah, Asylum Seekers and Migrants at Sea , 2009, p. 127
  6. ↑ Sicco Rah, Asylum Seekers and Migrants at Sea , 2009, p. 127
  7. ↑ State Parliament Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Maritime Security in the Baltic Sea Region , 2001, p. 315