Texaco Caribbean
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The Texaco Caribbean was a tanker that sank in the English Channel in 1971 after a collision .
description
The ship was built under construction number 1139 at the Kieler Howaldtswerke AG shipyard and delivered in 1965. The ship belonged to the Texaco Panama company, a subsidiary of the US Texaco . It was operated by the UK- based Texaco Overseas Tankship. The ship was designed for the transport of petrochemical products and lubricating oils and was used regularly between Trinidad and Europe .
The ship was powered by a steam turbine that acted on a propeller . The deck superstructures were distributed over an area about a third of the length of the ship. a. the bridge of the ship, as well as an area in the rear third of the ship, in which the engine room in the hull of the ship was also located. The cargo tanks were located in front of the bridge house and between the superstructures. In the area of the cargo tanks behind the bridge house, two cargo booms were installed for the hose takeover.
collision
 
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In January 1971 the tanker operated under the flag of Panama was on a ballast voyage from the Netherlands to Trinidad. On January 11, 1971, he collided in thick fog in the Strait of Dover with the flag of Peru propelled freighter Paracas , which deals with a cargo of fish meal and fish oil on the trip from Peru to Hamburg was. The freighter drove in disregard of the traffic separation area introduced only a few years earlier in the Strait of Dover off the coast of the United Kingdom and thus contrary to the direction of traffic here.
In the collision, the Texaco Caribbean exploded and broke in two parts (at that time, no inert gas was used on ballast trips, which is supposed to prevent the formation of an explosive air-gas mixture in the cargo tanks after the cargo was discharged). Eight sailors of the Texaco Caribbean arrived in the disaster killed, 22 others were rescued. The Paracas was badly damaged, but remained buoyant and was towed to Hamburg. In the accident, around 600 tons of bunker oil leaked from the fuel tanks of Texaco Caribbean , which in the following days polluted parts of the English Channel coast between Folkestone and Littlestone for 15 miles .
The next day, the German general cargo ship Brandenburg , which was on its way to the Caribbean , collided with one of the wreckage and was so badly damaged that it sank within a few minutes. 21 seafarers were killed in the accident and eleven were rescued by British fishermen (elsewhere there is talk of 20 victims and ten or eleven survivors or of 21 victims, including four wives of crew members who traveled with them ). It is unclear whether the wreck was not marked or driven away, or whether the ship's command of the Brandenburg had overlooked or misinterpreted the markings.
On February 27, the Greek cargo ship Niki , which was on its way from Dunkerque to Alexandria , collided with a part of the wreck and sank. 22 seamen were killed.
The wreckage of the sunken ships was partially recovered by a company in Southampton in the months following the collisions . Remnants of the ships that did not pose a threat to shipping remained on the seabed. The work took around 18 months.
Effects
The collision between the Texaco Caribbean and the Paracas was taken as an opportunity by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to make the system of traffic separation areas mandatory. The Dover Strait Separation Area was the first in the world to be established in June 1967, but it was only advisory.
The collisions of the Brandenburg and the Niki with the wreck of the Texaco Caribbean , in which 43 seafarers were killed, as well as other ships that passed through the restricted area, led to the standardization of the navigation marks by the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities . Previously there were around 30 different systems, but two systems were agreed which were divided into two geographical regions: Region A comprises Europe, Africa, a large part of Asia, Oceania and Greenland, while Region B covers North, Central and South America as well as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. In addition, the accidents led to the development of a uniform system for disseminating warning messages, which resulted in the NAVTEX system.
Others
The misfortune was discussed in the episode For Those in Peril of the BBC series Sea Fever .
Web links
- English Channel Tanker Crash , AP Archive
- Channel Collisions , AP Archives
- Texaco Caribbean disaster , Kent History Forum (with a collection of newspaper reports on the accident)
- La tragedia della Texaco Caribbean
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maritime Mishaps . Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ Howaldtswerke AG, Kiel . Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ Texaco Caribbean , Maritime-Connector.com. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ Fitzgerald v. Texaco, Inc. , United States Court of Appeals , Second Circuit, 1975. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Those Where the Days ... , Texaco Oil Trading & Transport, November 2001 (PDF, 63 MB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ Jonatan Toledo Arriagada: Texaco Caribbean, Paracas, Brandenburg y Niki (1971) , Análisis de desastres marítimos con vertidos contaminantes periodo entre 1955 y 1990, Trabajo fin de grado, Universidad de La Laguna, September 2016, pp. 52-55 (PDF , 6.9 MB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ A b Carlo Gatti: La Tragedia della Texaco Carribean , Mare Nostrum Rapallo, January 1, 2014. Accessed July 24, 2018.
- ↑ a b c d e f Texaco Caribbean , Cedre. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ Mary Anne Grant Traylen: Folkestone's Heritage as a port , Transitions 4 - A Journal of Crossings, Pavement Pounders CIC, 2014, page 44 (PDF, 1.6 MB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Chaos im Circus , Der Spiegel , January 18, 1971. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Jeff Werner: Lateral Marks for Pilotage , All at Sea. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ Flying Dutchman , Der Spiegel, December 25, 1972. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ A b c The Texaco Caribbean Disaster , Trinity House History. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ Wrecks , Canterbury Divers. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ↑ Historical Backgrounds on Ships' Routeing , International Maritime Organization (11.5 kB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities Maritime Buoyage System , Canadian Coast Guard. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ Hance D. Smith, Juan Luis Suárez de Vivero, Tundi S. Agardy (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Ocean Resources and Management. Routledge, 2015, ISBN 978-0-415-53175-7 , p. 535 ( preview on Google Books ).
- ^ Hans Schumann: Towards a Coordinated International Radio Navigational Warnings System , International Hydrographic Review, Monaco, January 1977 (PDF, 274 kB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ Ron Brown: Maritime radio in dire straits. In: New Scientist and Science Journal , Vol. 49, No. 737, New Science Publications, London, February 4, 1971, p. 257 ( article on Google Books ).
- ↑ IMO and the safety of navigation , Focus on IMO, International Maritime Organization, January 1998 (PDF, 116 kB). Retrieved July 24, 2018.
- ^ For Those in Peril , BBC Four. Retrieved July 24, 2018.