Torrey Canyon
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The Torrey Canyon was an oil tanker and could carry about 115,000 tons of petroleum . It sank off the coast of southern England on March 26, 1967, causing the first major oil spill .
history
The ship was in the US under the hull number 532 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company built and ran on 28 October 1958 by the stack . It originally had a capacity of 60,000 tons, which was increased to 120,000 tons in 1965 through a reconstruction in Japan . A completely new foredeck was added to the Torrey Canyon during this conversion . The hull, which was separated during the renovation, was initially also used as a floating oil store under the name Torrey Canyon . From 1972 to 1979 it was operated by the Dutch company SBM Offshore NV under the name IFRIKIA - FPSO III as a 70,000 ton FPSO ( Floating Production Storage and Offloading Unit ) for the mineral oil company Elf Aquitaine in the Ashtart field off the Tunisian coast.
Average
At the time of the accident, the Torrey Canyon belonged to the Barracuda Tanker Corporation , a subsidiary of the Union Oil Company ( Unocal ) in California , but was chartered by BP .
The last voyage of the Torrey Canyon began on February 19, 1967. It left Mena al-Ahmadi in Kuwait fully laden with oil and reached the Canary Islands on March 14 . From there she headed for Milford Haven .
Coordinates: 50 ° 2 '30 " N , 6 ° 7' 43.8" W.
On March 18, 1967, the Torrey Canyon hit Pollard's Rock in the Seven Stone Reef between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly because of a navigational error . The sinking of the ship caused enormous environmental damage to the coasts of England and France.
This was the first major sinking of an oil tanker, also because there were no plans as to what measures should be taken in an emergency. Attempts to get the ship afloat again failed, with a member of the Dutch recovery team dying. The ship broke apart after being stranded on the reef for several days.
The Fleet Air Arm (FAA, the Royal Navy aviators ) bombed the ship in an attempt to sink the ship, burn off the oil spill and thus reduce oil loss . The bombing was followed by attempts to burn the oil using gasoline and napalm dropped from Royal Air Force and FAA planes . Overall, the ship was the target of 161 bombs and 16 rockets, 1,500 tons of napalm and 44,500 liters of kerosene were dropped.
About 190 km of the English and 80 km of the French coast were polluted with oil and about 200,000 seabirds and many other marine organisms were killed. Further damage was caused by the extensive use of cleaning agents to destroy the oil spill. With 42 ships, more than 10,000 tons of detergents were sprayed onto the floating oil to emulsify and dissolve it. However, the substances applied to the oil were extremely toxic to many marine organisms and caused almost as much damage as the oil itself.
The Torrey Canyon disaster led to many changes in international regulations, such as: B. the Civil Liability Convention (CLC) of 1969, which stipulated the absolute liability of ship owners in the event of proven negligence, or the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships 1973.
See also
swell
- R. Petrow: In the wake of the Torrey Canyon . 1968 New York: David Mackay Co, Inc.
- ↑ Brockhaus Calendar Adventure History, March 26, 2008
- ↑ Overview of the units of SBM ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (pdf, english)
- ↑ Amazing footage of oil tanker being bombed in Cornwall ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , plymouthherald.co.uk, March 15, 2017
- ↑ fluter : Öl ins Wasser ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 9, 2007.
