Operating a US-flagged vessel in foreign commerce in 2010 was 2.7 times dearer than operating a foreign-flagged equivalent, and US-flag crewing costs were more than five times as expensive.
Shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk will use more armed guards on tankers passing through the Gulf of Aden but has “no immediate plans” to extend the policy to its container ships.
Anti-piracy efforts increasingly are focusing on tracing the flow of ransom money. There is growing evidence that it is being invested in the economies of surrounding nations (such as financing a real-estate boom in Kenya). But efforts to trace serial numbers of ransom bills have been thwarted at least twice when Danish authorities lost lists of such numbers.
Mozambique is in the process of becoming the world’s last big source of coal, and now the East African country may become a major supplier of natural gas. An Italian company announced that it had discovered a large offshore gas field. The gas is of unusually high quality and an unusually high percentage of it should be recoverable. Shortly after, the company announced that the field is about 50% larger than originally thought.
In the third quarter, South Korean yards received about half of the total global shipbuilding orders. (For figure freaks, that was 2.5-million gross tons for the period from July to September, about 50% of the 4.9m gt of total global orders.)
The People’s Liberation Army’s 584-foot-long (178-meter-long) hospital ship Peace Ark and more than 100 medical volunteers extended China’s “doctor diplomacy” into the Caribbean at Jamaica.
Thin Places and Hard Knocks
In the Persian Gulf, the oil-service vessel Koosha 1 sank due to a combination of bad weather and overloading. Rescue teams saved sixty people but thirteen divers were trapped in a decompression chamber. Bodies of six were found in the sunken vessel. (Had they tried to escape from the chamber?)
The Finnish fishing vessel Florence collided with the container ship Amazon at night and in dense fog. The crew of the Amazon noticed the collision but regarded the impact as mild, perhaps some flotsam rather than another vessel. The FV sank inside of one minute but an automatic alarm system (an EPIRB?) alerted Finnish and Estonian authorities. Rescuers found the fishermen because they were vigorously blowing the whistles on their lifejackets. In New Zealand’s Queen Charlotte Sound in misty conditions, the 8.5 meter government-owned catamaran workboat Waitohi and an 8.5 metre Herschoff sailboat collided. The sailboat couldn’t sink completely because fittings near the top of its mast caught the catamaran’s safety railing. Because the container ship MSC Nederland ran into the chemical tanker Elka Apollon at the Bayport Ship Channel and Houston Ship Channel intersection near light 75, three containers ended up on the tanker’s deck.
A few miles inshore from where salvors were removing bunker oil from the stranded Rena off Tauranga and figuring out how to remove the remaining containers, the small container ship Schelde Trader lost power and drifted onto rocks despite dropping an anchor. The ship managed to get itself off and was towed further out to sea while experts assessed it for damage before it resumed its voyage to Noumea.
In India at Chicalim in Goa, a worker died and two others were seriously injured when paint solvents exploded on newbuild barge Shantam 3884. The blast was so powerful that the dead man’s body was blown onto the roof of the nearby St Anthony's chapel. Although emergency services were quick to respond, the fire department was late in learning about the incident and arrived an hour after the explosion. Because explosions in compressors used by refrigerated containers have killed at least three maintenance men, hundreds of reefer units have been quarantined. Common to all explosions is that the units were serviced in Vietnam during 2011.
At Diliskelesi (it’s in Turkey), while the Chief Mate was supervising the docking of the chemical tanker Chemstar Yasu, a “maneuvering rope” snapped and hit him. He later died in a local hospital. In Louisiana at Garyville, a worker dismantling a Mississippi River barge was killed when a piece of the deck fell on him. Four Bangladeshi workers died and two others were ill after inhaling toxic gas while dismantling a vessel at a shipbreaking yard in the Chittagong region. All six fell unconscious while working inside a compartment. Their deaths came just days after two other laborers were killed in a similar incident at another local yard, and at a third local scrapping yard, a worker died when he fell from a ship.
Gray Fleets
Sixty-four sailors will be discharged from the US Navy for using or distributing drugs, mostly the designer drug Spice. They were assigned to the nuclear submarine USS San Francisco, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, and a floating dry dock. Spice is a synthetic drug that mimics the effects of marijuana. Six sailors also used cocaine and one was found to have used methamphetamines.
Bad apples have a way of being discovered. The former commanding officer of the destroyer USS Momsen will spend three years in jail after being court-martialed on charges stemming from incidents involving a junior female officer and an enlisted woman. He was charged with (hang on) one count of rape, two counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of abusive sexual contact, one count of sodomy, two counts of maltreatment, three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, and four counts of violating general orders.
After years of controversy over which California city would get it, the US Navy transferred title to the battleship USS Iowa to a Los Angeles group. The Pacific Battleship Center plans to operate the ship as an interactive museum at Berth 87.
The Ghana Armed Forces will use four new patrol boats built in China against the country’s recalcitrant fishermen, who have decided to fight naval personnel over fisheries regulations. (A recent clash was over the seizure of generators used in floodlight fishing.) Secondary duties, of course, will be to ensure the safety of the country’s territorial integrity, provide safe sea passage to legitimate traffic, and combat illegal activities such as drug trafficking, piracy, and pair trawling.
The Iran’s Revolutionary Guards increasingly aggressive navy has 20,000 personnel and a large fleet suitable for waging the sort of asymmetric warfare it favors. It is larger than Iran’s traditional navy with its 18,000 sailors.
The Royal Australian Navy patrol boat HMAS Broome was preparing to berth at the Papua New Guinea town of Alotau when word was received that the container vessel Vega Fynen had lost engine power and was drifting toward a reef. The warship raced 146 nautical miles at best speed to rendezvous with the 13,000-ton vessel and was able to slowly pull the vessel away from immediate danger.
Thanks to night-vision goggles and the keen eyes of a midshipman, the offshore patrol boat HMS Mersey rescued a Dutch yachtsman floating in a partially inflated and unlit life raft a couple of miles from the remains of his burning yacht. He had been sailing alone from Lowestoft to his native Holland
White Fleets
The cruise ship Norwegian Gem rescued five sailors from the sailboat Sanctuary about 256 miles northeast of Bermuda. The Queen Mary 2 experienced a fire in a gas turbine exhaust while ten miles east of Cape North, Nova Scotia in rough weather. No injuries, no pollution. Then passengers reported that the ship twice came to a complete stop for a short period while crossing the Atlantic. At Calvi in Corsica, divers had to cut the Mein Schiff 2’s anchor chain after it became jammed between rocks.
When a young man jumped from the 11th deck of the Celebrity Equinox, he hit a lifeboat’s rigging. He was dead when recovered about half an hour later. While the Maasdam was docked at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, an elderly man was reported missing by his wife. Soon after, a lobster fisherman found a body floating in Northumberland Strait. When the Norwegian Dawn docked at Boston after a cruise to Bermuda, it was carrying the bodies of two recently deceased people. An elderly woman had died of natural causes. The cause of a young man’s death was unknown but it was not considered to be a homicide.
Those That Go Back and Forth
At the Greek port of Piraeus near Athens, unionized seafarers called off an eight-day strike against the government's austerity drive but continued to block some ferry departures. That hampered passenger travel to the Greek islands and left some islands dangerously low on food, fuel, and medical supplies.
The British-flagged ro/pax Hafnia Seaways had a fire on board while en route to Cuxhaven. The fire started in the ship’s sauna and damage was serious enough to require a replacement ferry. Off Albania, the Turkish merchant ship Reina 1 sank in two minutes, taking with it eight sailors, after colliding with the car ferry Ankara. When fire broke out as the Jordanian ferry Pella was some 15 nautical miles from the Jordanian port of Aqaba and headed for the Egyptian port of Nuweiba, 1,230 passengers were told to get into life rafts. One passenger died when he jumped into the sea.
The Algerian-flagged ro/pax Tassili II was forced to return to Oran with more than 2,500/438 (take your pick) passengers and 300/208 (take your pick) vehicles on board due to damage suffered by striking a wharf/rock (take your pick). Passengers refused to get off, demanding to be transported to Marseille, and they spent the night on board before being forced to leave the ship the next morning.
At Hong Kong, three elderly people were seriously hurt and seventy-three others were injured when a high-speed, double-deck catamaran ferry hit a mooring dolphin. The captain explained that he was trying to avoid a light buoy on the portside of the vessel and when he spotted the unlit dolphin on the starboard side, it was too late. The starboard side of the ferry's bow was badly holed, leaving the interior framing exposed, but the vessel took on no water. A helicopter took the most-seriously injured patients to hospitals on Hong Kong Island. In Denmark at Rønne, the Leonora Christina hit one of the two towers that control the vehicle ramp. The ferry suffered a hole that was quickly patched with a steel plate but the tower suffered more. However, the ferry could still carry vehicles but only cars. At Auckland, the Devonport-bound Kea suffered a hole when it somehow backed into the berthed ferry Harbour Cat, punching a hole in that vessel. One person described the contact as “a bit of a crunch.” One minor injury.
After an eyewitness informed police that the Kiel Canal ferry Memel was being operated in an unsafe manner, police found the ferry’s captain under the influence of alcohol and his coffee cup filled with red wine.
Nature
Tsunami debris from Japan's March magnitude 9.0 quake earthquake will reach Hawaii in two years and the West Coast of North America in three years. Based on what has already been encountered by ships at sea, the debris may include floating TV sets, fridges, and other home appliances.
Legal Matters
A US federal judge sentenced a female company administrator to 38 months in prison for her role in selling counterfeit electronic circuits from China and Hong Kong. She conspired with the company's late owner to advertise the circuits as name-brand, trademark-protected integrated circuits and they sold hundreds of thousands of them to the US Navy, defense contractors, and others over a three-year period.
A US defense attorney claimed that the US government is waging a sophisticated sort of piracy in its pursuit of “magic pipe” offenders. He identified the environmental-crimes section of the US Department of Justice as the “mother ship” and noted that, “The average ransom paid by shipowners in Somalia in 2010 was $2 million and their crews spent an average of nine months in detention. Here in the US, the average criminal fine in magic pipe cases is around $2 million and the government requires seafarers to stay behind for nine to 12 months, and sometimes more. What is the difference?” (Since the late-1990s, the US government has probably raised well over $200m through such fines.)
In partial confirmation of the attorney’s claims, read on. The bulker Gaurav Prem was detained at Mobile, Alabama, after the Coast Guard detected a magic pipe infraction. The ship was allowed to leave after the authorities extracted a surety but 16 (repeat – sixteen) crewmembers had to stay behind at the owner’s expense to assist in the investigation. The owner provided lodging, health coverage and a meal allowance of $40 a day to the men, but their passports had to be surrendered.
Nasties and Territorial Imperatives
“A pirate’s life is not an easy one,” wrote Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, and his statement is still true. Thirty percent of all Somalian pirates never return from attack missions in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Piracy changes continuously. Pirates are maximizing profits by separating crews from hi-jacked vessels, taking them onshore, and holding them for ransom. And in the southern Red Sea, vessels have been coming under attack by groups of up to a dozen skiffs.
In the Indian Ocean 100 miles off the Somali coast, Royal Marines from the frigate HMS Somerset rescued a group of Pakistani fishermen who had been captured when Somali pirates seized their trawler. The pirates were then transferred to a US warship in the area since British policy is to not take prisoners because they might ask for political asylum. In Indonesian waters, Malaysian forces boarded the tanker Nautica Johor Bahru at night after a group of pirates armed with a pistol and machetes had left along with the crew’s cash, mobile phones, and laptops. The nearby presence of three Royal Malaysia warships may have had something to do with the pirates’ decision to flee. Also recovered was a drifting barge that was being towed by the fishing boat Ever Commender when hijacked. Six armed pirates had left the barge, presumably to hijack a more-powerful towing vessel. The FV with seven crewmembers was located aground but safe. And a Malaysian court sentenced six Indonesians to ten years in jail plus caning for trying to rob a merchant ship near Singapore.
Several kidnap-and-ransom insurers want armed guards on vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, and others insurers are offering discounts of up to 35 percent to those shipowners employing private security firms for voyages in high-risk areas. (For an average vessel valued at $20 million, the starting price for a policy is about $35,000 for a seven-day transit of the Gulf of Aden. With armed guards on board, a discount of 35 percent would represent a saving of $12,250.) But several states, including France, Greece, and Japan, prohibit the use of armed guards on board vessels.
Near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, a Philippine patrol ship (reportedly the World War II-vintage BRP Rizal) spotted a Chinese fishing vessel in Philippine waters near Reed Bank, which the Philippines claims is within its waters. The vessel was towing about 35 smaller boats. A problem with the patrol boat’s steering caused it to become entangled with one of the smaller boats. The Chinese vessel then left, abandoning the smaller boats.
Odd Bits
Back in January, the river tanker Waldhof capsized at a critical pinch point on the River Rhine with the loss of two crew. The accident trapped an estimated 300 barges in the Mainz area of Germany and that cost an estimated €55 million ($75.8 million). Operators hurt the most (about €14 million) due to “involuntary waiting” at up to €4,000 per day per vessel in lost income, while shippers, forwarders and brokers suffered costs of around €26 million, mainly due to having to arrange alternative transport via a shift to other modes or a bypass. The accident also prompted calls for more heavy cranes capable of lifting large Rhine barges.
At Portland, Maine, a fire captain and a firefighter got into trouble when they crashed the fireboat City of Portland IV onto rocks, causing $38,000 of underwater damage. The impact sheared off a propeller shaft and damaged a rudder but the boat was able to return to Portland without aid. To make matters worse, there were twelve civilians, including family members, aboard during what was called “a training exercise.” Back in 2009, the same boat ran aground two months after it was put into service, then sustaining $90,000 worth of damage.
The competence and valor displayed by two shipmasters after the recent Japanese earthquake were recognized by their peers at a recent meeting. The master of the high-sided vehicle carrier Morning Cedar opted to steam out of Onahama Harbor as huge tsunami waves lashed his ship and the docks. He cleared the breakwater and took the ship to safety in the open sea. But that option was not available to the master of the bulker Port of Pegasus. He was on the bridge when a loudspeaker blared a warning in Japanese that nobody on board could understand. But the operator of a crane-like unloader plunged deep into number four hold knew and fled as the tsunami approached. With the unloader still in the ship, the master faced a dilemma: if the ship left the pier, the unloader would be pulled down onto the ship but if the ship departed, it risked being wrecked. When the ship was hit by the first 8-metre wave, all but two mooring lines snapped. For the next 18 hours, the master worked the ship’s propulsion and steering to maneuver the ship, often at full power, in a successful fight against repeated waves and extraordinary currents.
The destroyer HMS Edinburgh was docked at Cape Town near the hotel where the US president’s wife was staying. The Sea Dart missile launchers on the destroyer’s foredeck happened to be pointed at the windows of her suite so, according to reports, the American Secret Service made sure that the missile loads were inert drill rounds.
Head-Shaker
A report revealed how the 280-foot high-speed catamaran ferry Condor Vitesse managed to run down the 30-foot whelk fishing boat Les Marquises south of the Channel Island of Jersey last March. (The whelk fishing boat was cut in half and its skipper was killed although two injured deckhands managed to cling to the hull until rescued 25 minutes later by the ferry.) The ferry was zipping along at 36.9 knots when it entered a thick fog bank. Speed was not reduced, nobody was watching two radars that had been showing the FV for several minutes, and nobody turned on the ferry’s fog signal. (It was thought the engines provided a better warning and, besides, the horn disturbed the officers on watch.) Instead, the bridge team raptly listened to the ferry’s master recount how the slinky movements of sexy actress Halle Berry as Catwoman on TV the night before had given him a bad night's sleep. Then the collision.
