This week’s incident photo comes from a friend who just rounded the Cape Of Good Hope. The photos show the barge Grand Ocean No. 1 on the beach at Jacob’s Bay, South Africa. [Continue Reading →]

Cittia De Salerno Sailboat Rescue At Sea

This week’s incident photo of the week is the rescue of the sailboat Cittia De Salerno’s captain, Gianfranco Tortolani, on the USA to UK segment of the the Original Single Handed Trans-Atlantic Race. AMVER tells us: [Continue Reading →]

This story comes via our friends at the excellent blog Maritime Accident Casebook (MAC for short). Bob Couttie writes: [Continue Reading →]

The Local Reports: [Continue Reading →]

Image via Wikipedia

This photo from the maritime incident archives is of the New Carissa… the freighter that ran aground on a beach near Coos Bay, Oregon, United States, during a storm in February 1999.

It comes to us via the practical traveler blog Thrifter with the caption: [Continue Reading →]

Click image for high-resolution

This week’s incident photo is provided by the Norwegian Coastal Administration, are of the 1,287 dwt Russian reefer ship Petrozavodsk that grounded and subsequently ran into sheer rock cliffs south of Bear Island, which is between Svalbard and the North Norwegian coastline.  All 12 crew aboard the vessel were successfully rescued but the vessel was severly damaged after rocks penetrated the vessel’s port side.  Fears of landslides and falling stones have hampered salvage operations.

While the cause of the incident remains under investigation, it is being reported that the Captain of the vessel has been arrested and charged with drinking alcohol while on duty after reviews of the vessel’s maneuvers prompted a blood-alcohol test.  Additionally, the vessel’s mate is charged for sleeping and drinking on duty, according to the Barent’s Reserver.

Initial fears that the vessel was leaking oil have been eased after only a small sheen was spotted and has since dissipated.

More high-resolution images of this incident can be found HERE

Spiegel Online has a pretty good photo gallery of the pirate attack on the MSC Melody cruise ship over the weekend. Click on the image above to go to the collection of photo’s.

The Melody, carrying about 1,000 passengers and 500 crew, was en route from Durban, South Africa to Genoa, Italy, on a 22-day luxury cruise when pirates in skiffs opened fire late Saturday. The cruise ship’s security detail returned fire, startling the pirates, who gave up and turned around.

Nine suspected pirates believed to be behind the attempted hijack have been arrested. The cruise ship wsa about 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) north of the Seychelles when the attack occured.

On Monday, Alaskan state officials announced that the owners and operators of the bulk freighter, M/V Selendang Ayu, that sank off the north shore of Unalaska Island in the Bering Sea in 2004 have agreed to pay the state of Alaska nearly $850,000 to settle oil spill, wreck removal and lost fish tax claims.

The settlement with the vessels operator IMC Shipping Co. Pte. Ltd. (IMC) of Singapore and owner Ayu Navigation of Port Klang, Malaysia, brings the total amount of clean-up costs and fees to more than $112 million for the December 2004 sinking.  The accident resulted in the a spill of approximately 336,000 gallons of fuel oil and diesel fuel.

With the exception of the Exxon Valdez, the penalty collected is the largest civil oil spill penalty ever recovered by the state of Alaska.

Flashback to December 2004

[Continue Reading →]

Image via SF Chronicle

A replica 16th century junk (Chinese sailing vessel) sank off Taiwan Sunday after a collision involving a Liberian freighter.  The junk was the Princess TaiPing, a 35-tonne replica of a Ming dynasty warship, that was on the the final day of a record breaking 10 month, trans-pacific voyage to demonstrate that the Chinese admiral and explorer, Zheng He, had sailed to North America some 600 years ago.  According the Princess Taiping’s website:

Our mission is to restore the craftsmanship and navigation techniques of ancient Chinese people, to honor the richness of Chinese maritime culture, and to applaud the glorious pieces in Chinese history. Nowadays, we can hardly find any ocean-going Chinese Junk. If these maritime culture relics can not be well preserved, we can boldly declare that they can be vanished within one decade. The foremost efforts of Princess TaiPing are to revive the Chinese traditional shipbuilding and sea navigation techniques and show the charm of Chinese Junk to the world as well. [Continue Reading →]