Karin Schepers

A drunken master that had fallen asleep in the bridge is to blame for the August 2011 grounding of the Karin Schepers along the UK’s Cornish coast, according to an investigation by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

The Karin Schepers, an Antigua-flagged 800 teu box ship with 13 crew on board, ran aground at approximately 0536 on August 3, 2011 while in transit from Cork, Ireland to Rotterdam, Netherlands.

According to the final report, the master handed over the watch of the Karin Schepers at approximately midnight to the second officer. Over the course of the next few hours, the master returned to the bridge in regular intervals, each time showing more and more and signs of intoxication until he eventually ordered the second officer from the bridge. Shortly thereafter and alone on the bridge, the master eventually fell asleep.

The investigation revealed that the master had been asleep with no proper lookout for nearly two hours prior to grounding close to Pendeen Lighthouse, West Cornwall, England.

When Karin Schepers was just 2 miles from land, the coastguard at Falmouth Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre was alerted to its location and attempted, unsuccessfully, to contact the vessel.  By the time the vessel grounded, lifeboats, a SAR helicopter and a cliff rescue team were already ready and waiting. After numorous calls once aground, the master eventually responded to the coastguard and advised them that the crew were all safe and that the vessel would be refloated by de-ballasting.

Fortunately damage to the vessel was minimal and no one was injured, which is quite miraculous considering she blindly crossed the busy Land’s End Traffic Separation Scheme. After 50 minutes aground Karin Schepers refloated with the high tide and resumed passage under her own power.

The MAIB says that the grounding could have been avoided had additional safety barriers been in place, namely a proper lookout and had the bridge navigational watch alarm system been switched on.

After an 11 month, £20m refit, the HMS Argyll is currently sailing on six-month deployment in the middle east. Photo: Royal Navy

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Any attempt by Iran to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz would be “illegal and unsuccessful”, U.K. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond will say Thursday.

In advanced extracts of a speech he is due to give in Washington, Hammond will say disruption to the flow of oil through the strait would threaten regional and global economic growth and it was in all interests that the arteries of global trade are kept open.

“The [U.K.] Royal Navy will continue to play a substantial role as part of the Combined Maritime Forces, both at the Headquarters in Bahrain, and through our mine counter-measure vessels which help maintain freedom of navigation in the Gulf,” he will say, according to the extracts.

Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, has threatened to block oil deliveries through the Strait of Hormuz if global powers impose sanctions on the country’s oil industry over its nuclear activities. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said last week that the strait carries about 20% of all oil traded worldwide.

Hammond is visiting Washington Thursday to hold his first meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and discuss Afghanistan, the Gulf and defense cooperation.

In his speech to be delivered at the Atlantic Council, Hammond will also say too many North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries were failing to meet their financial responsibilities in the group.

“Too many are opting out of operations or contributing but a fraction of what they should be capable of. This is a European problem, not an American one. And it is a political problem, not a military one,” he will say according to the extracts.

-By Nicholas Winning, Dow Jones Newswires

Photo: The chemical tanker Afrodite. Photo: Peter Beentjes via MarineTraffic

Seven crewmembers of the small containership, Florece, were rescued from liferafts early this morning after the vessel sank following a collision with a larger chemical tanker owned by Tsakos Group, the Afrodite.  The collision occurred at about 3:30 this morning 240 miles south-south-west of Lands End in the UK.

Falmouth Coastguard were alerted to the incident after the Florece crew set off an EPIRB, alerting the coast guard to their position, as the vessel began to sink.  After contacting the master of the Afrodite, the coast guard was informed that the men had abandoned into liferafts the crew of the Afrodite attempted to deploy the vessels fast rescue craft but were unsuccessful.

The Falmouth Coastguard said that coastguards from Spain, France, the U.S., as well as the Maersk Kampala, all coordinated in the response.  The seven men, who are a mixture of Russian, Polish and Ukranian, were eventually rescued by the containership Ocean Titan with no injuries.

The chemical tanker sustained little damage and was not taking water

“Satellite technology and modern communications made all the difference with this incident, meaning that we were able to pinpoint the location of the sinking ship, call the nearest vessel and coordinate a response within minutes,” said Falmouth Coastguard Watch Manager Terry Collins of the recue.

An illustration of the London Gateway project.

DP World said today that its new port and logistics center project, London Gateway, is expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2013 paving the way for estimated 36,000 new jobs.  The environmentally friendly global shipping center, located just outside London on the north bank of the River Thames, will have an initial container capacity of 1.6 million TEU’s and be capable of accommodating the world’s largest containerships, including the 18,000 teu giants being built by Maersk.

DP World, the Dubai headquartered group that is currently the world’s third largest port operator, has been laying the foundations for the new port since early 2010, and the company says it plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the project over the next three years.

DP World today also announced that over the next couple months the project will create an extra 1,000 new jobs for the UK, 700 new construction jobs and 300 new port jobs. Estimates predict that as many as 36,000 jobs will be created in the long term from the project, providing some £3.2 billion to the UK economy each year. The project has already created more than 600 jobs since January 2010 when major construction work started at the site.

“The importance of this project cannot be overestimated,” said Britain’s Business Secretary, Dr Vince Cable. “The announcement of these 1,000 new jobs today is a welcome boost to the UK.”

In addition to the opening date, DP World said it has awarded four major port equipment contracts to ZPMC and Cargotec.  ZPMC will provide eight quay cranes, which will be the largest in the world, able to handle the next generation container vessels of 18,000 TEU capacity. ZPMC will also provide rail mounted gantry cranes for the port’s rail terminal. Cargotec will provide automated stacking cranes and straddle carriers to be used in the port.

Today, at the SPE Offshore Europe 2011 conference in Aberdeen, Britain Energy Minister, Charles Hendry MP, announced that a new piece of equipment said to be the key to the U.K.’s oil spill response capabilities is tested and available for deployment.

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- The U.K. government will later Tuesday reveal a device designed to cap an underwater oil well in the event of a major incident so as to minimize environmental damage, the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group said.

The device was designed in response to BP PLC’s (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The cap works by shutting in and holding pressure on an uncontrolled well and uses a choke and a series of valves to stop the flow of oil into the water.

The device can be deployed in water as deep as 10,000 feet and was designed specifically for use in wells in the U.K. continental shelf.

“The successful completion and availability of this cap marks a significant step forward in industry preparedness and significantly bolsters our capability to deal with a major loss of well control,” said James House, chair of the Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group.

The device allows a quick response and is essential for minimizing potential pollution in the water, even though the U.K hasn’t had a major loss of well control in 20 years of offshore operations, House said.

-By Jenny Gross, Dow Jones Newswires

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The UK’s National Archive says it is releasing the records of 1 million Merchant Navy seafarers serving from 1918 to 1941 who were part of Churchill’s often forgotten ‘fourth service’.  The records are being released for the first time in celebration of tomorrow’s Merchant Navy Day, and are available online at findmypast.co.uk.  The Archives hopes the information will help family historians locate information on their seafaring ancestors.

The records are in the form of index cards that the Registrar General of Shipping and Seaman required merchant seaman to carry in order to produce a single index of merchant mariners serving on British merchant navy vessels.  The cards include detailed personal information including photos, name, rank, vessel numbers, address of kin, signatures and even physical descriptions such as standout tattoos or other identify marks or scars.

Take, for example, Mohamed Abbathira who is recorded as having a pock marked face and a scar on his right thumb.

A more sombre find is chief officer William Hunt Aaron who died on 25 October 1925 – a note in his record states ‘Supposed suicide’.

Colourful detail can be found in ‘ordinary seaman’ Henry Duncan Abbot’s record, which describes his tattoo as ‘Chinese death head with inscription ‘Death is Glory’ on right forearm’.

Referred to as the ‘fourth service’ by Winston Churchill, Britain’s Merchant Navy played an integral role in establishing the UK as a world leader in trade and industry, yet a remarkable 54% of Britain’s population has never heard of it, according to research by findmypast.co.uk.  It was often described as a ‘floating United Nations’ as many crews were made up of international mariners from all over the world.

A spokesman for findmypast.co.uk says “a large proportion of the UK population will have Merchant Seamen in their ancestry. Hopefully these records will help fill the gaps and people will enjoy learning about what life was like for the brave, seafaring merchants who helped the island nation of Britain prosper.”

The UK National Archives says it is planning on releasing information on seafarers from earlier periods sometime in the future.

The archives can be found at Findmypast.co.uk HERE.

The announcement comes after a successful start to 2011.  Since January 1st, Aker has increased its order backlog by 19% and says the market outlook for both the UK and Norwegian North Sea, as well as Brazil, West Africa and Asia Pacific remains strong.

“Last year we decided to take a much more proactive recruitment approach. Since then our strategy has been to man up ahead of the big waves of work that we know are coming. That offers much greater predictability for our customers and ourselves,” says Alan Brunnen, a managing director with Aker Solutions in Aberdeen.

Aker Solutions will be adding 300 staff to its Aberdeen office and create 200 positions at its new west-London engineering office.

The majority of the positions in Aberdeen will be for the subsea technology business, where 200 new jobs will be created. An additional 70 positions will be added to support the maintenance and upgrading of existing North Sea oil platforms.  In addition, Aker Solutions’ well service business, which provides technologies and services for increasing oil recovery from producing wells, will require a number of technical and ancillary personnel. The company’s drilling technology business, which provides drilling systems and life-cycle services to support new generation drilling assets, will also require some new talent.

Meanwhile at its new offices in London, Aker Solutions aims to hire approximately 200 engineering personnel over the next year, with a target of 500 by the end of 2015. Located in Chiswick Park, the global engineering hub will support field development projects in the North Sea and worldwide.

“The EU’s emissions trading scheme will not work for shipping. It is not suitable. It is not a global system, and shipping is,” U.K. Chamber of Shipping Director General Mark Brownrigg said.

He said that if shipping were to be included in the scheme, as campaigners have called for, that ships would simply refuel instead at non-EU ports, the Guardian reports.

The Chamber of Shipping will publish on Wednesday discussion documents setting out how the industry could adopt different methods of carbon reduction, including emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes.

Brownrigg told the paper: “This is a complex international debate for which we need active participation from the shipping industry and governments to find a genuine solution. This must be global–through the International Maritime Organisation–rather than regional.”

Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/09/shipping-industry-rejects-carbon-trading?INTCMP=SRCH

-By London Bureau, Dow Jones Newswires

On February 26, 2011, the platform supply vessel SBS Typhoon made contact with the Vos Scout and the PSV Ocean Searcher while conducting tests of a newly installed Kongsberg DP system in Aberdeen Harbor.  The authorities in charge of the investigation, UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Bureau, have released the final report on the incident, citing an incorrect pitch command signal generated by the newly installed DP system as the culprit.

At 1524 (UTC) on 26 February 2011, the platform supply vessel (PSV) SBS Typhoon was undertaking functional trials of a newly installed dynamic positioning (DP) system while alongside in Aberdeen Harbour. Full ahead pitch was inadvertently applied to the port and starboard controllable pitch propellers (CPP), causing the ship to move along the quay. Contact was made with the standby safety vessel Vos Scout and the PSV Ocean Searcher, causing structural and deck equipment damage.

Ahead pitch was applied to the CPPs because an incorrect pitch command signal was generated by the DP system signal modules. The error was not identified during factory tests or during the pre-trial checks although the system documentation specified the correct signal values. Actions taken on board to limit damage were hampered by a defective engine emergency stop and because a mode selector switch on the DP system was not moved to the correct position.

CLICK HERE to download the final report from the Marine Accident Investigation Bureau.

The following video was produced by the Seafarers UK, a charity that helps seafarers, ex-seafarers and their families, and gives us a look at what the world, or at least the UK, would be like if the world’s seafarers just up and vanished.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Commissioned by Seafarers UK for Seafarers Awareness Week (6-12 June), ‘The Vanished’ video is intended to shock viewers into understanding how dependent the UK is on ships and seafarers to supply essential food, fuel and goods.