Gilligan!!! The former captain of the Cougar Ace wishes that he had Gilligan to blame this on.Wired Magazine has a fascinating article on what happened and how a specialized business salvaged the 654 foot cargo ship with 4703 Mazda cars. The cargo was valued at $103m.
The ship was stranded 230 miles south of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands when it began to disgorge its ballast tanks of Japanese water and refill them with open ocean water per U.S. environmental requirements.
The procedure wasn't handled correctly and a ballast tank on one side completely emptied. When the next wave came, the entire ship listed onto its side and stayed there.
An American salvage company, Titan Salvage, was dispatched to try to salvage the ship after the U.S. Coast Guard declared it dead in the water. The salvage company reportedly earned $10m from the ship owners' insurer for its operation. Stephen Spielberg has optioned the story of the salvage for a movie, netting the company and its employees even more.
The crew and the methods they use are very interesting. Even more riveting is how close they came to losing the ship. The salvage crew lost a team member in the operation who lost his grip and slammed against metal poles on his way down like a ball in a pinball machine. He died the next day without regaining consciousness.
Despite saving the ship and its cargo, all 4,703 cars were scrapped for metal. Mazda didn't want to face any warranty claims for parts that might malfunction after being submerged or parked their sides.
It's just as well. When starting any of the cars, a big light on the dashboard lit up reading, "TILT".
2 comments:
That's amazing! I was going to tell you that I liked the tilt joke, but not after reading the myBart entry.
Thank you for the compliment, John. Modesty prevents me from saying what wonderful taste you have. ;)
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