Shipping News Briefs

A woman was reported to have jumped from the Costa Mediterranea off Florida, apparently after an argu­ment with her boyfriend. Her family disbelieved his story, saying she was scared of heights and afraid of water. Passengers on the Princess of the Caribbean filed a class-action suit, claiming their Mediterranean voyage was spoiled by many toilets that never worked, a stench such that some slept on deck, and an explosion on the third day that caused the ship to list. Many passengers returned home with stom­ach aches, diarrhea, and headaches. At Durban, the 3,000-grt Madagascarwill be auctioned off. The beloved yacht like ex -Stella Maris II was arrested in 2005 after successive failures of two cruise companies, one of which was named Razzmatazz Ocean cruising.

The busy oil industry lacks ac­commodations spaces near offshore rigs and so the small, elderly (1967) Danish cruise ship Sikker Havn will go the Middle East to act as an offshore floating hotel. The Sky Wonder, a cruise ship with an unhappy past as the Pacific Sky, ran aground in strong winds in Turkey and most of its 1,000 passengers decided to go ashore. Several previous trips had been cancelled due to gearbox problems, the ship had to anchor in the Malacca Strait for several hours in 2006 due to mechanical problems, it ran aground in Argentina in January, and an Australian woman died on her in 2002, a death that triggered much discussion into what actually went on during its cruises.
The cruise industry spent $765 million in British Columbia last year and $1.1 billion in all of Canada. That works out to $237 per passenger and $55 per crewmember, at least in Vancouver.

The final report on the sinking of the Canadian ferry Queen of the North in March 2006 failed to reveal what happened during the sinking, merely stating, "Essentially, the system failed that night." Bridge management was in­adequate and there was no third qualified person present. The report also quietly noted that the male officer on duty and a female crewmember at the helm had recently broken up a relationship. The ferry failed to make a course change after exiting the Grenville Channel, sailed on for nearly 15 minutes before hitting Gil Island, and then drifted for 1 hour and 17 minutes before sinking. Two people died. And residents of the nearby Indian village of Hartley Bay have sued, claiming that the ferry company has left the sunken ship in its territory without their permission and traditional fishing grounds were polluted. Hartley Bay residents were the first to arrive at the scene.

Continued bad weather and hurri­cane force winds rolled the grounded Irish Sea ferry Riverdance farther on its side, to 110 degrees, and did so much damage that the 6,000-ton vessel was declared a total constructive loss and will be cut up in place, Until gone it will be a major attraction at the UK's favorite family resort, Blackpool. However, unrecognized by most spectators was the historical significance of timber ends sticking out ofthe beach a few hundred feet from the Riverdance. They were the remains ofthe 1798-built, 80-gun ship ofthe line HMS Foudroyant, once Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship in the Mediterranean.

Maritime Odd Bits and Head Shakers

When the Panamanian- flagged cargo ship Voyager II entered a Dutch port, a Dutch court fined the master 5,000 euros for an oil discharge in Estonian waters.
Pilots boarded the bulker Ocean Victory to take it from Baltimore to sea but they finally anchored the ship because too many of the crew were drunk and, at one point, no crew member was in the wheelhouse. Arrested were the master, the second officer, two ABs, and an oiler.
Back in October 2006, the master of the German excursion boat Adler Dania, while sailing in Polish waters towards a Polish port, learned that Polish customs agents in plain clothes were aboard to investigate illegal sales of duty-free alcohol and cigarettes and were about to confiscate the stocks. In spite of warning shots from Polish patrol boat, he took the vessel into German waters, thus "kidnapping" the customs agents. Recently, he was fined 4,000 euros by a German court.

The smallish multipurpose carrier Beluga Skysails completed a successful l2,000-mile calibration and observa­tion voyage from Germany to the US, Venezuela, and Norway using a giant parasail to supplement its engine. The crew deployed the device for periods lasting minutes to several hours. The parasail produced five tons of pull in Force 5-6 winds and will be replaced with one twice as large for the next voyage. It may save between 10% and 35% of fuel costs.
Temperature differences at different levels in the sea power a robotic un­derwaterresearch glider. Warm surface waters melt wax stored in tubes. The molten wax expands and exchanges oil between a bladder inside the ves­sel and one outside. The change in glider volume changes its buoyancy and it sinks. When the wax cools, the glider surfaces and accesses two satellites for positional information and further instructions. One thermal glider has been yo-yoing its sawtooth way back and forth across the 4,000­meter-deep Virgin Island Basin since last December.
The State of Alaska conceded that cruise ships have advanced systems (far better than shore based systems) for cleaning wastewaters but will insist that cruise ships must meet water quality standards for ammonia, copper, nickel, and zinc by the 2010 season.

What do bananas, ceramic floor tiles, and kitty litter have in common? All are among products bugging inspectors of cargo containers because all emit detectable amounts of radiation. (Since cats usually don't spend much time in the litter box, the low-level radiation from bentonite, a common litter mate­rial, probably doesn't pose much of a risk to cats or their owners.)

You can now buy a high-speed, long-range motorboat that is also a submarine. The 34-foot-longcraftcar­ries five people, 525 gallons of fuel, and more than two tons of cargo and uses two 440 hp diesel engines for 40 knots when on the surface.
Mega-yachts and warships are alike in that many are about the same size and all need exceptionally well-trained crews. Which is why the financially stricken Royal Navy is gladly using its training facilities at Portsmouth to train stewards, skippers, and pursers for the mega-rich.

Maritime Mishaps

In the Antarctic, the master of the Sea Shepherd's environ­mental pirate ship Steve Irwin claimed he was shot at by Japanese whalers and produced a bullet he said had lodged in his bullet-proof vest, but Japan dismissed his claim as a lie. The alleged incident happened while the Irwin's crews was throwing stink bombs at the factory ship Nis­shin Maru and Japanese Coast Guard personnel threw back flash grenades. In the Arctic, two officers of the same group's Farley Mowat were arrested for taking the ship far too close to a sealing vessel. " we had a guy on the ice and she broke the ice up under his feet," claimed one sealer.

The Panama Canal Authority post­poned critical maintenance work on several locks when ships started pil­ing up. At one point, 110 vessels were awaiting passage, with waiting times running from five to eight days.
The offshore energy industry is feeling the pinch of too few skilled personnel but the next big problem may be rust, more than half the structures in the North Sea are in poor condition.

The French trawler Marie Louise Bart sank 41 miles from Guernsey in winds up to 110 km, its crew of five were saved by nearby vessels. The Chinese cargo ship New Hangzhou sank off East China, a passing fishing vessel plucked all 23 crewmembers from a liferaft. Off Alaska, rudder problems caused the 185 foot fishing vessel Alaskan Ranger to sink. Most of the crew of 47 was saved. It was the larg­est such rescue in the US Coast Guard memory. In Vietnam, a timber laden cargo ship managed to sink in the Dai Giang River all by itself and six of its crew of sixteen died. The tug Frigga was towing the crane barge Pontus, the dredge Elvira, and a barge off the Swedish east coast when strong winds capsized and sank the dredge and the crane barge. In East Java, thePerdana, carrying sand, cement, and forty people, capsized and five died.

The bulker Darya Bhakti bumped the container ship OOCL China off Shanghai, some damage to ships and containers. At Malta, Force 6 winds caused the cargo ship Akin to hit the Aggeklicki berthed at the fuel wharf. A South Korean tanker collided with a small boat off that country's south coast and 200 tons of diesel fuel spilled. A watchstander on the Japanese fishing vessel Kosho Maru No. 7 fell asleep and the craft ran into the side of the anchored Japanese Coast Guard vessel Was aka. The fishing vessel 801 Chang Nyeongand the 4,050-ton tanker Heung Yang collided off South Korea, caus­ing a 52,000-gallon spill of refined oil. The deep-sea tug Neftegaz 67 collided with the cargo ship Yao Mai near Hong Kong and sank, carrying with it most of its crew of 18. Rescuers saved eight and tried to drag the upside down tug into shallower waters for more rescue attempts. The pull failed because the tug's upper works were deep in the mud. At Rotterdam, the departing Beluga Innovation lost power, rammed the Vendette, and then ran its nose up on the shore.

On the Hooghly River, the smallish container ship CS Signe had steering problems, hit ajetty, and went aground, At the Brazilian port of Sal­vador, the MBTE-carrying tanker NCC Jupal ran into a pier and opened up its hull; some spill of engine oil. In eastern China, near Ninbo, the 1,400-dwt cargo ship Qinfeng 128 collided with a high concrete bridge under constructi on and one 3,000-ton span tumbled down onto the ship. Four went missing.
The container ship MSC Sabina ran aground in the St Lawrence River a hundred miles from Montreal and stayed there despite repeated pulls by up to five tugs plus waves created by a Canadian icebreaker steaming back and forth. Cargo will have to be moved to a sister ship before the next pull. Back in 2000, the MSC Sabrina ran into a Dutch fishing boat and then, 15 minutes later, hit a British freighter.) On the Basque coast of Spain, the cargo ship Maro went aground, its stern firmly amid rocks. High winds battered the UK and the 11,000-ton Astral began to drag its anchor. Tugs saved it but across the Channel in France, the 289-foot coaster Artemis did go aground on the Atlantic coast and next day people were walking around the stranded vessel. (It was pulled free by two large tugs.) The Sophia was similarly high and dry on a beach in Algeria.
The Tanzanian tanker Taurus, chartered by the Cormoran army as part of an offensive to recapture the archipelago's renegade island of An­jouan, caught fire and sank in the port of Grande Comore.

Three shipyard workers in the Philippines were pinned down by a crane when a shackle snapped and all three died. The night before Easter Sunday a seafarer fell off the Linda off Sweden and was not found. At Saldhana Bay in South Africa, the Panama arrived with two injured seamen. One died shortly after.

Pirates on the High Seas

Capture of the three-masted French yacht/luxury cruise ship (32 staterooms) Le Ponant by Somali pirates triggered quick responses by France even though the pirates only wanted ransom money and were operating in accordance with a "good conduct" guide. The pirates were local militia­men who borrowed two speedboats from local fishermen to defend the coast and do some fishing. First they captured a Yemeni trawler and made it their base ship. Then they captured the luxury sailing vessel. A ransom of two million dollars was agreed-upon ($50 for each villager and $11 to ­20,000 per pirate) but French Special Forces swooped in and captured six men as they tried to escape in a 4x4. They soon appeared in Paris.

The British Foreign Office advised the Royal Navy not to detain any pirates: breaches of their human rights might be involved because, if sent back to Somalia, beheadings might await them. Besides, detained pirates might claim asylum in Great Britain. The Foreign Office's advice? "The main thing is to ensure that any incident is resolved peacefully."
The Spanish tuna boat Playa de Bakio was seized by four Somali pirates while fishing 250 miles offthe Somalia coast. The captain was telling folks at home that they were all right when the handset was snatched from his hand by a pirate who then told listeners that he was a member of the Somalia militia and they wanted "money."

Again off Somalia, the food-carrying Dubai-flagged Al-Knaleet was taken by pirates. Somali troops stormed the ship and arrested seven pirates. (They faced the death penalty but got life sentences.) Next on the military's list of objectives was the Playa de Bakio.
A vessel from the United Arab Emirates unloaded at least forty Toyota sport utilities, a vehicle often equipped with heavy weapons and converted into "technicals," the Somalia version of a tank. Rumors had it that the vehicles may have been funded by the CIA and mining exploration rights may somehow be involved.

Elsewhere, pirates attacked the Thai tanker Batravarin 2 in Malaysian waters and managed to steal seafarers' money before escaping. And a South Korean fishing boat and a South Korean bulker were attacked in the Gulf of Aden; two of 13 attacks there so far this year. The bulker was pep­pered by machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades for about forty minutes. Also attacked in the Gulf was the large Japanese tanker Takayam, which survived a rocket attack by a single small boat. The tanker's master suffered an injury during the attack.

A New Zealand-designed system using suction devices is being used to hold large merchant ships in place under container cranes at the Southern Omani port of Salalah. The system reduces the vertical movements of all ships due to monsoon surges from three meters to between so­100 millimeters and this expedites loading and unloading of containers as well as easing passage of personnel from ship to shore and back.

The master of the cruise ship Mona Lisa wanted to give his passengers, mostly elderly Germans, the opportunity to take close up photos of the Irben lighthouse boldly sticking up in the Baltic 11 miles off the Latvian coast. He succeeded but ran the ship aground on a sand bar with the light conveniently only a ship length away.
At Port Stephens in Australia, people who cut down or poison their neighbor's trees in order to improve a view may find that local authorities respond by piling empty containers so as to block their improved sea view.

Maritime Happenings

The 11-man crew of the cargo ves­sel Tel Tale II took to liferafts after cargo shifted on their ship, causing it to list and then capsize about 300 miles south of Puerto Rico. Thanks to their EPIRB, they were rescued by the tanker Aegean Angel.
The bulker Sibulk Innovation col­lided with another vessel in a Singapore anchorage and took on water. No sink­ing, though. In misty weather off Hong Kong, the container ship Hubstella and the chemical tanker World Dynasty collided. It was that port's second col­lision in two weeks.
About 1,200 miles off the US East Coast, the Belgium bound empty car carrier Sea Venus had an engineroom fire. The automatic C02 fire extin­guishing system worked the way it was designed and the dead vessel was towed to Halifax by a harbor tug (reportedly short of both food and fuel) after the Canadian frigate HMCS Toronto took off most of the big ship's crew.
At Rotterdam, different cargoes got into a tank on the tanker Stolt In­novation and started to disagree. The ship was towed to a position four miles off Rotterdam. There, the chemicals were allowed to react for two days. Temperatures and pressures declined to safe levels so the tanker was towed back into the harbor.

The crew of the Greek cruise ship Aquamarine heard a loud noise and discovered a three foot crack that had just appeared in the topsides. The ship docked safely at the Aegean island of Milos and 1,200 passengers got off.
Up the Columbia River at the John Day Dam, the sternwheeler Queen of the West had an engineroom fire and lost power but the tug Challenger took charge and nobody was harmed. The Navigator of the Seas cancelled calls at Cadiz and Malaga so divers could remove a failed stabilizer at Lisbon. While the Brilliance of the Sea was docking at Miami and unloading its passengers, federal agents were un­covering 16 kilos of cocaine hidden behind ceiling panels in a passenger's cabin. After the Aurora ended a world cruise several hundred passengers were tested for Hepatitis E. Seven passen­gers had contacted the disease on the 11 week voyage.

On the Amazon, the ferry Com­mandante Sales sank in a pre dawn rain when strong currents caused it to capsize and then dragged it down river about 12 miles. At least 29 of an estimated 110 on board died. The ship had failed an inspection several months earlier. An hour into a voyage to Hirtshals, the Norwegian ferry Superspeed 3 turned back to off load about a dozen young people who were excessively drunk and rowdy. The Kristsiansand Police met the ship. In Hawaii, the high-speed pax-vehicle ferry Alakai went back into service after a spell in a drydock. Some of the repairs done there were scheduled routine maintenance but others were caused by (1) an engine failure of the tugboat inserting the big ferry into the drydock that caused a hull puncture and (2) misplaced blocking on the drydock floor that damaged the bottom of the ferry.

An Iraqi ship and a Korean vessel accidentally broke Red Seas submarine cables last February and that triggered widespread Internet outages in the Middle East and India. The Korean ship's owner has paid $60,000 for damages to Flag Telecom and the Iraqi ship is expected to shell out $350,000 in damages to another company.
PACCSHIP, a US company with about ten ships, was sentenced to pay $1.7 million for crimes associated with improper transfers of oily water. Several engineers have already pleaded guilty. Another US court ruled that Egyptian firm National Navigation Company, must pay $7.25 million for falsification of ships logs about oily water transfers. Finally, a three-judge panel of an ap­peals court (the ultra -liberal 9th circuit Court of Appeals) upheld the sentence imposed on a Chinese cook who seized a Taiwanese fishing boat and killed the captain and first mate in international waters south of the Big Island. The panel ruled it was "piracy" and that ruling may set a precedent that could allow the US to go after pirates off Somalia, Indonesia, and elsewhere.

Was it going to unload arms for the Zimbabwe's armed forces or not? That was the international question as the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang carried six containers of arms at sea off Africa in spite of intense pressure from Great Britain and the US. Refused at South Africa's Durban and Namibia's Walvis Bay, it headed for Luanda, capital of Angola, a Zimbabwe ally. There, the dockers union refused to touch the arms. So the ship sailed on there was even a report that it or another ship with the same name had sunk. Later reports stated that it docked at Lobito inAngola but off loaded only building materials and then that the ship was heading for Congo Brazzaville. Apparently, reports that the COSCO container ship was heading home were incorrect. At least five survivors claimed that Moroccan military personnel twice deliberately punctured their inflatable boat, saying, "Now go to Spain if you want." Between 29 and 33 migrants, four of them children, drowned only two hours out of Morocco.

Harassment by Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace vessels may have kept the Antarctic whale kill to about half the planned numbers. The goal was 850 minkes and fifty fin backs but Japanese whalers killed only 551 minkes and no fins. Sea Shepherd next turned its at­tention to the seal kill in the Canadian Maritimes where its Farley Mowat was arrested for various violations. The group aired its conditions for the Canadian Government to release its "yacht," using words like "high seas piracy" and "excessive force" and Sea Shep­herd said it would bill the Canadian government $1,000 a day for each day the ship remains seized. Nevertheless the Mounties proceeded with its cases against the master and first officer.
Greenpeace's Esperanza went after fishing boats from South Korea, Taiwan, and the US that it claimed were "plundering" tuna in the Pacific. The on site Greenpeace leader said that the fishing "is technically not illegal but is unregulated" and "Greenpeace is not a violent campaign­ing organization" but "actiyists were prepared to "interfere with their physical fishing activities on order for us to save the last tuna stocks."

TWIC Delayed

The long delayed Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC) has been delayed again, this time from September 25, 2008 to April 15th, 2009. On May 2nd, the Department of Homeland Security "realigned" the compliance date stating, "The seven month extension is a direct result of collaboration with port officials and industry and realigns the enrollment period with the original intent of the TWIC final rule."
Originally mandated by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 and then given a mandatory compliance deadline of September 25, 2008 by the SAFE Port Act of 2006, the first TWIC enrollments did not even begin until October 2007.

While the final compliance date of April 15, 2009 is for all facilities and vessels nationwide, the compliance date for the Captain of the Port Zones Boston, Northern New England and Southeastern New England is October 15th, 2008. These three ports were selected because of their geographic proximity, size of their TWIC enrollment population and enrollment efforts to date. "Compliance date" means the date that a TWIC card is required for unes­corted entry to facilities and vessels.
According to DHS, "The TWIC program is progressing steadily and has opened more than 100 fixed and dozens of mobile sites nationwide. More than 250,000 have enrolled to date and thousands more are processed each week."

The Coast Guard will provide at least 90 days notice prior to enforce­ment in any particular Captain of the Port Zone. The first of those notices was published May 7th for Boston, Northern New England and Southeastern New England Zones. In light of the reported problems in the TWIC rollout thus far, I applaud the decision of DHS to extend the deadline for enrollment. When workers must pay to enroll in a program necessary for them to do their jobs and provide for their families, they have the right to expect reliable, efficient service with little to no interruption to their schedules."

May 8th statistics show 277,177 enrollments, 89,696 cards activated and 104 enrollment centers open. The estimate for the total number of workers requiring cards is 1 to 1.5 million. TSA also released a report of en­rollments by port and by occupation showing 55,140 facility employees, 31,666 merchant mariners, 27,893 truckers and 16,454 longshoremen have enrolled so far. Interestingly, the largest group, 38,339, showed "no occupation specified." For those interested in the details, or those having trouble sleeping at night, both the TWIC Dashboard and the Enrollments by Port by Occupa­tion are available through the Marine Exchange of Delaware River and Bay at www.maritimedelriv.com/index.htm.

Maritime News Briefs

Maritime news reports that a group of Somali gunman who recently hijacked two ships now say they are not pirates but, "gentlemen who work the oceans" to rid Somali waters of ships that are damaging the environment.
The gunmen hijacked the tug Svitzer Korsakov on February 15t and claim they did so because the tug is, "part ofthe environmental destruction being committed by various foreign ships off the Somali shores".
The 35-meter Svitzer Korsakov is an ice breaking class tug, built in Rus­sia for the Dutch company Svitzer and was on its delivery voyage en route to the Russian island of Sakhalin. It had traveled to Singapore from St. Peters­burg and was hijacked after leaving the Somali port of Bossaso. The tug is one of several supporting LNG production in Far East Russia.
The pirates, calling themselves the Ocean Salvation Corps, are said to be Somali nationals, "who took upon themselves to protect the country's shores". The crew includes a British master, an Irish chief engineer, a Russian chief officer and three Russian crewmembers. All six are reported to be in good condi­tion and safe.

The timber carrier Ice Prince lost part of its deck load, listed, lost power, and eventually sank. A badly injured crewman was helicoptered off. Soon, more than 2,000 tons of its deck cargo of sawn timbers were littering the shore, looking in aerial photos like straw cast on the beaches. On the US West coast, the 45-foot Joe Foss sank while en route to a new home. Its crew ofthree were rescued. On the Canadian East coast, the small tug Check-Mate II sank while en route to a new home. The crew of two were found dead floating in survival suits that "had considerable water inside."

The Danish tanker Hanne Theresa ran aground in the Gulf of Finland on its ways to load a cargo ofliquid fertilizer. In the same Gulf, the RMS Satma ran aground and got holed in the process. The vehicle carrier City of Sun derlan d ran aground off Norfolk, UKbutthetugs Svitzer Trimley and Grey Test pulled it off. The product tanker Mariella dragged its anchor in Weymouth Bay and nearly went aground. Luckily, the large tug A nglian Earl was working on a nearby wreck project and provided a helping line.
In Denmark, the coaster South Michele was blown out of the channel and aground at Naksov. The same ship went aground at Naksov in December, that time due to a drunken Russian master. Also in Denmark, the bulker Trans Pacific with 68,978 tons of potash for US farmers ran aground. It was soon refloated by a fleet of sal­vaging vessels. In Northern Ireland, the RNLI lifeboat Katie Hannan was thrown ashore on rocky Rathlin Island and badly holed during a rescue and its crew of three needed rescuing by a smaller lifeboat. The Hannan will be retrieved from the land side. The Irish Sea ro/ro ferry Riverdance was hit by a freak wave and ended on its side on the beach at Blackpool a winter-time attraction at the famed playground for lower-class Brits. In South America, a big articulated tug/barge loaded with coils of sheet steel ended up on its side on a sandbar at Sao Francisco do Sol in Brazil.

In Peru the navy's bunker barge Bap Sude exploded three times and sank two hours later while transporting crude oil from a commercial oil platform to a state-owned refinery. In the Adriatic the Turkish cargo ship Und Adriyatak loaded with 200 trucks and more caught fire and pollution of Croatian beaches was feared (needlessly, it turned out). The Chinese freighter Jin Hui arrived at Geelong with a cargo of smoldering palm kernels (used for cattle feed). The container ship MSC Chancea had an engine room fire off Saldanha Bay in South Africa and yelled for help but the crew managed to kill the fire without that help.

In Ronne, Denmark, the St Vincent ­registered coaster Rybun and the Danish suction dredger Ahiseli collided, with the dredge getting the worst of it. Both managed to sail into port. In Kola Bay, the tanker Usinsk collided with the large tanker Belokamenka. No leak­ages. Off the Isles of Scilly at Great Britain's western end, the Horncliff lost some containers overboard in Force 10 winds and ran into one of them, badly holing itself. A search was initiated for the floating containers before their cargoes of bananas got too ripe. Off South Korea, a cargo ship and a tug collided; the ship sank.
The boom of a container crane at Southampton collapsed across the container ship Kyoto Express, putting a stop to work there for some time. Egypt sought the cargo ship Badr 1 (named after Pakistan's first satellite?) in the Red Sea after it and its crew of 17 had not been heard from for several days. The Russian cargo ship Captain Ustinov was missing in the East China Sea for more than two weeks but was found by Chinese services. For some time, it was surmised that it might have been taken by pirates.

In the Mediterranean, the gigantic (13,500 TEU) newbuild container ship Elly Maersk had engine problems and needed tug help. The cargo ship Suva docked at Dover with two crewmembers dead from unknown causes. The cargo ship Susie asked French authorities to evacuate one of its crewmen who was suffering from giddiness. Helicoptered ashore, he was dead on arrival. Then another crewman needed evacuation same symptoms. The cause may have been phosphine intoxication from an anti-germination coating on the ship's cargo of peas. A big wave hit the bulker Grand Glory off Canada's West Coast and five were injured, two seriously enough to be hospitalized. And a lifeboat dropped on crewmembers on theMSC India for no apparent reason and killed two.

Drinking and driving? The Ukrai­nian master of the coaster Helen was found with three times the legal limit at Southampton so he had to decide between paying a fine of £500 or 14 days in a British gaol. And the first mate of the Wilson Garston, which went aground at Helsingborg in December, was sen­tenced to three months in a Swedish jail. He was drunk and fell asleep on duty, although pharmaceuticals may have helped him doze.
The US government frowns heavily on discharges of oily substances into the sea so an Italian shipping company and the chief engineer of the Windsor Castle pled guilty while the former chief engineer of the vehicle carrier Tanabata got six months in jail. And eight Filipino seamen split a $730,000 cash award for blowing the whistle about illegal discharges of oily water from two ships.

A Greek court ruled that the master and two others from the reefer Coral Sea must stay injail without charges. They were suspected of drug smuggling when 51.6 kilos of cocaine were found in two of more than 27,000 pallets of bananas while unloading at Aegion. Orders to head for that port arrived while the ship was at sea, some 13 days out from Guayaquil, Ecuador. In Liberia, 90 barrels of "first class pure" cocaine (about 2.4 tons or half a billion US dollars) were destroyed after the French Navy intercepted a satellite radio call and arrested the Liberian-flagged Blue Atlantic. A French navy vessel also stopped the Panamanian-flagged Junior in international waters and found 107 cases, each with 30 kilos of cocaine.

For more than two weeks, Green­peace's Esperanza chased Japanese whalers in the Antarctic to keep them from shooting at whales. But fuel ran low and so Esperanza headed for Aus­tralia. Once there, Greenpeace changed its mind, saying it has limited resources and had decided to take the fight directly to Japan, The group also noted that the situation is different from previous years. The Japanese government clearly feels under pressure; it abandoned the kill of 50 humpbacks after a formal protest by 31 nations, and the government urged Australia to take action against Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Two members ofthat latter group were held on board a Japanese harpoon boat for two days after delivering a letter of protest.
The Scottish minister of the envi­ronment was "very concerned" about the damage rats could do to a remote Western Islands island. They may have got ashore when the trawler Spinning Daze ran onto rocks offSt. Kildaand 14 fishermen had to be winched to safety by a helicopter.
Jacques Cousteau's Calypso will be rebuilt to roam the seas again now that his second wife and widow has won a vicious fight with Cousteau's son over who owned the vessel. The World War II ex - US Navy wooden minesweeper will need a complete rebuild after years of neglect and a sinking.

Two teen-age Kenyan stowaways survived eight days on a tiny ledge above the rudder of the bulker New Auspicious only because the ship was lightly loaded and the platform was well above water. Some people are just not grateful for a free ride. Police were called to the Caprojo anchored in the North Sea off England. Conditions were rough so six policemen were helicoptered out and winched down through 35 mph gusts to the deck. Their quarry? A Turkish stowaway who had emerged on deck and gone berserk, throwing things at the crew and threatening to set fire to flammables. They finally spotted him on top of a 52-meter crane. He was talked down and arrested. He will be deported.

Maritime News From Other Shores

The cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 was chided by British officialdom for steaming proudly, if blindly, in a wrong part of the English channel while ignor­ing the legal rights of the approaching cross-Channel ferry Pride of Kent, which gave way at the last minute to avoid a collision.

The US Coast Guard air lifted a sick man from the Elation 260 miles to a San Diego hospital. Two ill people were evacuated by a US Coast Guardhelicop­ter from the Westerdam 80 miles south of Cuba. He went to the Guantanamo Bay hospital; she went to Miami. A Chinese crewman went missing from the Celebrity Constellation off the east coast of Florida, a surveillance camera saw him go overboard. A South African who has worked for one cruise line for eight years filed a lawsuit claim­ing "forced labor, slavery, and human trafficking." She wants her passport back so she can return home because she "refuses to work in a lower position at a lower rate of pay." The company, pointing out that she has signed several contracts since 2000, said the claims were "baffling."

In Bangladesh, the ferry Shouravi-l was hit from behind by a sand-carry­ing vessel. That killed one-third of the ferry's passengers. Next, both vessels tried to stay to starboard, and that caused another collision. Then the cargo ves­sel ran over the sinking ferry. The final death toll was 49 people.

In the UK, the 6,000-ton Irish Sea ferry Riverdance was flat on her side on the beach after a freak wave blew the ferry ashore at resort center Black­pool during a Force 10 gale. Salvors installed four containers holding water tanks on the top edge, loaded the ship's high-side tanks with water, and dug a trench alongside. The plan was to use one powerful tug to roll her upright into the trench and then off the beach but continued bad weather kept the plan from being executed.

Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are reputed to be adding to global warming but one of the European Union's top scientists reported that they may actually cool by forming clouds that reflect sunlight. But the soot and sulfur dioxide, forming a so-called "indirect aerosol," are mostly sulfur and that has bad effects including acid rain.

Coastal nations have sovereign jurisdiction over the natural resources of their continental shelf so the US was pleased when a recent expedition showed that the foot of the continental slope off Alaska extends more than 100 miles farther out than previously thought.

Further checks reassured many that rats had not escaped from the wrecked trawler Spinningdale so as to populate the Scottish island of St Kilda.

About 700 gallons of di-methyl car­bonate spilled on the Hyundai Patriot at Seattle and about 100 gallons entered the Dumwamish River. A mystery oil spill (maybe 500 gallons) at Barbers Point, Oahu, mystified authorities.

A US court rejected California's limits on ship emissions. The state must seek federal approval before imposing pollution limits on the thousands of vessels that visit California ports.

After an Australian trawler sank, two men spent twenty hours in the water and then one decided to swim for help. More than ten hours later, he was plucked by a helicopter from a New South Wales beach, cut, bruised, and exhausted. His cobber was later rescued.

New York City will pay $6.5 mil­lion to a man who lost a leg when the Staten Island ferry Andrew J. Barberi crashed into a concrete pier in 2003. The City has settled about two-thirds of 186 personal-injury cases with the largest settlements being about $9 million each to a man and women who lost both legs.
The small boat Suntory Mermaid II will travel from Honolulu to Japan propelled by waves. Horizontal fins at the bow will convert wave action into propulsive power much as a whale or porpoise's tail does. Sails and an outboard are also part of the single operator's equipment but will be used only in an emergency or when enter­ing a harbor. The boat's hull is made from recycled aluminum and electrical energy is supplied by solar cells

Maritime News

One of three mariners unfairly jailed in Greece after cocaine was found on the banana-carrying freighter Coral Sea "lost contact with reality" after bail was denied for the second time in the seven months since their arrest.

Ships are twice as likely as five years ago to be involved in a serious casualty, announced one classification society. Smaller crews and decreas­ing levels of experience and complex technical cures to those problems are the main causes.

Japanese whaling in the Antarctic was harassed by the Sea Shepherd, whose crew threw stink bombs on the factory ship Nisshin Maru and managed to hide a satellite device on a killer boat. Australia, which had the patrol vessel Oceanic Viking on scene, condemned these actions but warned Japan to take actions to prevent violence.

The container ship Maersk Santana had a machinery failure and ended up aground across the traffic lane at Hamburg. In Qatar, the rolro Grande Napoli grounded in shallow water out­side the Doha pilot station. In Dubai, the freighter Farsi went aground after an anchor chain broke. A coast guard tug also went aground during rescue attempts. While trying to deliver fuel at New Providence in the Bahamas, the Shell tanker Ficus struck a reef and stayed there for some time.

The Russian dry-cargo river-sea freighter Ataman went aground in the Aegean Sea although the weather was fine and the chief mate was the duty officer. While being towed to a repair yard because of a hole in its engine room, the coastal reefer Arlu ran aground near Makhachkala (a Russian port in the republic of Dages tan on the western shore ofthe Caspian Sea). The product tanker Breakthough ran aground at the famed Cocos (Keeling) Islands off Australia.

Three vessels more-or-less simul­taneously collided in Akashi Strait in Japan's Inland Sea. The oil tanker Golden Phoenix and the fishing ves­sel Eisei Maru 5 survived but the small Belize cargo ship Gold Leader sank, taking with it three of its crew of nine.
The beer-carrying Don Wilfredo capsized and sank off the coast of Philippine's Sorsogon province. The coast guard and navy rescued 17 of the crew of 19. However, 76,744 cases of beer were not rescued.
The freighter Rezzak sailed in bad weather from Russia's Novorossisk for Turkey's Bartin, a 24-hour voyage. It never arrived although a life raft, life jackets, and other oddments were found. There were subsequent suspicions of maritime fraud: the same manning agency handled the tug Jupiter 6, which also disappeared during a voy­age in 2005.
Northeast of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, fire swept the fish processor Pacific Glacier and most of its crew was evacuated while firefighting continued, eventually successfully.

Steering failure on the rolro Otani left her adrift on the Japan Sea and awaiting arrival of the salvage tug Slavyanka. Hurricane-force winds off Denmark caused the rolro Victoria VI to lose five trailers overboard and enough cargo shifted so that the vessel developed a list.
In Felixstowe, high winds caused the mooring lines holding the Chinese container-crane carrier Zhen Hua 23 to snap and the ship slid along the pier. The aftermost of seven cranes knocked over a shore-based container crane and that toppled the next crane. Luckily, a parked car stopped the rolling carnage but the car wasn't good for much any more.

Across the English Channel near Rotterdam, sistership Zhen Hua 10 carrying five towering container cranes ran aground at the Hoek van Holland when it anchored too close to shore in high winds and it took four powerful tugs to pull it free. A Dutch inspector said it was questionable whether the crane-carrier (a semi -submersible con­version of a tanker) had enough power in light of its "wind-sensitive" cranes. In Hamburg, a shore-based container crane knocked antennas and satellite domes off the container ship COSCO Ningbo and across the North Sea Southampton was still cleaning up from the dropping of gantry-crane parts onto a boxship about two months earlier.