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New Carissa: 'like a Steven King novelÂ’.
For almost a decade, this has proved the ship they couldn’t salve; repeated salvage operations have been inexplicably jinxed by a series of mishaps.
Only now, nine years after the casualty, has work started on removal of the stern section. The salvors will be hoping that this time, for once, they get lucky.
New Carissa first hit the headlines on February 4 1999, when it grounded near Coos Bay. Initial efforts to refloat the vessel were unsuccessful. Two of its five fuel tankers began to leak bunkers and diesel, and before long, the authorities were dealing with a 70,000 gallon spill.
The nearest tugboat able to handle a ship of New Carissa’s size was 24 hours steaming time away.
However, Salvage Chief had not sailed in over a year, and it took 18 hours to find fuel, provisions and a suitable crew. Once mobilised, the atrocious weather delayed it reaching the scene by a further 48 hours.
By this point - four days after the beaching - cracks were evident in New Carissa’s hull. Refloatation would have risked a major spill. In any case, Salvage Chief was unable to reach New Carissa with its tow gear.
On February 10, New Carissa suffered major structural failure, after its hull was breached, flooding the engine rooms and thus disabling the engines. The insurers unsurprisingly declared it a total loss, making it effectively unsalvageable.
As heavy waves continued to pound the wreck, the authorities decided to try to burn off the fuel with the use of napalm and incendiary devices on February 10, but only one of the tanks caught fire.
The following day, explosives experts from the US Navy placed 39 charges in the hope of breaching the fuel tanks. A further 2,280 litres of napalm of 180kg of plastic explosives resulted in a 33 hour blaze. The resultant structural stress split the hull in two.
On March 2, salvors managed to float a 132 metre section of the bow and tow it out to sea for disposal. Unfortunately, another storm arose and the tow line broke. The bow section floated away and grounded again, around 80 miles from the other half of the vessel.
A week later, a second effort was left nothing to chance. Once the bow had been towed 248 miles off the coast, a further 180 kgs of high explosives were detonated; meanwhile, one US Navy warship gave it 69 rounds of 127mm gunfired while a second fired a torpedo at the underside. This time it sure as hell sunk.
In 2001, operator Green Atlas Shipping sued the United States for $96m, claiming negligence on the part of the US Coast Guard in the provision of faulty charts. The US countersued for $7m.
The actions were settled in 2004, with Green Atlas paying $10.5m towards clean-up costs, while the US paid $4m in respect of the charts claim.
Last week, Crowley Maritime Corporation subsidiary Titan Salvage commenced work on the task of hacking the stern - which has remain in situ ever since - to pieces. The problem is that it is now embedded 40 feet into the sand, and will have to be extracted before it can be cut apart piece by piece.
Small wonder, then, that exasperated local congressman Peter DeFazio famously described the saga as ‘like a Steven King novel’.
Difficulties such as these truly puts New Carissa into a class of its own. Working on MSC Napoli must have been a doddle by comparison.
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