Alarm in Cherbourg n°2
Flying the flag of Saint-Vincent-et-Grenadines, the Serval, a tugboat built in 1977, is arriving at Cherbourg. In January 2015, the most recent inspection of the Serval in the port of Gdynia in Poland revealed eleven deficiencies. This precarious state has been noted for the past eight years. In 2007, the Serval had been detained in Denmark with 23 deficiencies.
The Serval is not coming to Cherbourg to be demolished. It’s in the port in Normandy to tow an old, abandoned tuna boat that has been stuck in the wharf since the summer of 2007. It will be towing into the risks and perils of the sea. The Marginella, built in 1985, measures 55 meters in length. Its operating crew comprises 25 sailors. It belongs to the Soviet tuna fishing fleet. It is the last survivor of eleven units of tuna seiners from the Tibiya project, built between 1980 and 1986 with the exception of Tibiya, which was converted into a service boat in the Caspian Sea.
Hassan 1 mystery : solved
Simon, from North Lincolnshire, UK, has identified the mystery-ship Hassan 1 beached for demolition in Pakistan (Cf Ship-breaking # 37, p 27): she is actually the ex-Chariot Bulker, a bulk carrier built in 1977 in Japan.
Hassan 1 is no longer a mystery. She is no stranger either. In 1999, her name was Maria K. On December 10th, 1999, she left the port of Saint-Nazaire (France) bound for England. She came back to Saint-Nazaire the day after due to bad weather conditions and was anchored there. She then dragged her anchor, was not loaded and represented a hazard and a pollution risk in case she hit the sea bottom. A pilot boat was supporting her, a harbor tug from the port of Saint-Nazaire, the Saint-Denis, was ready to take action.
SOS Cosette
The 9th commitment of the “Grenelle de la Mer” (Seas Summit, environmental roundtables about the sea and the coastline in France in 2009) regarding the development of a local end-of-life ship scrapping and recycling process struggles to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Yet it was specified that this commitment, which is supported by the current Ministry of Transport, covered overseas territories. According to converging information that is still confidential, the prefect of Martinique is about to order the immersion of Cosette IMO 6617025, a 99-meter long roll-on roll-off cargo ship abandoned 4 years ago at Fort-de-France. The same drastic operation, which is illegal with regard to the international commitments of France, could also happen to Lady Grace II, which is a 48-meter long coaster, unclaimed, that has also remained in Fort-de-France since October 2008, whereas her location favors, or rather requires, her destruction in situ.
