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Back to SSG 08
When Torrey Canyon hit Pollards Rock, south west of England, the world’s first oil disaster was a fact and it became the starting point for better safety regulations.
40 years since the Torrey Canyon disaster
A harsh lesson to raise
environmental awareness
The Torrey Canyon was one of the first super tankers. Built in the United States in 1959 with an original capacity of 60,000 tonnes, she was later expanded in Japan to 120,000 tonnes. The Liberia-flagged tanker was owned by a subsidiary of Union Oil, chartered to BP and had an Italian crew.
On February 19, 1967, she left Kuwait for order on what was to be her final voyage, carrying a full cargo of crude oil. On March 14, the order came to head for Milford Haven. Because of the size of the ship, they had to catch the high tide at midnight four days later, or wait six days more.
Short cut to catch high tide
When the Torrey Canyon approached the Isles of Scilly, a small group of islands that has more shipwrecks per square mile than any other place on earth, the captain decided on a short cut through a gap between the Isles of Scilly and the Seven Stones reef to save time.
At 17 knots on March 18, she hit Pollards Rock, ripping open six tanks. The ecological impact was immense.
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It took two days of bombings to sink the Torrey Canyon, after the attempts to float her were abandoned. |
Napalm to burn the slick
This was the first major oil spill and no plans existed to deal with it. Attempts to float the ship off the reef were abandoned after the death of a salvage worker. The use of foam booms to contain the oil was of limited success. During two days, RAF dropped 42 bombs until the wreck finally sank on March 30.
Despite petrol and napalm being dropped to burn the oil slick, the oil spread along the shores on the south coast of England and in Normandy of France with sludge up to a foot deep. 13 kilometres of beaches, more than 20,000 sea birds and innumerable marine organisms were contaminated. In addition, over 10,000 tonnes of toxic detergents were sprayed to emulsify and disperse the floating oil, causing even further damage. It took more than ten years for animal and plants along the rocky coast to recover.
Growing awareness
The Torrey Canyon disaster occurred at a time when awareness of the world’s environment as a whole was developing rapidly. The OILPOL convention of 1954 did not meet the growth in maritime transport, the size of tankers and the increasing amount of chemicals carried at sea. Before the disaster, accidental pollution was not an issue. Pollution from ships meant operational pollution; washing the tanks with water and dumping the slops into the sea and disposing the engine rooms wastes in the same way. The Torrey Canyon provided an incentive for a plan of action and led to many changes in international regulations.
IMO enabled governments to act if an accident in international waters threatened its coastline with pollution and in 1973 IMO adopted the MARPOL convention to tackle pollution from oil, chemicals, sewage, garbage, and later ship emissions. IMO also introduced measures to minimize the effects in the event of a collision or grounding. First by requiring segregated ballast tanks, and after the Exxon Valdez 1989, made it necessary for tankers to be built with double hulls or an alternative approved design.
Better compensation
The incident also exposed deficiencies in the system for compensating the victims of pollution after an accident at sea. This led in 1969 to the Civil Liability Convention (CLC), imposing strict liability on ship owners without the need to prove negligence. The first stage requires the ship owner to pay compensation up to an agreed limit, depending on the size of the vessel. Further compensation is provided by means of contributions from oil importers in the International Oil Pollution Compensation fund (IOPC).
Investigations into the disaster revealed several causes in an unfortunate combination but deciding on the short cut is probably what triggered the accident. They were 12 hours from Milford Haven, with almost no time to spare. The safe option of going round the Isles of Scilly, would have added about two hours to the journey.
Pressure and ergonomics
During manoeuvring in the narrow gap, bad design of the autopilot accidentally caused the helm on the bridge to be disengaged. When the bridge team realised what had happened it was too late to steer clear of the reef.
Time pressure and bad ergonomics brought about the first oil disaster and the efforts to control the damages was either too late, too small or made matters worse.
But much was learnt from the grounding of the Torrey Canyon.
//Cecilia Österman
Latest update 16-04-2007 17:57
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