Ghost Ship (not Adnam's beer...)

[AleisterCrowley]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51534957
A "ghost" cargo ship has washed up off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, brought in by the bad weather that lashed Europe in Storm Dennis.
...
The vessel appears to have drifted thousands of miles over more than a year, from the south-east of Bermuda in 2018, across the Atlantic Ocean.

How very odd, and slightly spooky

[bungeejumper]

Oh well, at least they already knew it had been formally abandoned at sea. Unlike this creepy little thing that turned up in Japan.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50934145

Probably North Korean refugees - they get a lot of those. But this one had five corpses and just two heads. (Or possibly two additional heads, it isn't quite clear.) The horror, the horror.......

BJ

[staffordian]

I realise that basic news reports tend either to be incomplete or incorrect, but the impression I got from reading about this was that it came as a suprise that it had washed up there.

I imagined that something like this would have been tracked somehow either since it was abandoned, or at least picked up by UK or Irish authorities when it came into territorial waters , if only to ensure it wasn't a hazard to other shipping or to stop it washing up somewhere awkward or dangerous.

But perhaps I just tend to assume technology is more powerful than it actually is?

[AleisterCrowley]

From article;
It was last spotted in September 2019 by a British Royal Navy ship.
"To have a ship drifting around like that for 18 months is not common,"
"For it to have been spotted just once since October 2018 just shows how vast the ocean is"

Surprised they didn't at least attach a radio beacon to it. Or attempt to scuttle in deep water.

[redsturgeon]

I guess this is one of those things that falls under the "not my problem" category.

John

[AleisterCrowley]

The ownership looks a bit..unclear
...the Alta, which has had numerous owners and names. Built in 1976, it most recently flew a Tanzanian flag.

[bungeejumper]

The ownership looks a bit..unclear
...the Alta, which has had numerous owners and names. Built in 1976, it most recently flew a Tanzanian flag.

Flags of convenience. It used to be very common for ship owners to chop and change the vessels' home ports at regular intervals, so as to suit the "requirements" of whatever regional businesses they were engaged with at the time.

Tax fiddles mostly, I think. There are hundreds of seagoing tankers registered in Switzerland. Wouldn't stop them being 95% Filipino crewed, though. And probably captained by a Russian drunk.

BJ

[AleisterCrowley]

Yes -the popular choice used to be Liberia, that well known seafaring giant

[sg31]

Yes -the popular choice used to be Liberia, that well known seafaring giant

When I was in the merchant navy we always gave Liberian flagged vessels an extra wide berth.

At one time I was on the Hardwicke Grange which was going in to dry dock at the end of her trip to South America. I was scheduled to transfer to the sister ship the Royston Grange. Fortunately I fell ill before that happened and went on sick leave.

I was very fortunate because on that trip the Royston Grange was in collision with a Liberian tanker and all the crew perished.

https://www.pilotmag.co.uk/the-royston-grange-trgedy/

[AleisterCrowley]

Some rather spectacular pics from the BBC site
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-51558440

[bungeejumper]

Some rather spectacular pics from the BBC site
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-51558440

Indeed, I liked those. Some of them are almost high-end art!

BJ

[Clitheroekid]

I can't understand why it's simply been allowed to drift around the oceans. Apart from it being a very obvious hazard to shipping it must surely be worth quite a lot just in scrap value, so why has nobody salvaged it?