MV Tricolour Sinking.
The sinking occurred off Dunkirk harbor, which is France’s most northerly seaport and France’s third largest port after Marseille and Le Havre.
MV Tricolor was a 50,000 tonne Norwegian--flagged vehicle carrier built in 1987, notable for having been involved in three English Channel collisions within a fortnight. MV Tricolor was originally launched in 1987 as Nosac Sun. At the time of her collision with Kariba she was operated by Wilh. Wilhelmsen. During the early hours of 14th December 2002, while traveling from Zeebrugge, Belgium to Southampton, U.K with a load of close to 3,000 automobiles, she collided with Kariba, a 1982 Bahamian-flagged container ship. Kariba was able to continue on, but Tricolor sank where she was struck, some 17 nautical miles (20 mi) north of the French coast within the French exclusive economic zone in the English Channel. While there were no deaths, the ship remained lodged on her side in the mud of the 30 metres (98 ft) deep waterway. A third vessel, MV Clary, was alleged in subsequent litigation to have contributed to the collision by "embarrassment of navigation".
Because of the location of the sunken vessel, at a point where two lanes combine in the Traffic Seperation Scheme (TSS) of the English Channel and the Southern part of the North Sea and the fact that she was just completely submerged, the wreck was considered as a hazard to navigation. The TSS at that location is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. In December 2002 French authorities ordered the wreck to be removed, as it was perceived to represent a danger to shipping and the environment. Two more collisions happened with MV Tricolor in the days after the sinking. Following the sinking and due to its location in a busy point of a shipping lane (the location was on the edge of a turning-point within the TSS of the English Channel), the wreck was initially guarded by the French maritime police patrol boat P671 Glaive and HMS Anglesey (a 195 ft British island-class patrol vessel), in addition to two salvage vessels and three wreck buoys.
A photographer takes a picture of the wreckage of the Bahamas registered Kariba container ship at the Belgian port of Antwerp.
REUTERS/Theirry Roge.
Volvo XC90 - 2003
At the time of its sinking, the Tricolor was on its way to Southampton from Belgium with a shipment of 2,871 luxury cars from BMW, Saab, and Volvo. The automotive cargo held a total value of $100 million. This included a shipment of early production run Volvo XC90 SUVs – a highly coveted vehicle at the time. Despite standard radio warnings, three guard ships, and a lighted buoy, the Dutch vessel Nicola struck the wreck the next night and had to be towed free. After this two additional patrol ships and six more buoys were installed, including one with a Racon warning transponder. However, on 1st January 2003 the loaded Turkish-registered fuel carrier Vicky struck the same wreck; she was later freed by the rising tide.
French maritime police patrol boat P671 Glaive.
The salvage operation of the Tricolor was carried out by a consortium of companies under the name Combinatie Berging Tricolor (Combination for Salvaging Tricolor) that was led by the Dutch company Smit International, and took well over a year. The consortium consisted of Smit Salvage, Scaldis Salvage, URS Salvage & Marine Contracting and Multraship Salvage. Starting in July 2003, the operation was declared complete on 27 October 2004. The salvage method included a carbide-encrusted cutting cable used to slice the wreck into nine sections of 3,000 tonnes each. This technique was similar to one Smit had used in salvaging most of the Russian nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk. The Dutch company CT Systems, together with Thales Navigation, handled the navigational aspects of the operation. The positioning equipment provided the required locational accuracy and, after using a side scan sonar, the debris was located and all the relevant positional information converted to a chart, enabling a systematic search and recovery of the remaining debris.
Side-scan uses a sonar device that emits conical or fan-shaped pulses down toward the seafloor across a wide angle perpendicular to the path of the sensor through the water, which may be towed from a surface vessel or submarine, or mounted on the ship's hull. The intensity of the acoustic reflections from the seafloor of this fan-shaped beam is recorded in a series of cross-track slices. When stitched together along the direction of motion, these slices form an image of the sea bottom within the swath (coverage width) of the beam. The sound frequencies used in side-scan sonar usually range from 100 to 500 KHz; higher frequencies yield better resolution but reduced range.
Side-scan sonar may be used to conduct surveys for marine archaeology; in conjunction with seafloor samples it is able to provide an understanding of the differences in material and texture type of the seabed. Side-scan sonar imagery is also a commonly used tool to detect debris items and other obstructions on the seafloor that may be hazardous to shipping or to seafloor installations by the oil and gas industry. In addition, the status of pipelines and cables on the seafloor can be investigated using side-scan sonar. Side-scan data are frequently acquired along with bathymetric soundings and sub-bottom profiler data, thus providing a glimpse of the shallow structure of the seabed. Side-scan sonar is also used for fisheries research, dredging operations and environmental studies. It also has military applications including mine detection.
The doomed Russian nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk before the disaster.
One of the worst naval catastrophes in Russian history
On Aug. 12, 2000 as a result of a catastrophe during a Russian naval exercise in the Barents Sea, the K-141 Kursk submarine sank to a depth of 108 meters. K-141 Kursk was an Oscar-II class nuclear-powered cruise-missile submarine. Its construction started in 1992 in the Russian city of Severodvinsk and was first launched in 1994. K-141 was deployed to the Mediterranean during the summer of 1999 to monitor the U.S fleet responding to the war in Kosovo.
On Aug. 12, 2000 the first major Russian naval exercise took place in a very long time. Kursk was loaded with 24 SS-N-19/P-700 Granit "Shipwreck" cruise missiles and 24 torpedoes. Due to faulty welding on a 65–76 "Kit" practice torpedo, an explosion of high-test peroxide occurred involving five to seven torpedo warheads, causing the sub to sink 175 km off the coast of Severomorsk. The disaster killed all 118 personnel on board, including the submarine captain Leonid Lyachin.
On Aug. 22, President Vladimir Putin issued an executive order declaring Aug. 23 a day of mourning.
Complete destruction was guaranteed when the huge vessel MV Tricolor sank. 2,871 destroyed and unusable automobiles were removed from the wreck and recycled for the metal component. Most of the oil was removed from the ship's tanks soon after it sank, but during the salvage there was a 540-tonne oil spill. This image shows a selection of Volvo cars after salvage.