Posted on 10/08/2011 8:37:26 PM PDT by prisoner6
The Canadian Miner was struck by a storm where 40 foot waves broke over the grounded vessel near Scaterie Island. Reports state the vessel has a 50 foot hole on the side of the vessel near the stern and the hull has cracked in several places. The storm winds reached gusts up to 131 kilometers per hour. Waves have pushed the Canadian Miner closer to shore with the bow of the vessel now resting on the beach.
Luckily, salvagers were able remove 6,000 liters of engine oil and diesel fuel before the storm struck. There is still 3,000 liters on board, but plans are to have it removed as soon as the salvage crew can return to the vessel.
It started about a month ago when the Canadian Miner was being towed out of the St Lawrence Seaway headed for a scraping yard in Turkey.
As the tug and it's tow headed into the Atlantic a rope broke and the C Miner was driven onto the rocks on Scaterie Island, near Cape Breton Nova Scotia.
Several attempts have been made to pull the grounded ship loose but all have failed due to the harsh surf and weather.
It now looks as if the ship is going to break apart. In the pic you can see one of the hatch covers has blown off.
What a shame to see a GL ship meet such an end.
More can be found HERE under the "News Channel"
The above link is also a great source of weather and other Great Lakes info especially under "vessel passage" and then "current vessel locations."
Shame to see that much steel not get recycled.
Notice the “worry” and excitement about a little bit of diesel oil..... 3000 liters! (In WWII, hundreds of tankers and loaded cargo ships filled with thousands of tons of fuel oil were sinking.)
A lake Superior gale onboard the Charles Wilson. It doesn’t look like much until you think about it. The crew was in their survival suits by choice.
“We displace 38,000 tons, are full of iron ore, and 680’ long and bending”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cddtyqQNHtM&feature=related
YUP! Of course the lobster fishermen are all upset because they claim it's going to destroy some prime grounds. I would wager more than the amount on board is spilled there yearly anyway from cargo ships and fishing boats.
It makes one wonder why they would risk hauling it all the way to Turkey to be scrapped. You would think it could have been done here and the steel used here. The ship was registered out of Toronto IIRC.
To think that at one time decades ago I seriously considered trying to get a job on one of those. I figured the trip between say Cleveland and Duluth would be fun, LOL!
Instead of signing on board I chose a more dangerous fate...I got married.
I’ve read that you can hitch a ride as a tourist on some of those great lakes ore carriers at a price. Its a no frills ride but I understand that the food is top notch.
It would be something I would enjoy.
boatnerd.com used to raffle off a trip every year. If they did this year I missed it.
A GL ship isn’t built for an Atlantic crossing in any kind of bad weather.
I’ve always wanted to try a great lakes cruise.
Its really more for the grey hair set but I’ve got plenty of grey of my own.
IIRC there might have been yet another ship also under the Algo title that sunk more recently.
True. They are built with only half the longitudinal strength of an ocean going ship or “saltie”.
Enviro and OSHA laws!
It is SO expensive to even work in the Us or Canada's “clean” and working industrial sites that trying to cut out and scrap a messy old ship (or anything else) is only a cost-buster. It costs more for the labor and enviro servicing and cleaning than it does to tow the ship overseas, cut it up over there with non-OSHA (non-union) labor and dump the pollutions and dirt and old asbestos and old oil and old paint and old wire and old insulation and old trash over there, then send the scrap steel back as new Chinese steel.
I've always read that's why when cruise ships reposition from the Caribbean to Europe and vice versa, they sail without passsengers.
They're not ocean liners. AFAIK, only the QM2 is strong enough to sail anywhere on all planetary shipping routes as a passenger vessel today.
SmAller that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald but the same type of ship. That wreck will be tourist site for the next 200 years.
I didn’t know that about cruise ships or the QM2. I read a lot about GL’s ships though and because they sail on fresh water and the Lakes have a limited “fetch”, they built them that way. Apparently it has something to do with wave height and motion. This isn’t the first time a GL ship being towed for scrap across the ocean has sunk.
The concert footage is not of this song, but the video composition works well.
In parts of the world, there are few environmental laws, and a couple of welding rods are worth more than a day's pay.
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE.
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE, and Civ.
Ping Clive.
:-)
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