"Amoco Cadiz Amoco Cadiz was a very large crude carrier (VLCC) owned by Amoco Transport Corp and transporting crude oil for Shell Oil. Operating under the Liberian flag of convenience, she ran aground on 16 March 1978 on Portsall Rocks, from the coast of Brittany, France. Ultimately she split in three and sank, resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date. On 16 March 1978 in a southwesterly gale, the ""Amoco Cadiz"" passed Ushant at the western tip of Brittany, headed for Lyme Bay in the United Kingdom. At 9:46 am when the supertanker"
"Tanio oil spill The ""Tanio"" oil spill occurred March 7, 1980 when the ""Tanio,"" an oil tanker of Madagascan origin traveling from Wilhelmshaven to Civitavecchia split in two 60 km off the coast of Brittany, France in rough weather, spilling about 13,500 tons of cargo oil into the English Channel and killing 8 sailors. The stern section of the boat was towed to Le Havre by a British cargo ship despite the strong wind. The bow, however, sunk, leaking 5,000 tons of oil. After the spill, strong winds moved the oil toward the Breton coast. Oil began to wash a"
"MV Sea Empress The MV ""Sea Empress"" was a single-hull oil tanker that ran aground at the entrance to the Milford Haven harbour on the southwest coast of Wales in February 1996. The ensuing oil spill, Britain's third largest oil spillage and the twelfth largest in the world at the time, devastated a considerable area of local coastline and killed many birds, and continued to affect the Pembrokeshire coast for years afterwards. On the evening of 15 February 1996 the ""Sea Empress"" was entering the mouth of the Cleddau Estuary on her way into Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire to deposit"
"or Lost"". MV Sea Empress The MV ""Sea Empress"" was a single-hull oil tanker that ran aground at the entrance to the Milford Haven harbour on the southwest coast of Wales in February 1996. The ensuing oil spill, Britain's third largest oil spillage and the twelfth largest in the world at the time, devastated a considerable area of local coastline and killed many birds, and continued to affect the Pembrokeshire coast for years afterwards. On the evening of 15 February 1996 the ""Sea Empress"" was entering the mouth of the Cleddau Estuary on her way into Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire"
"Odyssey (tanker) Odyssey, which previously went by the name ""Oriental Phoenix"", was an oil tanker in operation from 1971 to November 10, 1988, when an explosion caused it to sink in the North Atlantic off the coast of Canada. The resulting spill remains one of the largest oil spills in world history. The tanker was off the coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia when it sank and released 132,157 tons (43 million gallons) of oil into the ocean. By way of comparison, 4.3 times as much oil was spilled by the ""Odyssey"" as from the much more famous"
"sea. Onshore impacts were considered negligible as the slick traveled seaward. The only visible impact was the oiling of 1,500 gannets that were on a nearby island. The ""Castillo de Bellver"" was built in 1978 to carry light crude oil. On 6 August 1983, the Spanish oil tanker ""Castillo de Bellver"" was en route from the Persian Gulf to Spain transporting 250,000 tonnes (300,000 cubic metres) of light crude oil. Around off Table Bay, South Africa, it exploded and proceeded to burn. The crew abandoned the ship, which proceeded to drift off the coast, eventually breaking in two at around"
"Whiddy Island disaster The Whiddy Island disaster, also known as the ""Betelgeuse"" incident, occurred on 8 January 1979, around 1:00 am, when the oil tanker ""Betelgeuse"" exploded in Bantry Bay, at the offshore jetty for the oil terminal at Whiddy Island, Ireland. The explosion was attributed to the failure of the ship's structure during an operation to discharge its cargo of oil. The tanker was owned by Total S.A., and the oil terminal was owned and operated by Gulf Oil. The explosion and resulting fire claimed the lives of 50 people (42 French nationals, seven Irish nationals, and one British"
"was recovered from the wreck, has been erected in the hillside graveyard overlooking the harbour. The bodies of two unidentified casualties from the incident are interred nearby. Whiddy Island disaster The Whiddy Island disaster, also known as the ""Betelgeuse"" incident, occurred on 8 January 1979, around 1:00 am, when the oil tanker ""Betelgeuse"" exploded in Bantry Bay, at the offshore jetty for the oil terminal at Whiddy Island, Ireland. The explosion was attributed to the failure of the ship's structure during an operation to discharge its cargo of oil. The tanker was owned by Total S.A., and the oil terminal"
"gas platform protection. In 1978, ""Orkney"" coordinated the clean-up operation after the tanker ""Christos Bitas"" ran aground in the Irish Sea. She helped co-ordinate the search for survivors from the trawler ""Ocean Monarch"" off Fair Isle, in 1980 and recovered many of the bodies when the freighter ""Radiant Med"" sank off Guernsey in 1984. In 1993 she became involved in a fishing dispute with France around the Channel Islands. Paid off in April 1999, she was laid up at Portsmouth Dockyard. Following decommissioning, her bell, name board and honours board were presented to Orkney Islands Council. In 2000 she was"
"Torrey Canyon oil spill The ""Torrey Canyon"" oil spill was one of the world's most serious oil spills. The supertanker ran aground on a reef off the south-west coast of the United Kingdom in 1967, spilling an estimated 25–36 million gallons (94–164 million litres) of crude oil. Attempts to mitigate the damage included the bombing of the wreck by aircraft from the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, causing a potential international incident, as the ship was not British, and was in international waters. Hundreds of miles of coastline in Britain, France, Guernsey, and Spain were affected by the oil"
"safety authority. The accident happened in rough weather while the tanker ""Navion Britannica"" was loading oil from a storage buoy, according to the operator Equinor. Statfjord oil field The Statfjord oil field is an enormous oil and gas field covering 580 km in the U.K.-Norwegian boundary of the North Sea at a water depth of 145 m, discovered in 1974 by Mobil and since 1987 operated by Statoil. It is a trans-median field crossing the Norwegian and UK North Sea Boundary with approximately 15% being in the UK Continental Shelf waters. At peak production it produced over of oil per"
"MV Captayannis The Captayannis was a Greek sugar-carrying vessel that sank in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland in 1974. On the evening of 27 January 1974, a severe storm caused the vessel to drag her anchor while she was waiting at the Tail of the Bank to deliver sugar to the James Watt Dock in Greenock. Her captain ordered the engines to be started with the intention of running for the more sheltered waters of the Gareloch but before she could be brought to power she drifted onto the taut anchor chains of the BP tanker ""British Light"". The tanker"
"oil. A full scale emergency plan was activated by the authorities. News of the grounding was first reported at 21:18 on the BBC's Nine O'Clock News – just over an hour after she ran aground. Over the next few days, efforts to pull the vessel from the rocks continued. Tugboats were drafted in from the ports of Dublin, Liverpool and Plymouth to assist with the salvage operation. The ""Sea Empress"" disaster occurred in Britain's only coastal national park and in one of only three UK marine nature reserves. The tanker ran aground very close to the islands of Skomer and"
"oil"" to ""keep all Europe movin' from our base in Bantry Bay."" Gulf's operations from its Whiddy Island oil terminal in Bantry Bay ended on a night in January 1979 when the Total Oil tanker ""Betelgeuse"" exploded while unloading its cargo of Saudi crude oil. The commercial itself was simple, consisting of helicopter shots of the various vessels (beginning with the superstructure of the ""Universe Kuwait"") often in conjunction with tugboats to give the viewer a sense of scale regarding the size of the ships. One overhead shot shows five tugboats pushing on the port side of the ""Universe Ireland"""
"a portion of its cargo of oil. In 1984, a serious explosion on a tanker being repaired in the Haven resulted in three fatalities. In 1996, it was the location of the ""Sea Empress"" oil spill, initially thought to be one of the most devastating oil tanker disasters the UK has ever seen. In the event, recovery has been surprisingly good, perhaps partly because of the very strong tides. The comparable ""Torrey Canyon"" spill in 1968, a ship which had been heading to Milford Haven, affected shores further south around southern Cornwall and northern France, was actually far more damaging."
"incident occurred when a supertanker, the ""Torrey Canyon"" hit the Pollard’s Rock, tearing a gash in her side and spilling 860,000 barrels of oil into the sea. Westerly winds and currents caused the oil to pollute of the Cornish coast and of the Brittany coast. She now lies in of water. Large amounts of toxic detergent was sprayed on the oil in an attempt to disperse it and, along with the oil, accounted for the loss of much of the marine life and 15,000 birds. At the time it was the world's costliest shipping disaster, and to date, still the"
"RAF Angle was located on the Angle Peninsula Coast. It was operational from 1 December 1941 to the 1950s, having been used by both the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. The sheltered beach at West Angle Bay has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest; the rock pools are home to a small green starfish called ""Asterina phylactica"". The starfish was only formally identified in 1979. On 15 February 1996, the oil tanker ""Sea Empress"" grounded at the entrance to the Milford Haven Waterway, spilling 72,000 tonnes of crude oil. The coastline around Angle was severely damaged."
"MV María Alejandra The María Alejandra was a Spanish oil tanker built in 1975 in Cádiz, Spain. She sank suddenly on high seas some 130-150 km off the coast west of Nouadhibou, Mauritania on 11 March 1980 after several internal explosions, presumably related to malfunctions in the inert gas system. Of the 43 people aboard, 36 perished. She was the penultimate ship built by Astilleros de Cádiz, (Cádiz) one of the main shipyards in Spain. Before its completion the original customer, the Italian company D'Amico Società di Navegazione, canceled the contract. Finally in 1977 she was acquired by Mar Oil,"
"MV María Alejandra The María Alejandra was a Spanish oil tanker built in 1975 in Cádiz, Spain. She sank suddenly on high seas some 130-150 km off the coast west of Nouadhibou, Mauritania on 11 March 1980 after several internal explosions, presumably related to malfunctions in the inert gas system. Of the 43 people aboard, 36 perished. She was the penultimate ship built by Astilleros de Cádiz, (Cádiz) one of the main shipyards in Spain. Before its completion the original customer, the Italian company D'Amico Società di Navegazione, canceled the contract. Finally in 1977 she was acquired by Mar Oil,"
"2s began to replace the Mk 1s and the Scimitars, completing the process by November of that year. In March 1967 the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on Seven Stones Reef near Lands End and started to leak thousands of tons of crude oil into the sea, putting nearby beaches at risk of pollution. In an attempt to minimise the damage to the environment, the Buccaneers of 800 NAS along with those of the training squadron 736 NAS were ordered to destroy the tanker and its cargo. Flying from RNAS Brawdy in Wales on 28 March 1967, eight Buccaneers"
"taking on the riskiest ventures. It earned the company massive profits; it also earned them the worst safety record in the industry. In 1967, the giant oil tanker ""Torrey Canyon"" foundered off the English coast. Over of crude oil was spilled into the Atlantic and onto the beaches of Cornwall and Brittany, causing Britain's worst-ever oil spill. The ship was owned by the Bahamas-based Barracuda Tanker Corporation and was flying the flag of Liberia, a well-known flag of convenience, but was being chartered by British Petroleum. The ship was bombed by RAF jet bombers in an effort to break up"
"SS Atlantic Empress SS ""Atlantic Empress"" was a Greek oil tanker that in 1979 collided with the oil tanker ""Aegean Captain"" in the Caribbean, and eventually sank, having created the fifth largest oil spill on record and the largest ship-based spill. The ""Atlantic Empress"" was a large crude oil carrier built at the ""Odense Staalskibsværft"" shipyard in Odense, Denmark, and launched on 16 February 1974. At the time of her sinking she was owned by the South Gulf Shipping Company of Greece, and flagged in Liberia. On 19 July 1979 ""Atlantic Empress"" collided with the ""Aegean Captain"", another fully laden"
"Scotia. On February 4, 1970 in Chedabucto Bay, off the east coast of Nova Scotia in a gale and only 14.6 nautical miles from her destination, she ran hard aground on Cerberus Rock, a known, well-charted hazard to navigation. The tanker ran aground mid-morning, halfway between high and low tide, being driven by 60 knot southwesterly winds and blinded by a heavy mist. The impact drove the forward section of the tanker onto the rock formation wedging it with the starboard side hard against the rock pinnacle. Efforts to free her from the rock failed as did efforts to pump"
"ship while it was aground. A South African tugboat, the ""John Ross"", was contracted by the firm Pentow Marine to tow the crippled tanker into the Channel where the remaining oil would be transferred to another tanker. During the tow the ""Katina P"" buckled amidships and on 26 April 1992 sank in of water, from the Mozambican coast and north-east of Maputo. It is not clear why the oil transfer was not done at an early stage of the tow, as time was obviously of the essence. The south-moving Agulhas current spread the spilled oil into Maputo Bay, the estuaries"
"was the fifth-largest oil spill in world history which severely affected the north and northwest coasts of Brittany. In February and March 1980, the population of Plogoff, the commune containing the Pointe du Raz, demonstrated to prevent the construction of a nuclear power generator in their commune, despite the paratroopers and helicopters sent by the government. They received a wide support from the media. The power station project was abandoned after the presidential elections of 1981, which brought François Mitterrand to power. In 2014, the Bonnets Rouges destroyed hundreds of highway speed cameras, tax portals, and tax bureau offices in"
"Katina P Katina P was a Greek oil tanker carrying 72,000 tonnes of oil which sank off the Mozambique coast on 26 April 1992. On 17 April 1992, the master of the Greek-owned, Maltese-flagged vessel ""Katina P"" deliberately ran the ship aground north of Maputo in Mozambique and then abandoned ship. The tanker, which had been under way from Venezuela to the Persian Gulf, had lost a hull plate during a storm. Two of the vessel's tanks had ruptured and spilled some 13,000 tonnes of #6 heavy fuel oil in the Mozambique Channel. A further 3,000 tonnes leaked from the"
"reopening of the Suez canal and upgrading of the older European oil terminals (Europoort and Marchwood) meant that the financial return from these projects was not all that had been hoped for. The Bantry terminal was devastated by the explosion of a Total tanker, the ""Betelgeuse"", in January 1979 (Whiddy Island disaster) and it was never fully reopened. The Irish government took over ownership of the terminal in 1986 and held its strategic oil reserve there. In the 1970s, Gulf participated in the development of new oilfields in the UK North Sea and in Cabinda, although these were high-cost operations"
"that were common amongst tankers at that time - have been dealt with. A fleet of smaller, ""river-sized"" (several thousand tonnes) ore-bulk-oil carriers have also been used for some decades on European Russia's waterways, primarily by Volgotanker. In addition to MV ""Berge Istra"" and MV ""Berge Vanga"", one of the more famous OBOs was the Derbyshire MV ""Derbyshire"" of 180,000 deadweight tonnes, which in September 1980 became the largest British ship ever lost at sea. It sank in a Pacific typhoon while carrying a cargo of iron ore from Sept-Îles in Canada to Japan. The loss of ""Derbyshire"" was found"
"catastrophes such as the wreck of the Amoco Cadiz oil tanker off the coast of Brittany in 1978 and the Bhopal disaster in 1984 have demonstrated the universality of such events and the scale on which efforts to address them needed to engage. The borderless nature of atmosphere and oceans inevitably resulted in the implication of pollution on a planetary level with the issue of global warming. Most recently the term persistent organic pollutant (POP) has come to describe a group of chemicals such as PBDEs and PFCs among others. Though their effects remain somewhat less well understood owing to"
"1979 publication, ""The Book of Heroic Failures"". In December 1976, ""Argo Merchant"" loaded with of No. 6 fuel oil at Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, sailing for Boston under Captain Georgios Papadopoulos. It was later established that the ship carried two unqualified crew as helmsmen, a broken gyrocompass, inadequate charts, and an inaccurate radio direction finder. At 6 p.m. on 15 December in high winds and seas, the tanker ran aground on Middle Rip Shoal about southeast of Nantucket and more than off her intended course. The thirty-eight members of the crew were evacuated, but the shallow waters and weather conditions"
"MV Braer The MV ""Braer"" was an oil tanker which ran aground during a storm off Shetland, Scotland, in January 1993, and nearly a week later broke up during the most intense extratropical cyclone on record for the northern Atlantic Ocean, the Braer Storm of January 1993. During the enquiry after the ship's loss, it was stated that the ship lost power due to seawater contamination of the ship's heavy fuel oil on 3 January. This occurred after a pipeline on the deck broke loose, allowing seawater to enter the vessel's bunker tanks via broken air vents. The loss of"
"Finally, on 3 August, the ""Empress"" sank, having spilled 287,000 metric tonnes of crude oil into the Caribbean Sea. By comparison, in the ""Exxon Valdez"" spill ten years later only 37,000 metric tonnes of oil was released. SS Atlantic Empress SS ""Atlantic Empress"" was a Greek oil tanker that in 1979 collided with the oil tanker ""Aegean Captain"" in the Caribbean, and eventually sank, having created the fifth largest oil spill on record and the largest ship-based spill. The ""Atlantic Empress"" was a large crude oil carrier built at the ""Odense Staalskibsværft"" shipyard in Odense, Denmark, and launched on 16"
"MV Algonorth The Algonorth is a seawaymax lake freighter built in 1970 by the Govan Division of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Ltd. in Govan, Scotland. Her original owners were Lambert Bros. Shipping Ltd., of London, England, where she was known as the ""Temple Bar"". In 1976 her new owners, Nipigon Transport Ltd., had her hull lengthened and installed a new power plant for Great Lakes service. The ""Algonorth"" crashed into a dock in Toledo Ohio on December 15, 2007, spilling over 3,500 barrels of diesel fuel. Nearby vessel the ""Amelia Desgagnes"" was wrenched from her moorings following the collision. The spill"