Torrey Canyon

Career
Name:	Torrey Canyon
Owner:	Barracuda Tanker Corporation
Operator:	British Petroleum
Port of registry:	Liberia
Route:	Milford Haven Waterway
Laid down:	1959
Out of service:	18 March 1967
Fate:	sank
General characteristics
Class and type:	supertanker
Length:	974.4 feet (297.0 m)
Beam:	125.4 feet (38.2 m)
Draught:	68.7 feet (20.9 m)
Capacity:	120,000 tons

The Torrey Canyon was a supertanker capable of carrying a cargo of 120,000 tons of crude oil, which was shipwrecked off the western coast of Cornwall, England in March 1967 causing an environmental disaster.

The ship

When laid down in the United States in 1959, it had a capacity of 60,000 tons but the ship was enlarged in Japan to 120,000 tons capacity. At the time of the accident it was registered in Liberia and owned by Barracuda Tanker Corporation, a subsidiary of Union Oil Company of California but chartered to British Petroleum. It was 974.4 feet (297.0 m) long, 125.4 feet (38.2 m) beam and 68.7 feet (20.9 m) draught.

The ship left the Kuwait National Petroleum Company refinery at Mina al-Ahmadi on its final voyage on 19 February 1967 with full cargo of crude oil, reaching the Canary Islands by 14 March. From there the planned route was to Milford Haven.

Accident

On 18 March 1967, owing to a navigational error, the Torrey Canyon struck Pollard's Rock on Seven Stones reef between the Cornish mainland and the Scilly Isles. An inquiry in Liberia, where the ship was registered, found Shipmaster Pastrengo Rugiati was to blame, because he took a shortcut to save time in getting to Milford Haven.

This was the first major oil spill; a fairly adequate outline of how to deal with a coastal oil spill had been issued to local authorities some years previously, but had apparently been forgotten, so it was widely reported that no plans had been prepared beforehand to deal with it. The tanker had to be ready to deliver its cargo to anywhere in the world, and so only had small-scale charts; she used LORAN, but not the more accurate Decca Navigator. When the risk of collision with a fishing fleet became obvious, there was some confusion between the Master and the helmsman (who was actually the cook and had little experience) as to whether she was in manual or automatic steering mode; by the time this was resolved, it was too late. Unsuccessful attempts were made to float the ship off the reef, and one member of the Dutch salvage team, Captain Stal, was killed.

Detergent was used by Royal Navy vessels in an attempt to disperse the oil. However, the ship had started to break up and UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his cabinet held a mini cabinet meeting at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose and decided to set fire to the remaining oil to avoid the oil disaster getting worse. On 28 March 1967, the Fleet Air Arm sent Blackburn Buccaneer planes from Lossiemouth to drop forty-two 1,000 lb bombs on the ship. Then, the Royal Air Force sent Hawker Hunter jets to drop cans of aviation fuel to make the oil blaze. However, exceptionally high tides put the fire out and it took further attacks by Sea Vixens from the Naval Air Station at Yeovilton and Buccaneers from the Naval Air Station at Brawdy, as well as more RAF Hunters with napalm to ignite the oil. Attempts to use foam booms to contain the oil were of limited success due to their fragility in high seas.

The wreck now lies a depth of 30 m at 50°2.50′N 6°7.73′W.

Some of the oil from the ship was dumped in a quarry on the Chouet headland and is still there today.

Impact

Some 50 miles (80 km) of French and 120 miles (190 km) of Cornish coast were contaminated. Around 15,000 sea birds were killed, along with huge numbers of marine organisms, including all fish within a 75 mile radius^{[citation needed]}, before the 270 square miles (700 km²) slick dispersed. Much damage was caused by the heavy use of so-called detergents to break up the slick - these were first-generation variants of products originally formulated to clean surfaces in ships' engine-rooms, with no concern over the toxicity of their components, and many observers believed that they were officially referred to as 'detergents', rather than the more accurate 'solvent-emulsifiers', to encourage comparison with much more benign domestic cleaning products. Some 42 vessels sprayed over 10,000 tons of these dispersants onto the floating oil and they were also deployed against oil stranded on beaches. In Cornwall, they were often misused - for example, by emptying entire 45-gallon drums over the clifftop to 'treat' inaccessible coves or by pouring a steady stream from a low-hovering helicopter. On the heavily-oiled beach at Sennen Cove, dispersant pouring from drums was 'ploughed' into the sand by bulldozers over a period of several days, burying the oil so effectively that it could still be found a year or more later. It is probable that the general resistance to the proper use of later-generation, much-improved oil-spill dispersants arose as a result of this operation.

The UK government was strongly criticised for its handling of the incident, which was at that time the costliest shipping disaster ever. The RAF and the Royal Navy also came in for ridicule, as 25% of the 42 bombs dropped missed the stationary target.

Claims were made by the British and French governments against the owners of the vessel and the subsequent settlement was the largest ever in marine history for an oil claim. The British government was only able to serve its writ against the owners by arresting the Torrey Canyon's sister ship, the Lake Palourde, when she put in for provisions at Singapore, four months after the oil spill. A young British lawyer, Anthony O'Connor, from a Singaporean law firm, Drew & Napier, was deputised to arrest the ship on behalf of the British government by attaching a writ to its mast. O'Connor was able to board the ship and serve the writ as the ship's crew thought he was a whisky salesman. The French government, alerted to the Lake Palourde's presence, pursued the ship with motor boats but were unable to board and serve their writ.

The disaster led to many changes in international regulations, for example the Civil Liability Convention (CLC) of 1969, which imposed strict liability on ship owners without the need to prove negligence, and the 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.

Cultural references

The Torrey Canyon disaster was the subject of a satirical song by Serge Gainsbourg on the album Comic Strip.

See also

• Humphry Bowen
• Oil Spill

References

• Marine Biological Association U.K. (1968). J.E. Smith. ed. Torrey Canyon pollution and marine life. Cambridge University Press. 
• R. Petrow (1968). In the wake of the Torrey Canyon. New York: David McKay Publications. 
• E. Cowan (1968). Oil and water - the Torrey Canyon disaster. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 
• Senate Congressional Record, 1969-11-12

External links

• The Torrey Canyon disaster
• Torrey Canyon 'lessons learned' BBC News 2007-03-19
• The Breaking-up of the oil tanker TORREY CANYON
• BBC On this Day. 1967: Bombs rain down on Torrey Canyon