Post card from india: Death rites

[Doc Vernon]

Attachment 24046

They come down from the nearby hillsto demolish ships -- and earn $1-2 a day. Alang in India is the busiestscrap yard for ships, old and these days some not so old, anywhere. China, Pakistan & Turkey also have a piece of this business.

But India is crammed -- over 400ships just last year. Small teams of Indian scrap merchants, often insuits & ties and wearing gold watches & toting leather cases, travel all over the world and negotiate the purchase of unwanted ships. And these days, with vast changes in international shipping, ships of ten andfifteen years are being decommissioned and then broken-up.

Pricing: A medium-sized cruiseship might go for $5 million, but then the scrap metal/recycling marketfluctuates.

The ships are deliberately run ontothe beaches, secured and then invaded by armies of torch and ax and hammerwielding workers. These days, a good-sized, say 50,000-ton container shipcan be gone in three months.

[dave moore]

Can anyone enlighten me ,there was a few years ago a firm a Greatham near Hartlepool that had some American ships to scrap I believe there was some problem about the dismanteling of them ,health and safety or sommut that stopped them .its just come to my mind I think lt was At Greythorpe,anyone help

[Lewis McColl]

Were these part of the American ghost fleet, had been laid up for years and some were towed across the Atlantic.
I think the problem was that the age of these ships a lot of them had tons of asbestos in them and therein lay the problem.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Have a look on you-tube for 'Super tanker Front Driver at Gadani beach' quite interesting for those who have not been

[Ralph Knowles]

Ref. post #11 on this string, the American ships broken up south of Hartlepool at ABLE breakers, one of the ships was USS Simon Lake, which for a few years was the service ship for the US Navy polaris missile submarines based in the Holy Loch in the West of Scotland. Its pollution still contaminates the seabed of the loch.

[j.sabourn]

#14... we worked in conjunction with the UK sub base of Faslane. One time about 1979 were testing a stingray torpedo in the southern reaches of Loch Fyne . In the process of this exercise the stingray which was still on the secret list was lost on the seabed , also the target an old WW 2 submarine was also lost on the seabed. The torpedo was obviously the primary recovery target of importance and although knew the exact location was too deeply imbedded in the mud for us to recover. We hung around until the pinger on it expired and then departed. A day later a Russian submarine was reported as being in the The Clude estuary, true or false will never know , or if the torpedo was ever recovered. There are things which the people will never hear about and in a lot of cases is best they don’t. I have a high regard for our armed forces as having worked alongside of them for 4 years and they get a lot of undeserved stick. JS...

[happy daze john in oz]

There was a time when the life of a ship was estimated at some 30 years, but no longer with many particularly bulk carriers which do get a lot of work.


Most modern day cruise ships appear to have an extended life, there are many out there over 20 years old and undergo regular refits to keep them up to date.
$20 million is not an uncommon amount for such.

[Tony Taylor]

Were these part of the American ghost fleet, had been laid up for years and some were towed across the Atlantic.
I think the problem was that the age of these ships a lot of them had tons of asbestos in them and therein lay the problem.

That is correct Lewis, there was a lot of reaction to these ships even coming here from the usual sources (Tree Huggers United etc.) the move was halted for quite some time until the furore died down and Able demonstrated they could do the job safely. Prior to this Able had dismantled other old assets without issue but I suppose the ships were more high profile and had more publicity; I think there are many who just jump on any bandwagon that happens to be passing. I have spent the last 30 years involved with anti corrosion protection of oil / gas / petrochems for various companies. Back in 90s I was visiting Tioxide at Grimsby where we found Greenpeace demonstrating outside the gate. Their issue was the plume which came out of a very large stack. I was with my MD at the time who was a very highly qualified chemical engineer (advisor to DoE). He was laughing at them because it was only steam but directly over the road was a small fish meal processing plant with a small vent which was discharging a highly dangerous fume, but because it smelled strongly of fish it was accepted as natural. Ignorance is bliss - might be appropriate in this case.

[Chris Allman]

There was a time when the life of a ship was estimated at some 30 years, but no longer with many particularly bulk carriers which do get a lot of work.


Most modern day cruise ships appear to have an extended life, there are many out there over 20 years old and undergo regular refits to keep them up to date.
$20 million is not an uncommon amount for such.

I think this one is a near record John,

Astoria - IMO 5383304 - Cruise Ship - built 1946 by Gotaverken, Gothenburg, Sweden for Swedish America Line - launched as Stockholm - ( as Stockholm, she was in collision with Andrea Doria which sank, there was a loss of 5 members of her crew and 46 people off the Andrea Doria ) 1960 renamed Volkerfreundschaft - 1985 renamed Volker - 1986 renamed Fridtjof Nansen - 1993 renamed Italia I - 1994 renamed Italia Prima - 1998 renamed Valtur Prima - 2002 renamed Caribe - 2005 renamed Athena 2013 rebuilt and renamed Azores - 2016 renamed Astoria - 12,165 GT - 160m - Beam 21m - Draught 7.9m - 17 knots - 556 passengers.

and still going strong at 72 years of age.

[Ken Norton]

What a lovely little ship she is, did a cruise on her to the Norwegian fiords a couple of years back, nice size and number of passengers, accomodation very nice felt at home.

[happy daze john in oz]

Thanks for that Chris, saw a photo of her some time back but never knew her age.
Some ships better built back then maybe and well cared for will as shown last.