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17th July 2021, 07:16 AM
#1
"Shiver me Timbers ! "- Ghost Ships of Modern Times.
In a recent thread about Manchester Liners I commented about the fate of one of them after she had been sold on for further service:
ss MANCHESTER MERCHANT 7,542 GRT Built 1951 at Blythswood,Clyde for Manchester Liners. Sold 1967 to Liberian company,renamed CLIO.
Here's her eventual fate ;
[The Liberian steamship Clio was on voyage from Chittagong and Indonesia to the Continent with a cargo of jute and cattle cake when fire broke out in No.3 Hold on Feb.13th 1972 about 700 miles off the coast of Angola in Lat.10-18S,Long.01-45W.When the fire rapidly spread throughout the vessel the crew abandoned ship,Five men were lost but 28 other persons including the Master's wife and son were rescued by the French motor tanker Ventose.The burning derelict continued to drift being last sighted on Feb.21st in Lat.05-21S,Long.05-07W.Three days later an oil slick 15 miles long was seen but there was no trace of the Clio,which was presumed to have sunk.]-Extract from Lloyds List.]
I’ve always been interested in these derelicts, often romantically called ‘ghost ships’ in popular literature,although as a seaman I prefer to call them ‘unfortunates’ !
In yet another post I commented on the thick fog sometimes encountered ,often for a couple of days at a time in the South Atlantic when bound from Europe to South Africa,and how we were so reliant on radar assistance to help us stay away from other conflicting traffic situations. .At the back of your mind was the thought that you wouldn’t encounter one of these ‘derelicts’,and in the days when we just about carried Radio Officers,that ‘Sparks’ had been diligent in receiving all relevant navigational warnings for your area.Even then,if you had been warned that such a vessel had sunk you couldn’t really be sure,could you?..
Looking at the Clio saga above I engaged my rusty brain and worked out that :-
Clio had drifted on a Northwesterly course,approx. NW X N (326 deg True ) for a distance of 357 nautical miles,that is a drift rate over 8 days of 44 miles per day,until her last known sighting,and the oil slick was seen .
Then looking at a current atlas it is obvious that as she was about 700 miles west of the Angolan coast she was carried first by the Benguela current then by the South Equatorial Current to her presumed ‘final’ sighting position.Possibly after that,if she hadn't sunk she might have been carried westwards towards South America…
Anyway,it prompted me to look up known passages of derelicts.
I enjoyed this article,particularly the story of the ‘Rat Ship’-the Russian cruise ship Lyubov Orlova.
LINK
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