Bow Mariner

[LKunze]

Attached are a couple links to the Bow Mariner oil tanker wreck that sunk off the east coast this past February. Some tech-divers have already dove it and took some pictures. I've posted the picture link and a news story link of the dives below.




By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 24, 2004 | Last updated 11:11 AM Apr. 24

Survivors of the tanker Bow Mariner still are not talking publicly about the disaster, but a team of recreational divers who visited the wreck last weekend have brought back a telling video of the sunken ship.
“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” said Capt. J.T. Barker, a veteran diver from Portsmouth who has visited scores of wrecks and recovered a body from the wreck of the Andrea Doria. “It is just total destruction of everything on the main deck until you get to the bow, which is fine.”
The divers, who reached the wreck in 200 feet of water 50 miles off Virginia’s Eastern Shore, took video that shows a fire hose draped over life lines on one side of the bridge. In a nearby area, just outside a passageway leading to the bridge, the door to another fire hose compartment was opened.
Scorched white paint fills the face of the seven-story superstructure where the crew’s quarters and office spaces were. Surprisingly, only one window is broken.
“I believe someone was fighting the fire on this bridge wing,” Barker, who led a team of eight to the site last Saturday, said as he reviewed film footage he and fellow diver Tom Sawicki produced.
“The hose is deployed, and the fire station box is open,” he said. “If there was a second explosion, he could have been blown off the ship.”
Only six of the 27 crewmen on the 570-foot Bow Mariner survived the Feb. 28 accident. Three bodies have been recovered; 18 remain missing.
Little is known publicly about what may have caused the explosion, which took place in calm seas while the ship was steaming from New York to Houston. It was carrying about 3.2 million gallons of industrial grade ethanol, used as a solvent in the cosmetic industry. It also had 48,000 gallons of stored diesel fuel and 193,000 gallons of fuel oil.
Four of the six survivors have refused to talk to Coast Guard investigators and began answering questions earlier this month from a federal grand jury only after they were granted immunity from prosecution. However, their testimony is secret; even the Coast Guard is barred from knowing what they have said.
Jerry Crooks, chief Coast Guard investigator for the Bow Mariner case, said it likely will be months before he is ready to issue a report on the accident, the worst in the mid-Atlantic since February 1983, when the collier Marine Electric sank in a storm just 20 miles from the site of the Bow Mariner sinking, killing 31 of its 34-member crew.
Barker, who charters boats for Lynnhaven Dive Center, made the 210-mile round trip to the site, bringing back the first underwater photos of the Bow Mariner’s condition. Although images from a side-scanning sonar, released earlier by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, showed a broad outline of the ship’s damage, nothing seen so far is as detailed as Barker’s and Sawicki’s photos.
The Singapore-flagged chemical tanker was built in 1982 and is managed by a Greek company, Ceres Hellenic Shipping Enterprises Ltd. Its owners, Odfjell USA, headquartered in Houston, hired marine salvage experts who used a remotely operated underwater vehicle to film the site. They have declined to release any photos.
Barker said in one area, a large piece of bulkhead on one of the 28 cargo tanks apparently was blown upward like a manhole cover and came to rest back on the deck.
In another area, a series of pipes, usually parallel to the deck, were bent skyward by a blast. Both sides of the ship are missing large chunks of hull plating. Catwalks are nothing but twisted, mangled rails.
“There’s absolutely no side plates on the port side – it’s just blown away,” Barker said. Drops of black oil cling to the ship’s surfaces.
William J. Ripley, a Norfolk architect who also was on the dive, visited the stern of the ship, where a deck-mounted wrench was pulled from its mounts and now hangs by a metal plate, perpendicular to the deck.
“The stern looks like a freight train hit it,” Ripley said. “It was buckled in on the port side just as if you had folded a piece of paper. Apparently there was an explosion in the engine room back there.”
The divers, who also included Greg Klefeker, Suzanne Johnson and Jeff Hewlett, said they were struck by the clarity of the ship in such deep water.
“It was so eerie,” Ripley said. “You go down and all of a sudden this pristine, white bridge and superstructure comes up to you. She is sitting straight and level and looks like she is just going down the river.”
The dive team, which was supported by co-captain Mark Fowler and mate Ed Woodard, both of whom remained on the surface, called the dive dangerous and said it only should be attempted by experienced divers.
The top of the Bow Mariner’s superstructure is 120 feet from the surface, with an 80-foot drop to the main deck, meaning the divers were exploring down to about 200 feet, considered extreme for scuba divers.
The bottom of the ship rests on a mud and sand bottom 258 feet below the surface, the divers said. Barker said there were strong currents and a water temperature of 37 degrees on the bottom.
The team was underwater for 80 minutes, spending just 25 exploring the wreck and the rest decompressing. They plan to return.
While the owners were not happy with the divers’ visit, there is little that can be done to stop them. The ship is in international waters.
It has not been abandoned by the owners, and all property aboard remains protected.

Reach Jack Dorsey at 446-2284 or jack.dorsey@pilotonline.com

[igotoofar]

That was an interesting article. When the crew refueses to testify unless they are given imunity, it makes you wonder what the story is.

[Mark Y]

Sounds like a fun dive (except for 18 potential bodies to come across :'().

The divers most likely used mixed gases other than just air, although they could have - they would have been narced big time. Did a few quick, down and dirty V-Planner scenarios (although time & gas used could vary a lot, dependant on a diver's SAC): using EAN 21 ('regular air' - thus a high PO2) for most of the dive and starting EAN 75 @ 30 ft. for deco, the dive runs approx. 90 minutes, using approx. 190 c.f. air & 33 c.f. deco. I'm sure they didn't run this profile . . .

Sounds like an Inspiration CCR dive to me! Anyone interested ;D