The Hindu : Tragedies above and below the surface

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 09, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Tragedies above and below the surface

By Stan Cox

Hours after the U.S. space shuttle, Columbia, went down, the investigation into the cause of the tragedy began. But in more than a year since the Christopher went down, nobody has investigated the accident seriously.

The Christopher? No, your memory is not failing. When the 1,65,000-tonne ship sank in a North Atlantic storm during the night of December 22-23, 2001, it made barely a ripple in the press. I learned about the tragedy only because Deepak Gulati, an Indian and the ship's captain, was my brother-in-law. The Christopher was a bulk carrier, similar to an oil tanker, but designed to carry solid cargo. It was owned by a Greek company and registered in Cyprus. Like the Columbia, the Christopher had a diverse crew. Deepak's 26 crew members were from the Philippines, Ukraine, and Togo. All 27 on board were lost.

The Christopher was not considered for "breaking news," because bulk-carrier tragedies are too routine to be visible to the media. Over the past two decades, these massive ships have been sinking at the rate of one every month, with over 1,600 lives lost.

While investigators continue to scour America's southwest for clues to the cause of the Columbia crash, bulk carriers litter the ocean floors of the world, undisturbed. But without even inspecting those rusting, toxic hulks, it is possible to address the causes of the sinkings. All that is lacking is the political will.

Built in 1983, the Christopher was, by 2001, a disaster waiting to happen. It was being pushed well beyond its safe lifespan, and was probably overloaded with a cargo of coal, bound for Britain. It had no forecastle for protection against the huge waves that struck the bow that night. One or more of its old, weakened hatch covers broke and allowed water to enter the hold, where it formed a coal slurry that broke down the bulkheads.

The 1980 loss of the bulk carrier, Derbyshire, with its crew of 44, all British, is the only such accident so far to have been thoroughly investigated. That study showed clearly that simple remedies — age and load limits, strengthening of hatch covers, and addition of raised forecastles and pumping systems - could halt the epidemic of sinkings.

But such improvement would mean reduced profits for the shipping companies that own old wrecks such as the Christopher, and no one is forcing them to make the needed changes. Unlike the Derbyshire, the hundreds of bulk carriers now lying under the sea, some still with their crews, have no visible constituency.

Like the Christopher, they flew flags of convenience, their crews came from countries that many in the West would be hard pressed to find on a map, and they carried coal, grain, or other not-so-glamorous cargo that, unlike oil, stays inside the sunken ship and out of sight.

The International Maritime Union, an agency of the United Nations, oversees safety on the high seas. The IMO has no enforcement power, so its regulations are enforced by the nations under whose flags the ships fly, through so-called "classification societies."

The less scrupulous ship-owners are free to shop around for the more lenient societies. It is their ships that go down, time after time.

We grieve for Kalpana Chawla and the other shuttle astronauts aboard Columbia, and expect the defects that caused their deaths to be corrected. We should do the same for the ship's crews of all nationalities who haul the food and fuel that sustain entire economies.

(The writer works for the Land Institute, Kansas, U.S.A.)

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