MSC Napoli: A Year Later

On January 18, a year after the 62,000-ton MSC Napoli first ran into trouble, the United Kingdom's (UK's) Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) announced that the first phase of the removal of the stern has been completed. According to a January 19 MCA press statement, "All the accommodation block has been cut away and the scrap has been removed for disposal. The bow section was towed to a yard in Northern Ireland last year. All the salvage vessels and plant equipment that were on site have now returned to Rotterdam. All that remains is the cut down stern section with a 30 degree list to starboard. The owners representatives and insurers are currently in discussions to decide the timetable and method for removing the final section in phase 2 which is expected to commence sometime in April."

On January 18, 2007, en route to Portugal from Belgium, the UK-flagged Napoli was damaged by the European windstorm Kyrill. The large waves and gale-force winds cracked the vessel's side and flooded its engine room. Shortly thereafter, the crew sent out a distress call, abandoned ship into a liferaft, and was subsequently rescued by UK Royal Navy helicopters. The stricken ship was then to be towed about 140 miles to Portland Harbour, Dorset, but as the vessel's list increased and its overall condition declined, it was determined that the ship could not handle the journey. The Secretary of State's Representative, Robin Middleton, made the decision to deliberately beach the vessel in Lime Bay, at Branscombe, 1 mile from the coast of Devon, on January 20, 2007.

During the nearly 6-month-long salvage operation, many different tasks had to be taken care of in order to refloat the Napoli. Firstly, more than 2,000 containers and 4,000 tons of fuel were removed from the ship. Secondly, steel scrap, containers, and other waste materials that washed up onshore were collected. Additionally, around 1,900 seabirds that were harmed by the 200 tons of oil that leaked from the Napoli soon after its grounding had to be taken care of. Finally, on July 9, 58,000 tons of water were pumped from the ships holds and, with the help of a big foot barges winches and cranes and a leading tug, the ship was refloated, with anti-pollution/support vessels keeping a close eye on her.

However, after a MCA dive survey revealed that the ship was too damaged to be towed, it was decided by Robin Middleton to rebeach the Napoli near the original grounding site, which occurred on high tide in the late afternoon on July 12. The MCA then used three rounds of cutting charges over a series of days (July 18, 19, and 20) to break the vessel in two. The explosions took place on the ship in order to weaken the deck above the hulls crack so that tugs could pull the ship apart. After the hull was separated, it took the MCA nearly three weeks to carry out its plan to have the bow towed away for recycling.

Since then, the stern had stayed where it was left with hardly a mention of it by any official until the late October situation update from the Devon County Council. In this update, Fred Caygill of the MCA described the two-part stern removal process in detail: "The first stage will involve equipment arriving, probably starting next week, to cut the accommodation block off and that will then be taken to an approved recycling site. The first stage will take about 60 days and will probably be finished by January. The remaining part of the ship will stay until March when, once again large plant equipment will be used to cut the stern up. It will probably be about a 12 day operation that will see the remains of the Napoli gone in March time. Then a full sonar scan of the site will be carried out. Divers and the usual contractors will do a sweep of the seabed to remove any remaining bits and bobs."

However, the original two-phase process may now be amended, according to Hugh Shaw, the Secretary of States Representative for Maritime Salvage and Intervention: "We have reached a milestone in the removal of the final piece of the wreck of the MSC Napoli. The original plan was for a 2 phase operation to remove the stern section. Because the stern section is listing after a spell of bad weather, the plan for phase 2 may have to be revised, and this is the subject of further negotiations and discussions at the moment."

Find the latest information on the MSC Napoli at http://www.devon.gov.uk/msc-Napoli-update.