ROV Inspection Confirms Wreck Site of Lost Turkish Freighter
Turkey's navy has found the wreck of th Tugberk Imamoglu, a coastal freighter that sank last week after a collision with a product tanker in the Sea of Marmara. 10 crewmembers of the lost cargo ship remain missing, and surface search efforts are ongoing; now that the hull has been found on the bottom, some 900 meters below the surface, additional efforts could be put into recovering the ship's VDR or searching the wreck site for remains.
At about 0300 hours on the morning of September 2, the Tugberk Imamoglu was operating about 18 miles to the souh of Silivri, a town west of Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara. The tanker Alsu was under way nearby; early reports in Turkish media suggest that a new third mate was on watch on the tanker's bridge while the captain slept. It appears that there was no lookout on duty aboard Alsu, leaving the third mate to make all assessments on his own.
In the minutes leading up to the casualty, the two vessels' watchstanders appear to have been aware of each other and made passing arrangements over VHF. Due to circumstances that remain under investigation, they collided at 0315 hours. The freighter, laden with a cargo of rolled steel, capsized quickly. Alsu was undamaged.
Prosecutors in Silviri swiftly moved to charge the Alsu's master and the third officer with negligent homicide and failure to fulfill navigational safety obligations. Four other crewmembers were arrested and allowed to depart on conditional release.
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While prosecutors and investigators go to work on analyzing the root causes of the casualty, the search for the missing continues. No fewer than 18 vessels are assigned to the search, according to the Sivliri regional government. The discovery of the wreck site is a significant step: an ROV deployed by salvage tug TCG Akin has confirmed its identity, said the Turkish defense ministry in a statement.
Istanbul Gov. Davut Gul visited the search team over the weekend. "This is not just a great pain for our families, but for our entire nation as well. "The families' expectation moving forward are: Are the crew members inside? How will they be extracted? Our relevant institutions will continue their work," Gul said in a statement.
