Real Life Incident: Progressive Flooding Sinks Tanker

A fully loaded tanker left port despite a bad weather forecast for the following days. As a precaution, the Master chose a route relatively close to the coast in the event of an emergency.

Some 11 hours after departure, the bilge alarm sounded in the bow thruster room. The OOW considered it to be a malfunction and silenced the alarm. The next morning the bilge alarm in the bow thruster room sounded again. The bilge pump was started for that space, and the alarm soon ceased.

The weather remained relatively fair during the first day of the voyage. By the afternoon of the second day, a strong northeasterly wind was blowing, with waves increasing from four to six metres. In the afternoon of the same day, a 440V low insulation warning alarm was detected in the windlass motor room.

Given the alarms, the Master wanted to check the extent of the problems forward. He altered the tanker’s course to reduce wave impacts at the bow. Crewmembers, including the chief engineer, then went forward and found that there was about one metre of water inside the windlass motor room. The windlass motor room was emptied of seawater using the general service pump and portable air pumps, but the operation was hampered b…

CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM MarineInsight HERE