It is an oft-repeated bromide that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the sea. There is some truth in this – in fact, an article at Wired.com states that we know more about Mars than about our own planet’s ocean floor. This deficiency in knowledge was thrown under the spotlight by the loss at sea of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in March 2014.
In order to search for the flight in the Indian Ocean, depth survey tracks done in the 1960s (before GPS existed) are being combined with satellite sea floor maps, which are based on measurements of the height of the ocean’s surface from space. The resolution of the satellite data is low – about 20 kilometres, so it was further combined with ship tracks and other publicly available information.
Yesterday, 21 November 2014, marked 100 years since the SS Clan Stuart, a British turret steamer of 3 594 tons, ran aground in a south easterly gale off Glencairn at two o’clock in the morning. She was on her way from St Helena island with a cargo of coal, and dragged her anchor in the gale. Fittingly, the anniversary of her foundering was also marked by a strong south easterly wind!
The entire crew was rescued, but returned to the ship during efforts to refloat her. She was pumped out and pulled off the rocks by a tug from Table Bay, but permission for her to enter the dry dock at Simon’s Town was refused for fear that she sink and block the entrance to the harbour. Her captain was thus compelled to run her aground at Mackerel Bay, where she now lies, in order to prevent her from sinking.
The Clan Stuart today
She is now a well known landmark to drivers on their way along the coastal road between Simon’s Town and Glencairn, as well as being a popular shore dive site. We’ve had some great dives there, and here’s a round up of some of the material we’ve published about the wreck since starting this blog:
The wreck is quite heavily encrusted and there’s usually a lot to see. We’ve seen cuttlefish, small schools of two tone fingerfin, and for some reason I always see a wide variety of worms there! There is kelp growing on and around the wreck, but not so much that it’s hard to move around. On the beach we sometimes see African oystercatchers with their striking red legs and bills, and black bodies. Cormorants and gulls often perch on top of the engine block, too, giving them a convenient platform from which to go fishing.
On our first night dive together (Tony’s first in Cape Town, and my first night dive ever) Tony took a video (grainy) of some seals that joned us on the dive – you can find it in our post about Cape fur seals.
We also spotted a onefin electric ray on a dive on the wreck, whose electric personality seemed to interfere interestingly with Tony’s video camera.
On one memorable dive on the Clan Stuart (I think it was on 1 January one year, in the height of summer), we were surrounded by an agitated school of large white steenbras, who seemed to be trying to take cover behind us and on the wreck, repeatedly changing direction and swirling around us. Tony and I concluded independently that something large and toothy was chasing them, and exited the water by practically tunneling our way to the beach, trying to appear relaxed for the sake of the students accompanying us.
A few years later a group of Russian divers accompanied by two locals – diving off the boat this time – actually came face to face with a great white shark on the Clan Stuart – here is Tony’s story, Christo’s story, Craig’s story, and a short video of the shark taken by one of the Russian visitors. Undaunted by their experience they ended the dive on the beach, where I picked them up, drove them back to the jetty to get back on the boat, and they set out for another dive!
Diving the Clan Stuart
The best time to dive the wreck, in light of the above information and the typical movements of sharks in False Bay’s waters, is in winter. The visibility is likely to be better then, though it’s rarely exceptional (I would be ecstatic with 10 metres, and expect closer to six in the winter months). In summer you can expect 2-5 metre visibility. Don’t underestimate the waves on the beach, and keep your regulator in your mouth until you’re through. Save the chit chat for when you’re back on dry land!
Find out more
A team of film makers has been working on a project about the Clan Stuart for some time. Here’s some of their work so far:
Sloane is a local boytjie who lives in Somerset West when not abroad doing salvage work. He agreed to talk to Langewiesche for this article on condition that they did not discuss the Costa Concordia(I imagine he was utterly exhausted and sick of that subject). Many of the salvage jobs that Sloane has worked on are off the Cape coast – notable examples dealt with in this article are the wreck of the MV Treasure (now a dive site) in Table Bay, and the Ikan Tandawhich ran aground off Scarborough in 2001.
… one of the greatest seafarers at work today is neither a naval commander nor an old-salt merchant mariner but a certain marine salvage master with a taste for chaos and a genius for improvisation. He is a burly South African, aged 53, by the name of Captain Nick Sloane. His job is to intervene where other captains have failed, and to make the best of ships that are sinking, burning, breaking apart, or severely aground. Usually those same ships are threatening to leak bunker fuel—the sludge that powers them—along with crude oil or other toxins in quantities that could poison the environment for years to come. Sloane boards the ships with small teams—by helicopter from overhead, or by Zodiac from oceangoing tugs—and once he arrives he stays aboard and fights, sometimes for weeks at a stretch.
Do not be put off by the fact that the article doesn’t deal with the Costa Concordia salvage at all – I imagine we’ll see a book about that in a couple of years’ time.
Read the full article here. It’s a fascinating read.
At the start ofAll is Lost a solo sailor far from land in the Indian Ocean gives a brief farewell message – maybe writing a letter – to unseen recipients that we assume must be his family. We then flash back eight days, to when he strikes a semi-submerged shipping container with his yacht. The rest of the film deals with his attempts to save his sailboat, and then ultimately simply to save himself. There are a couple of lines of dialogue, but no other people appear in the film and the sailor, played by Robert Redford, is alone for the duration of the movie.
Some people will find the spare nature of the production infuriating or boring – be warned. In other ocean films that we’ve watched, and even in the Deadliest Catch series, the ocean itself appears almost as an auxiliary character, full of sound and texture and power. In All is Lost, there are long periods during which Redford’s craft is becalmed, with a featureless ocean and distant, cloudless horizon almost fading into obscurity. During the storms the camera remains closely focused on him, not giving the waves and wind an opportunity to dominate the screen.
An interview with the director reveals how he relished the opportunity to cast Redford in a role in which he could not much use his voice – which is widely recognised and commands attention. His performance is gripping and disturbing. At no point could we guess how the unnamed yachtsman’s ordeal would end. The build up of tension was almost unbearable. I dreamed restlessly about sailing after watching the film.
There are interesting reviews at the New York Times and The Guardian. Tony, who has a bit of a sailing past, critiqued some of the decisions made by Redford’s solo sailor as being rookie errors (such as trying to put the storm sail up in the middle of a storm). Other sailors agreed with the points Tony made – Vanity Fair has an article here (but it’s likely to spoil the movie for you).
You can get the DVD here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here.
Shipping pallets under milk at my local Woolworths
Here is something wildly esoteric, but beautifully written. Jacob Hodes researches the heck out of the pallet industry in the United States. Along with The Box, The Docks, and Deep Sea and Foreign Going, this fills in another part of the global shipping puzzle.
Does this grab you?
There are approximately two billion wooden shipping pallets in the United States. They are in the holds of tractor-trailers, transporting Honey Nut Cheerios and oysters and penicillin and just about any other product you can think of: sweaters, copper wire, lab mice, and so on. They are piled up behind supermarkets, out back, near the loading dock. They are at construction sites, on sidewalks, in the trash, in your neighbor’s basement. They are stacked in warehouses and coursing their way through the bowels of factories.
Legendary American treasure hunter Mel Fisher searched for the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atochafor more than sixteen years. The Spanish galleon sank off the Florida Keys in 1622, loaded with precious metals, jewels, tobacco and other cargo. She and another ship from the Spanish fleet (the Santa Margarita), were driven by a hurricane onto a reef near a group of islands called the Dry Tortugas.
This is a fascinating account of a protracted treasure hunt for Atocha by a very determined man. Fisher had the requisite permits to search for and salvage the wreck (imagine that!) but was involved in numerous lawsuits for the duration of his search, and his financial state was insecure. He was constantly on the brink of bankruptcy. He had to continually raise money from investors and devise fund raising schemes in order to maintain the search. The search for Atocha was also marked by tragedy: during the years he spent looking for the wreck, a storm capsized one of his boats, killing his son and daughter in law, and one of his divers.
The Florida Keys are a beguiling part of the world. Shallow, crystal clear blue water, white sands and several centuries of shipwrecks – many carrying treasure like Atocha – make this a paradise for treasure hunters and recreational divers alike. While the search for Atocha involved years of diving effort – thousands of underwater hours by many individuals – the key to finding the wreck was arguably provided by Dr Eugene Lyon. Lyon spent hours in the archives in Seville, Spain, searching for information to pinpoint the location of the wreck. The Spanish had found the wreck shortly after her sinking (the masts protruded from the water, which was less than 20 metres deep) and spent several years retrieving treasure from the wreck, so there were descriptions of her location (all tantalisingly vague).
Fisher’s family are still cashing in on his legacy, and working the wreck. The part of the wreck with the most valuable cargo – the stern castle – has not yet been located.
You can get a copy of the book here or here. There are many other books covering this topic – I don’t know how this one stacks up against the rest of them, so best do some research first if this is a subject that interests you.
A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy Seals & Dangerous Days at Sea – Richard Phillips & Stephan Talty
A Captain’s Duty
Having watched and enjoyed the movie based on this book, Captain Phillips, I was keen to read the captain’s account of his ship’s hijacking. Like Sully Sullenberger, the passenger airline pilot who landed his plane in the Hudson River after the plane was damaged by a bird strike, Richard Phillips has become something of a folk hero.
In A Captain’s Duty Phillips portrays himself as a blustery, no-nonsense man’s man, with no time for “milquetoasts”. (He in fact uses this word so often that it became ridiculous – I was under the impression that the only people who know what milquetoast means would be considered milquetoasts themselves.) The book alternates between Phillips’s struggles with the pirates on board the Maersk Alabama and then the lifeboat that he ended up in, and his family’s attempts to cope with the drama (and the media attention) while at home in the United States. I could have done without the family part of the story – wisely (and to heighten the tension), the film downplayed his family’s activities while the captain was in captivity.
One expects a screen adaptation to take liberties with the truth, but it turns out the movie is very faithful to the book’s description of events. Whether this means that Phillips’s version of things is too incredible to be true is for the reader to judge… Slate attempted to tease out fact from fiction, if you’re interested. You can read an excerpt from A Captain’s Dutyhere. I don’t think it’s necessary reading unless you’re a rabid fan of the film or of Captain Phillips himself, and want deeper insight into what happened.
You can get a copy of the book here, here or here (if in South Africa).
Several of my friends – among them people who are nowhere near as obsessed with container ships as I am – have recommended that Tony and I watch this film. It is based on a true story (ahem, ahem) of the heroics of Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama. His ship was boarded by pirates while travelling past the Somalian coast on the way to Kenya. There is an account of the hijacking here, but it will ruin the movie for you if you read it.
Tom Hanks’s reliable acting skills aside, this is a gripping film. The captain ends up in an enclosed lifeboat with the pirates, and half the US Navy turns up to try and resolve the situation. The khat-chewing pirates operate at a level of near-insanity that is terrifying and compelling. Having read The Outlaw Sea and several other pieces on the subject of the at times intractable problem of Somali piracy, the depiction of their desperation and the ease with which they board and overpower a 155 metre long ship ring true.
Although it’s set on a ship, which gave it special interest for us, this is a drama that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes that genre. Both of us would recommend it.
You can get the DVD here or here, and if you’re in South Africa you can get it here.
The logical extension of the “sea blindness” that Rose George describes (and attempts to set right) in Deep Sea and Foreign Going, is blindness to what happens to the ships that bring us all our worldly goods at the end of their lives – when they go out of service. They go to the ship breakers.
The effective lifespan of a ship is 25-30 years, and at the end of that time, if it hasn’t sunk yet and become a dive site (or disappeared without a trace), it is most likely to arrive on the coast of Bangladesh, China, India, Turkey Pakistan, or another poorly regulated third world destination. Here, giant vessels are chopped up on the beach by thousands of workers, swarming over the steel hulks like ants, dismantling them without the assistance of heavy machinery. Up to 90% of the steel is recycled. It is dangerous, polluting work. Safety and environmental standards are practically non existent in most ship breaking yards and accidents are frequent. The scale of the work is mind-boggling.
The CMA CGM Alexander von Humboldt, one of the world’s largest container ships
Photographer Alastair Philip Wiper visited a South Korean shipyard to photograph a Maersk Triple E container ship under construction. These ships are designed to be fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly than existing ships. They are 400 metres long and everything about them is dauntingly huge. Wiper is a photographer who appreciates the beauty of industrial spaces, and his images of the Triple E are breathtaking. You can read more about the Triple E class ships here.
It is my fervent hope that next time we visit family in Denmark, one of these Maersk ships is open to the public for a walkabout…
Read the Wired.com article and see Wiper’s images here.
