Tanker (1f).
L/B/D:
974.4 × 125.4' × 51.4 (297m × 38.2m × 15.7m). Tons:
123,000 dwt. Hull:
steel. Comp.:
36. Mach.:
geared turbines, 25,000 shp, 4 screws; 16 kts. Built:
Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va.; 1959.
At 0850 on March 18, 1967, the crude-oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on the Seven Stones Reef (50°02N, 6°07E) at the western entrance to the English Channel—eighteen miles west of Land's End and eight miles south of the Scilly Isles. At the time of the grounding, the ship was between the Scillies and Seven Stones, though common practice (and sense) dictated that ships pass either west of the Scillies or east of the Seven Stones. Manned by an Italian crew, the ship was owned by the Barracuda Tanker Corporation, a Liberian-based subsidiary of the Union Oil Company of California, and was en route from Mena al-Ahmadi, Kuwait, to Milford Haven, England, under charter to the British Petroleum Company. Investigators found Captain Pestrengo Rugiati solely responsible for the accident because he had kept the ship on automatic steering and steaming at its top speed of nearly sixteen knots. Captain Rugiati was also accused of failing to change course when advised to do so both by his third officer and by signals from the Seven Stones lightship.
Within seventy-two hours of the incident, which occurred in broad daylight, an estimated 37 million gallons of the tanker's 118,000-ton cargo of oil had spilled. In an effort to break up the slicks, Royal Navy ships sprayed a dispersal agent on the oil, and then sprayed the beaches when the oil began going ashore in Cornwall on March 24. Efforts to refloat the ship resulted in the death of one of the Dutch salvage crew and were ultimately a failure. As tugs attempted to pull the ship off the rocks on August 26, she broke in two; the following day the ship was declared a total loss. From March 28 to March 30, Royal Navy planes hit the ship repeatedly with 1,000-pound bombs and dumped aviation fuel, kerosene, and napalm on the wreck in an effort to start fires that would consume the remaining oil before it could spread.
Despite this drastic action, oil spread across 120 miles of southern England and 55 miles of the coast of Brittany in northwest France. The world's first major disaster involving one of the new breed of supertankers, the wreck of Torrey Canyon had a devastating effect on the environment—an estimated 15,000 birds died, as well as untold numbers of fish and shellfish—and on the $300 million tourist industry in southern England and northwestern France.
Cowan, Oil and Water. Petrow, In the Wake of "Torrey Canyon.".
