RENA Aground

On Wednesday 05 October 2011 it is reported that the large container ship RENA ran aground on Astrolabe Reef, 12 miles off Tauranga at 0200. Seeking towage assistance. Grounding position 37 32.29'S, 176 25.53'E. Holed and taking water. 9.2 metres draught. Length 236 metres. 37,209 gross. Liberian flag. Vessel was on a voyage from Napier to Tauranga. Lloyds List - Monday 24 October 2011 by Micheal Grey MY SISTER-in-law has a sharp tongue and is not backward in coming forward to use it on behalf of her strong opinions. She was getting pretty angry when my wife spoke to her about the wreck of the containership Rena and all the globules of oil that are coming ashore on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Indeed she intimated that no criminal sanctions could be too severe for the wretched officers in charge of the ship, which they allegedly so wantonly wrecked. She has fairly pronounced views on this matter, and as she lives in Tauranga, within sniffing distance of the oiled foreshore, I suppose we must consider these thoughts pretty representative of the inhabitants of the region. I thought it was a bit extreme that the authorities have had to secrete the officers of the ship at some concealed address for their own protection. But having had the benefit of my sister-in-law’s opinions, perhaps it is a sensible precaution. On the grand scale of ship-generated pollution, this may not be up there in even the two-star bracket, according to the truly excellent daily bulletins provided by the New Zealand authorities, but I am afraid that is not the point. Any spilt oil is a matter for extreme local outrage and almost regardless of the consequences for the environment it will be, in public opinion terms, well off the Richter scale. In another, perhaps more stoic, age, people would have admitted mistakes occasionally get made in even the best-run ships, and that the trail of causation is sometimes more complicated than first meets the eye. In an age less inclined to mass hysteria about what we used to call accidents, people were more forgiving of human errors or mechanical failures that left wreckage behind them or even oil on the beach. Nobody, as far as I could detect, has yet lost their life as a result of this grounding, [b]but it is a regrettable trend that dead wildlife and oiled seabirds tend to have a greater impact on the public than dead seafarers.[/b] One might point out that the mechanism for compensation for marine pollution is well developed and highly efficient, and that the expertise available for clean-up, from individual specialists and organisations such as the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation, is world-renowned. All of this is more than capable of dealing with anything [i]Rena [/i]is likely to throw at the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, if the casualty ends up, as now seems highly likely, as a wreck removal, rather than a straight salvage job. In an earlier, less judgmental age, where mistakes could sometimes be made without those bearing criminal sanctions getting in on the act, there was rather more understanding of the value of merchant shipping and its benevolent impact on the wealth of a nation. This was particularly apparent in New Zealand, where the dependence on merchant ships was (and is) pretty well total. You never had people regarding ships as first and foremost potential polluters, whether through their misfortune, their emissions of oil or into the atmosphere. Seafarers who made operational errors were not regarded as criminals who had to be hidden for their own safety. But that was then and this is now, and there is no doubt the operators of this wretched ship and, of course, their insurers, are going to face gigantic sums for whatever mistakes might have been made by their employees. It might seem a trifle outrageous to suggest it, but I sometimes wonder whether the expressions of outrage that promote every accidental emission of oil into a catastrophe (think [i]Exxon[/i] [i]Valdez ,Cosco Busan [/i]) might in some way be energised by the prospect of quite unbelievable claims for compensation. We have been reading recently about the doomed climber George Mallory, who lost his life on Everest all those years ago and the reason he apparently gave for attempting to go where no man had gone before – “because it is there!” If a gigantic pot of free money is “there” to compensate those who have suffered from a marine accident, along with all the punitive damages and consequential sums, there is every incentive to make a huge song and dance about every loss of a ship on your coastline or harbour. It is all meat and drink for the greens. The more tears shed for the dead rockhopper penguins, the more rage and hatred that can be summoned up in the media to fall on the heads of the wretched mariners and their shipowning employers, the better it will seem when all of these matters are judged in court. Hitherto, despite the comments of people like my sister-in-law and the local inhabitants, the official line from the New Zealand government and its authorities has been sensible and mature, and a contrast to the hysteria exhibited by certain Queensland politicians when Swire’s containership was damaged in a storm and spilt oil. But it is the way of an unforgiving world, and none of us are going to change this in a hurry.