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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
Expert Got Vessel Floating Again After it was Stranded Near Ensenada for 10 Weeks
 Sandra Dibble - Union-Tribune
| | Salvage master David Stirling (right) was hoisted by crane to the deck of the APL Panama as it lay stuck on an Ensenada beach. The container ship was freed March 10 in one of the biggest commercial salvage operations ever undertaken. (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) |
He has rescued oil tankers while under hostile fire in the Persian Gulf, boarded the ghostly remains of a container ship near Singapore on which all the crew members had burned to death, risked rough and frigid seas off an Icelandic beach.
But when David Stirling first set eyes on the APL Panama, the 835-foot container ship that became stranded on an Ensenada beach on Christmas Day, the 47-year-old salvage master had only one thought: “Wow.”
“I've seen ships on the beach before, but nothing as big as this one,” Stirling remembered thinking this week as he was making his way home to Scotland. “It's either going to be an easy job or not.”
It was not.
This month – more than 10 weeks after Stirling first saw the vessel Dec. 30 – the APL Panama was towed off the beach, with small cracks in its hull and its propeller damaged. The effort is headed for maritime history, as one of the largest commercial salvage operations ever undertaken.
The APL Panama was worth an estimated $50 million, Stirling said, and its cargo at least twice that amount, much of it electronic components and car parts from Asia for factories in Mexico. Salvage industry insiders say the final cost for saving the APL Panama could reach tens of millions of dollars. But no one knows just how much – that is now subject to negotiation between the vessel's German owner and the Florida-based salvage company, Titan Maritime LLC. If they can't agree, they'll ask an arbitrator to step in.
| | Stirling, senior salvage master for Titan Maritime, said that when he saw the ship, he thought, "I've seen ships on the beach before, but nothing as big as this one." (John Gibbins/Union-Tribune) |
The APL Panama was salvaged under the time-honored “no cure, no pay,” rule peculiar to the profession. The salvage company and its parent company, Crowley Maritime Corp., risked their resources, agreeing to negotiate for compensation only if successful.
If seven tugboats, five hydraulic pullers, a puller barge, a helicopter, a dredger, three cranes and numerous pumps and generators provided the brawn, the senior salvage master for Titan Maritime was the brains, leading a crew of 24 salvage specialists that included divers, welders, cutters and a naval architect.
“I love the challenge, the feeling you get when you eventually refloat,” said Stirling, who speaks so softly that a listener must sometimes lean forward to catch what he's saying. “The crew, they're not the normal guys that you find, you have to be a little bit different to do this kind of job.”
On a public beach just south of Ensenada's harbor, this was an especially visible assignment. From the start, the stuck APL Panama was a popular tourist attraction, but it was also a window into the world of maritime salvage, one of the world's oldest and more unusual businesses.
In more than two decades as a salvage master, Stirling has saved some 150 ships. There was the Ocean Blessing, with its crew burned to death in the Malacca Straits. The Alva Star, run into a cliff at full cruising speed in the Aegean Sea. The Vikartindur, driven by a gale onto a remote Icelandic beach. And for three years of his career, oil tankers on fire in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
“There's something in the blood of the salvor that makes him want to do it,” said Jim Shirley, a former salvage master, now practicing maritime law in New York City. “The salvor is man against the sea. He goes out into the roughest weather when everyone else is seeking refuge in the harbor.”
Of 51 members worldwide of the London-based International Salvage Union, only a handful of maritime salvage companies have the resources to mobilize for a major salvage operation anywhere in the world such as the APL Panama, said Michael Lacey, the group's secretary-general. And only a handful of salvage masters have the experience and reputation to lead such endeavors.
“A salvage master is an interesting bird, they have to understand vessel stability, strength of materials, and characteristics of steel,” said Tuuli Messer, a professor at the California Maritime Academy who has studied the salvage industry. “They're running very dangerous operations, money is at stake, big machinery.”
Salvage can be as simple as towing a disabled vessel. But it can involve any range of maritime disasters – from tanker fires to collisions to groundings to wreck removal.
The job requires much flexibility, said Richard Fredericks, executive director of the American Salvage Association: “Each case is different, different vessel, different geographic location, different weather conditions, tidal conditions,” Fredericks said. “In each case, there are certain known elements, and many unknown elements. . . . It's not a static situation.”
Salvage has its origins in antiquity, with its rules developed to prevent plunder of stranded ships by offering generous rewards for those who helped save the property. To this day, more than half of salvage contracts involve “no cure, no pay” arrangements, often under a contract known as the Lloyds Open Form.
The industry has been changing in recent years. As ships get larger and more complicated, salvors must keep up with the changes. Better navigational instruments and stricter regulation have worked to decrease accidents. These days, salvors are expected to place priority on preventing oil spills and other environmental accidents.
Stirling's low-key style is not typical for salvage masters, but he is among the most effective, said Michael Mallin, an attorney for a London-based maritime law firm that represents Titan.
“In a job mostly populated by larger-than-life characters, he is one of the most understated,” Mallin said. “But he gets a lot of respect from his salvage crews, and he is very good at thinking outside the box in a business where it is often necessary to come up with novel solutions.”
After it grounded, the APL Panama sat along the beach in quiet seas on a beach off a residential neighborhood, close enough for passersby to walk up and touch at low tide.
The prime enemy was not exploding oil tanks, nor enemy bullets, nor turbulent weather, but sand so fine “it was like concrete when it was packed in,” Stirling said.
In cases of groundings, “99 times out of 100, you can just go in there and take some ballast off, take a little bit of cargo off, take the fuel off and pretty much pull on it and remove it,” Stirling said.
“In this case, it was not that simple. I've never seen a vessel embedded in sand like that.”
From the start, Stirling's plan involved pulling the bow out to sea.
But as tugs and hydraulic pullers heaved at the bow, walls of sand would build up on the starboard side of the hull, at times reaching 20 feet.
Bad weather allows a ship to roll and move, “we're always looking for a bit of swell, so it lifts the ship up and down.” But day after day, salvors were confronted with good weather.
To get the sand moving, they drilled tiny holes into the ship's bow, pressing air through them. The tugs' propellers also helped wash the sand away, as did a submersible pump.
To lighten the ship's load, a helicopter lifted off the lighter containers; the others were eventually taken off by crane, delivered to trucks on a temporary jetty.
Eventually, a dredger vessel was brought in to dig a channel near the bow. Finally, at 4:40 a.m. on March 10, with barely anybody watching, the APL Panama was once again afloat.
“Everything we did from start to end contributed to it,” Stirling said. “Very often you get to the point where you think, 'Is there any point in carrying on?' Perhaps the APL Panama was getting to that point as well, we tried so many things.”
Critics watching the operation from shore say it would have moved faster had the dredger been brought in at the start. But none was readily available, Stirling said. And in the first two months of the operation, he said, the water by the bow was too shallow for the dredger to operate.
Such questioning of Stirling's decisions is likely to multiply as the vessel's owners and Titan negotiate the price of the salvage. It's part of the territory for salvage masters. Under the typical Lloyds Open Form contract, salvage companies stress their efforts and sacrifice to save a vessel, while the shipowners point out the flaws.
Yesterday, the APL Panama sat anchored outside Ensenada harbor, undergoing inspections. It will probably be towed to China for repairs, Stirling said.
He was on his way elsewhere as well, to his farm outside Edinburgh, Scotland, a place with grass and trees and Icelandic sheep and horses.
“When I go home, I have nothing to do with the sea at all,” he said. “I just want to stay there and not go anywhere.”
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com |
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