Royal Navy rescue 27 from Italian con/ro Grande America in Biscay

What a way to finish a 9-month (SE Asia!) deployment, and <24hrs from home!
https://gcaptain.com/royal-navy-rescues-27-from-cargo-ship-on-fire-in-bay-of-biscay/
“BZ” :clap:

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Grimaldi have had a checked history.

Hairy looking situation. Bravo Zulu to the Royal navy.

For what it is worth, Pasha’s Marjorie C is of similar design as these Grimaldi Line ships.

I wonder how much of this incident is actually related to the design of the ship? It doesn’t seem to me like anyone really has a good system for fighting container stack fires on deck judging from recent casualties.

I don’t know that it would have helped in this case, but I’m surprised at how uncommon it is to see fire monitors on top of the wheelhouse of ships with container stacks.

The ship is CON/RO, fire could have started in the RO/RO decks.

Absolutely, but I’m still surprised at the lack of fire monitors.

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Strikes me it wouldn’t be a bad idea for hazardous containers to have their own automatic internal fire suppression tailored to the type of cargo. For most things I would think that one of the Halon substitutes could work well.

Even in the case where the monitors don’t reach effectively seems like they would still protect the house and lifeboat.

It does look like the fire is in the containers on deck.

image

The paint on the sides doesn’t show very much if any heat damage.

It did look like the paint on the portside was scorched a bit, possibly extending down one deck if they have a low clearance RORO deck there.

Taking a list, maybe down flooding from fire-fighting.

Burning ConRo Grande America Sinks in Bay of Biscay

Update: The MV Grande America has sunk in Bay of Biscay in water depth of 4,600 meters, France’s Marine Nationale reported. The agency said ship sank at March 12, at 1526 local time about 180 nautical miles off France’s coast.

In addition to 2,200 tonnes of heavy fuel the “Grande America” had on board, it was also transporting 2,000 cars and 365 shipping containers, 45 of which held dangerous materials, including a hundred tonnes of hydrochloric acid and 70 tonnes of sulphuric acid.

Four French ships are trying to prevent that the heavy fuel will reach the French coast. On Monday also a Spanish ship will join the clean-up operation.

Porsche is reportedly going reopen a production line to replace vehicles lost in the sinking:

Porsche Reopening Line?

Cheers,

Earl