Sealand records non-existent

2003-08-21 13:45

Cape Town - There are no voice recordings of key exchanges between Cape Town port authorities and the container ship Sealand Express before she ran aground in Table Bay this week.

"Regrettably there are no tapes available," operations manager of the South African Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa), Captain Bill Dernier, said on Thursday.

He said "something went wrong" at Port Control, which normally records all ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship exchanges on its multimillion rand, state-of-the-art communications system.

Dernier said port control did, however, have the vessel's radar plots stored in digital form, and he was going to view these on Thursday afternoon.

Asked whether the ship had in fact received repeated warnings from port control that she was headed for danger before she grounded on Sunset Beach early Tuesday morning, he said: "I can't comment on that."

Sapa was told by a maritime source that the ship was given several warnings, but told authorities everything was under control.

It was contacted first at 04:00, and at least twice more before it struck the beach at 06:30, the source said.

It is unclear at this stage whether the Sealand Express tried to start up her engines and move away from the looming coastline.

Her operators, North Carolina-based US Shipping Management, have not replied to a Sapa query on how exactly she went aground.

National Ports Authority spokesperson Donald Kau referred all queries about the tapes to Samsa.

"I would rather ask you to get in touch with them," he said from Johannesburg.

He confirmed that procedure was to record all voice exchanges, as well as radar tracking.

"We are not in a position to really comment at this point on the exact nature of the messages between ourselves and the ship when it went aground," he said.

US Coast Guard investigators are expected in South Africa on Thursday to probe the stranding.

Salvors plan to start pumping fuel oil off the ship on Thursday afternoon to lighten her for another attempt to refloat her.

Three attempts by a trio of salvage tugs have already failed.

There are 1 037 containers, some of them containing hazardous materials, on the ship.

- SAPA