After reading the texts and exchanging the information about causes of the accident, do your best to describe the disaster using the facts from the three texts.
Text 10. Divers to survey Channel wreck
Skim the text and express your opinion of the causes of the accident.
The 55,000-ton Tricolor – carrying nearly 3,000 luxury cars – capsized and sank in the early hours of Saturday (Dec 14, 2002) after a collision with a cargo freighter Kariba about 48 km east of Ramsgate, Kent.
No-one was injured. A salvage team is preparing to send divers down to the sunken car carrier in the English Channel on Sunday.
A team had been at the scene of the wreck overnight but had been hampered by bad weather conditions and a high tide.
None of the ship's estimated 2,000 tons of oil was leaking into the sea.
The method of removing the ship had still to be decided by the owners and insurers. It could be refloated or lifted by floating cranes.
The Norwegian-registered Tricolor had been travelling from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Southampton with its multi-million pound cargo of vehicles, including BMWs, Volvos and Saabs, and 77 containers.
The 20,000-ton Bahamas-registered freighter Kariba was badly damaged in the collision but limpedback to port in Antwerp, Belgium.
The wreck must really go as soon as possible, because the Dover Straits is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world – and this is the actual crossroads where ships come from and to the European ports.
The value of the cargo was put at £30m, though the cars would have fetched double that at retail prices.
The estimated value of the Tricolor itself is about £25m.
The Tricolor was initially only partly submerged because of a low tide but later disappeared from view.
An inquiry will be launched by the French authorities into the cause of the accident.
Group Work
Two texts below are about the same accident but comprise different information. Each student has to read one text. Exchange the information. Work in pairs.
Text 11(A). Raising the Tricolor
The giant vessel capsized on December 14, after being hit from behind by another boat that was trying to overtake it.
Two days after the initial accident a freighter ploughed into the wreck, and two weeks on from that (after several marker buoys and a radio beacon had been positioned to warn shipping) a tanker carrying flammable paraffin managed to wedge itself on top. To make matters worse, a salvage tug boat knocked out safety valves on the Tricolor in bad weather in January, producing an oil slick
4 km long.
The wreck is effectively blocking the main route that ships from Belgium take into the Channel – which has the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The wreck is some 200 m long and 30 m wide and is considered too badly damaged to refloat. And it's heavy. Car carriers are not the very largest boats afloat but they have little internal structure to stop water pouring in. Add the cargo of cars – some 2,862 luxury BMWs, Volvos and Saabs sit rusting away inside – and the weight of the beached Tricolor rises to an estimated
20,000 tonnes.
Vocabulary
| to plough | врезаться (во что-л.) с силой |
| to wedge | втискиваться |
| safety valve | предохранительный клапан |
| to rust away | ржаветь |
Text 11 (B). The wreck lay on its side in the English Channel
until August 2003
The wreck lay on its side in the English Channel until August 2003, when the operation to cut it up was finally put into action – the method was to cut the whole ship into pieces as if it were a huge cake. To achieve this, two large platforms were placed either side of the wreck and a chain placed beneath the wreck. This chain was then used as a saw, which cut the Tricolor up into manageablechunks that could then be lifted away by means of a heavy lift crane. A similar method was used to remove the nose of the sunken Russian submarine Kursk before it was raised in October 2001. In that case, technical mishaps, including a broken saw cable, hampered the project.
The team removed most of the oil from the Tricolor's tanks, though some could still escape. A specially equipped boat was standing by to deal with any spill.
The Tricolor has been removed from the seabed. Her propeller is placed in front of the Smit office in Rotterdam-Waalhaven.
Vocabulary
| saw | пила |
| manageable | зд. удобный (для работы) |
| chunk | глыба, огромный кусок |