Newswatch
Fairplay
International Shipping Weekly
04
Mar 2004
The dire straits of the Bosporus
THE LOSS of the bulker Hera with 19
crew on February 13th was just the latest, sad statistic in a long
list of disasters and near misses in the Bosporus Straits involving
vessels of dubious quality. “The Hera was in such poor shape it
couldn’t even make a distress call,” says Turkish pilot Capt Cahit
Istikbal. Last October the Russian-flagged Khazar Star-2 struck the
shore in Istanbul, causing damage to a historic building. An
investigation pointed to navigational error brought about by
difficult currents and the fact the Khazar Star-2 had no pilot on
board.
In May 2003 the Greek tanker
carrying 23,300 tonnes of fuel oil ploughed into four floating
restaurants, sinking one and damaging the others. Luckily, it was a
slow night in the kitchens and nobody was injured. Turkish
authorities detained the 30-year old tanker. Suay Umut is president
of Dunya Shipping and has modern tonnage on charter to BP, AP
Møeller and Hanjin. But he lives in Istanbul close to the straits
and some of the ships he watches manoevering in front of his garden
have him worried. “Really, they look like they belong on the Danube,
not at sea,” he says. “We get passenger ferries from Black Sea
countries which appear to be falling apart and you can hear the
racket from their engine rooms.” Istanbul’s ChevronTexaco
representative Kjell Landin notes, “The fifth biggest group of ships
by flag state going through the straits last year was Cambodian,
what does that tell you?”
“We are living in a poor area of
the world and sub-standard ships come to Turkey to trade in the
Black Sea,” says Capt Istikbal who is also head of the Turkish
Maritime Pilots Union. “In an economically poor region, it’s not so
easy to enforce port state controls like Paris MoU.” True, but
mandatory pilotage, unless a master can demonstrate competency,
would be a good start. Istikbal showed Fairplay a computer
presentation of a laden Suezmax tanker making the 18-mile north-south
passage through the Bosporus as seen from a helicopter.
At each point he comments on the
width – just 700m at Yenikoy, the 12 course corrections including
one 80-degree turn, 3-4kt of current and local fishermen drifting in
the traffic lanes. But the tanker in Istikbal’s photos has one of
his colleagues on board. Many charter parties stipulate pilotage,
oil majors insist on it and pilot fees are part of the Worldscale
for the voyage. The relevant IMO resolution “strongly recommends”
using a pilot, but it’s only compulsory for ships whose routes begin
or end at a Turkish port. During 2003, 61%of vessels in transit took
their chances without. It’s no surprise that data collated by the
Turkish pilots over a 20-year period show 85% of all mishaps
involved vessels that did not have a pilot onboard.
