disabled and listing 90 degrees

I didn't think that was possible until I clicked on the link. Holy cow. They are incredibly lucky that the weather is good.
posted by fshgrl at 10:37 PM on July 24, 2006

This is all I have to say about that.
posted by Derek at 10:37 PM on July 24, 2006

Another ship that listed recently.
posted by nickyskye at 10:54 PM on July 24, 2006

Page 3 of the "other Aleutian shipwrecks" site contains images of old, wrecked submarines.

WTF? You're a submarine. Go under the water.
posted by frogan at 10:58 PM on July 24, 2006

I spent a year stationed on Attu, AK (the furthest island out on the chain) when I was in the Coast Guard. I didn't do any search and rescue while I was there (it was a radio navigation station). Just the same, I got to see plenty of the water.

fshgrl is dead-on. Those guys are damn lucky that the weather isn't worse, and I can only hope that luck holds out.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:12 PM on July 24, 2006

It looks so top heavy.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:20 PM on July 24, 2006

So we can add nearly 5,000 automobiles to the list of brand new, valuable stuff coming soon to a beach near you. Great.
posted by paulsc at 11:28 PM on July 24, 2006

Oops, I forgot a "the" at the beginning of the first sentence.

scaryblackdeath, that's pretty neat. Such remote communities are really interesting to me.
posted by thirteenkiller at 11:29 PM on July 24, 2006

Frogan, old-style submarines spent the vast majority of their time at sea on the surface, because their engines need air.

Once the Cougar Ace listed far enough, all the cars inside would have shifted (read "fell") to one side, becoming scrap metal, and just incidentally also becoming ballast keeping it on its side.

USCGC Rush (WHEC 723) is moving in and will reach there tomorrow morning some time. Presumably by then all the crewmen will have been rescued, so Rush gets the pleasure of trying to put a tow line on Cougar Ace to attempt to take it to a safe port somewhere before it sinks.

All credit to the bulk cargo carrier Ikan Juara for getting in close and staying around to help in the rescue.

What a hell of a mess. Jeeze.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:01 AM on July 25, 2006

How much you want to bet those cars end up being sold somewhere on Kingsway.
posted by Kickstart70 at 12:04 AM on July 25, 2006

FWIW, the MSNBC link is now saying that all crew members have been successfully rescued.
posted by neckro23 at 12:16 AM on July 25, 2006

It's amazing to me how easy one can loose a ship. There is one sitting adjacent to the local harbor here. It was departing, and the engines failed. It ran aground against the breakwater, opposite the harbor entrance! So close, they are getting containers off with shore-based cranes. Yet they can't seem to get the ship off the sand/rocks.
posted by Goofyy at 1:47 AM on July 25, 2006

Dayamn, they need to clean that place up.
posted by Tullius at 2:29 AM on July 25, 2006

Yikes! I wonder how long it took for the ship to list that dramatically. Must have been tense on board (on wall?).
posted by persona non grata at 4:12 AM on July 25, 2006

In this photo released by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Singapore flagged vessel Cougar Ace is shown disabled and listing 90 degrees to its port side about 230 miles south of the Aleutian Islands off the Alaskan coast on Monday, July 24, 2006.

Hmm. I guess Suzuki made the hull. I keed, I keed.

BTW, she's not listing 90 degrees. If she was, the deck would be dead vertical. She is, however, knocked over, and given how stable she is, she's not righting herself.

The big question is how much water is she taking on, and do they still have power to work the pumps? As long as the pumps keep up and the weather clears, she'll float until she runs out of ocean.

Yet they can't seem to get the ship off the sand/rocks.

It's all a matter of draft. You need foo fathoms/feet/meters/millifurlongs/nanoparsecs between the keel and the ocean floor. Screw up, and the ship will never float again.

Ships adrift are forced high aground by the tides and waves -- each one pushes the ship a little higher, but as it gets further from clear water, the waves lose force. Soon, you end up hard aground, where even at the flood of a spring tide, there isn't enough water to float you.

The extreme of this is a storm surge or tsunami that leaves you well on the beach, feet above and away from the high tide line.

One way to refloat is to lighten ship -- so unloading, provided the hull is sound, may well be enough -- or at least enough to let them pull her back into deep water.

Once the Cougar Ace listed far enough, all the cars inside would have shifted (read "fell") to one side, becoming scrap metal, and just incidentally also becoming ballast keeping it on its side.

I'm willing to bet that they screwed up and didn't put enough effort into making the car(go) fast when they loaded her, and in a storm, heeled over a bit. Properly stowed, she would have been fine, but with the cargo shifting, it just forced her over.

Cargo that's properly fast doesn't move if the ship rolls over. (HH,OS)

USCGC Rush (WHEC 723) is moving in and will reach there tomorrow morning some time.

That'll be an interesting tow -- the Cougar Ace has a length of 655 feet, and displaces 55,000 tons -- and because she's knocked over, she's not going to pull straight. The Rush may be one of the largest vessels in USCG service (the WAGBs are larger by a fair amount, but they play in ice) but she's only 378 feet at the waterline, and she displaces 3200 tons. The Hamilton WHECs are only rated to tow 10,000 tons at 8 knots, they may not even be able to hold the Cougar Ace in place, much less get her anywhere. Presumably, they'll try, and somebody's sending a tug, but tugs aren't noted for speed.

(Aside, the Hamilton class WHECs can make 29 kts, with all four engines burning -- very impressive for ships that are pushing 40, 20 since the last major refit. If there was justice in the world, the USCG wouldn't have to fight for hand-me-downs.)

posted by eriko at 4:54 AM on July 25, 2006 [2 favorites]

I wonder how long it took for the ship to list that dramatically.

Probably about 15-20 seconds. If SdB is correct (and I have no reason to assume otherwise), once the car(go) started shifting, she would have just kept rolling.

She's dammned lucky that she's stable at 75-80 degrees. If she'd rolled much more, her main deck would be under water, and she'd sink quickly after that -- decks have way too many holes to seal against constant immersion.
posted by eriko at 4:57 AM on July 25, 2006

I did the math... with the average sticker price on a car running about $34,000 now (according to a report this morning on the radio), that puts the value of the cargo at about $163 Million...

oops..
posted by HuronBob at 5:12 AM on July 25, 2006

eriko: thanks for the superb and in-depth info.
posted by SteelyDuran at 6:04 AM on July 25, 2006

Some of the shipwreck pictures on the last link are absolutely striking. I'm surprised at how much remains of the ships, though. Is there really no value in salvaging from them?
posted by idigress at 6:26 AM on July 25, 2006

There are some full-sized pictures of the Cougar Ace here.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:39 AM on July 25, 2006

Other Cougar Ace pictures I considered and rejected for the FPP here, here (also be sure to enjoy the comments), here (Panama Canal) and possibly here.

Here is a pretty in depth story about the situation and a short Coast Guard video of the ship on its side.
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:55 AM on July 25, 2006

Wow, they got lucky -- this shot shows that she's over on her port side -- and the loading ramp is on the starboard side, high and dry.

That large a hatch would almost certainly have failed, and she'd have sunk fast with that large a hole in her side. This pic show her port side -- basically a slab wall. Assuming they were able to reinforce the few ports they have on that side, and that they're able to pump, she'd remain afloat for quite a while -- heck, the right wave might even right her.

Her biggest problem is that her screw and rudder are high and dry, which means that all she can do is drift. If she hit something or runs aground, she'd be in real trouble.

Heck, if they could get two or three ships out there, they might be able to right her. They'd need to tie up low on the port side (you'd need a diver, but it looks like she has bitts low on each side) and high on the starboard side. The port line could be made fast to a tug, but the starboard line would need to be on a capstan, ready to be let free the moment she started to heel over. It would be embarrassing to flip her from a 75° port list to a 75° starboard list, have the main hatch fail, and have her sink. A third ship would allow a high line on the port side as a safety, though you'd need to be able to let that line slip and brake it slowly, or you'd just snap it.

I'm guessing that if they could heel over to about a 30° port list, she'd right herself, or at least hold at that list, that would let her (presuming that her engine isn't damaged) make her own way to port, or at least make the tow vastly easier.
posted by eriko at 7:10 AM on July 25, 2006

I think it would depend on just how well the wreckage inside her would shift if they tried to right her. The water she's taken on would move, of course, but would all the wrecked cars really move all that far? (If they actually are wrecked, which I suspect is the case?)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 7:24 AM on July 25, 2006

idigress writes "I'm surprised at how much remains of the ships, though. Is there really no value in salvaging from them?"

To dangerous and expensive. It's barely worth breaking up ships for salvage in places like Bangladesh where people work for minimal compensation on nice flat beachs.
posted by Mitheral at 7:25 AM on July 25, 2006

eriko, Wow, Great posts of yours in explaining this. Makes it really interesting having your detailed, experienced knowledge.
posted by nickyskye at 9:16 AM on July 25, 2006

Great FPP. I wish the beautiful photos of other wrecks had a little more information though. For instance, are we to assume that all of these are just sitting there derelict?

Kind of reminds me of this place.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 10:16 AM on July 25, 2006

To dangerous and expensive. It's barely worth breaking up ships for salvage in places like Bangladesh where people work for minimal compensation on nice flat beachs.
posted by Mitheral

Here's a MeFi thread on that. I knew I remembered something about it in the blue.

Another ship full of cars that sunk.

Now, I think I'm going to go cue up some Gordon Lightfoot.
posted by ninjew at 10:29 AM on July 25, 2006

The same site has a text list of local shipwrecks, with links to the pictures for the few entries that have them.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:51 AM on July 25, 2006

I still can't get over they cut that Tricolor in pieces. These pics blow me away (there were some pics with the cargo [cars] in the pics, but I can't find them on the site now - likely due to Volvo not liking them in the pics).
posted by tomplus2 at 11:44 AM on July 25, 2006

Thanks, thirteenkiller. Now I'm really not going to get any work done today...
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 12:47 PM on July 25, 2006

i spent 18 months on Adak and have been gathering links for my first FPP based on my experiences there. There are beautiful vistas, outstanding picture galleries of Adak during WW2 - it was a forward staging base for a proposed Tokyo bombing and invasion of Attu - some info on people adapting the former base to civilian use - stuff like that - but it's all dead now.

So GREAT, goddamn ship. Ruined my FPP. :(
posted by disclaimer at 12:52 PM on July 25, 2006

Nice job, tho, thirteenkiller. :)
posted by disclaimer at 12:52 PM on July 25, 2006

Aw, I'm sorry disclaimer. If you have other interesting stuff you can still post it.
posted by thirteenkiller at 2:56 PM on July 25, 2006

Page 3 of the "other Aleutian shipwrecks" site contains images of old, wrecked submarines.

Indeed it does. Kiska was US territory that was briefly occupied by the Japanese, and dislodged in the Battle of the Aleutian Islands. Wikipedia says that the US successfully cordoned the island such that they used exclusively submarines for resupply.

I'm willing to bet that those submarines were underwater, and the US Navy did something to make sure they stayed there.

As for the Cougar Ace (sounds like something to keep the younger longshoremen away from), I'm reminded of the Estonia and more recently the Queen of the North. Ferries and car carriers seem to be especially vulnerable to calamity (I wonder if that's statistically borne out).
posted by dhartung at 3:36 PM on July 25, 2006

If they decide that the ship can't be safely towed, or perhaps that it can't eventually be righted even if moved into a harbor, I wonder if the Rush will use her main gun to sink it, just to make sure it doesn't drift someonewhere inconvenient before it sinks naturally anyway.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:26 PM on July 25, 2006

disclaimer, I would be interested, do a FPP one of these days when your ready, and link back to this one in it somewhere.
posted by BillsR100 at 7:28 PM on July 25, 2006

The salvage effort of the Cougar Ace has claimed the life of naval architect Marty Johnson, who slipped and fell 80 feet vertically, while inspecting the listing vessel.
posted by paulsc at 4:18 AM on August 8, 2006