THE WORST SHIP
Between
1953, when it was built, and 1976, when it sank, the Argo Merchant
suffered of every known form of maritime disaster.
In 1967
the ship took eight months to sail from Japan to America. In collided with a
Japanese ship, caught fire three times and had to stop for repairs five times.
In 1968
there was a mutiny and in 1969 she went aground off Borneo for thirty-four
hours. In the next five years she was laid up in Curaçao, grounded off Sicily
and towed to New York.
In 1976
her boilers broke down six times and she once had to travel with two red lights
displayed, indicating that the crew could not longer control the ship’s
movements because steering and engine had failed. She was banned from
Philadelphia, Boston and the Panama Canal.
To
round off a perfect year she ran aground and sank off Cape Cod depositing he
country’s largest oil slick on the doorsteps of Massachussetts.
At the
time of the final grounding the ship had been ‘lost’ for fifteen hours. The crew
was eighteen miles off course and navigating by the stars, because modern
equipment had broken down. What is more, the West Indian helmsman could not
read the Greek handwriting showing the course to be steered.
A naval expert afterwards described the ship as ‘a disaster looking for somewhere to happen’.
