The burnt-out German container ship “Solong” is being towed to Aberdeen in Scotland for further inspections and salvage work.
According to the British Coastguard, the 140 m long freighter (812 TEU, built in 2005) will be towed to its destination by a tugboat and accompanied by a second special vessel to prevent environmental pollution. The arrival in Aberdeen, more than 450 km from the scene of the accident off the coast of Yorkshire, is scheduled for the end of this week.
It is still unclear what will happen to the “Solong”, which is majority-owned by the fleet investment company Ernst Russ and technically managed by the Schleswig-Holstein-based shipping company Köpping. As photos and film footage of the burnt-out feeder container ship suggest, it is a “total loss”. This can be seen from an entry in the official European ship database Equasis, which is operated by the French Ministry of Transport’s shipping administration.
The salvage agreements made for the ship also point to a total loss. The owners of the “Solong” have signed a Lloyd’s Open Form (LOF, “No cure, no gain”) with a consortium consisting of T&T Salvage LLC, Multraship Salvage and Boluda Towage.
The service providers have activated the so-called SCOPIC clause (Special Compensation P&I Club Clause) in the LOF, which is always used if salvaged values are not expected to be sufficient to pay for the salvage. This would raise the next question of where and how the “Solong'” is to be scrapped or recycled. It is possible that the offshore port of Aberdeen has already been chosen with this task in mind.
The German container ship, which was sailing between Hull, Grangemouth and Rotterdam under charter from the shortsea carrier Samskip, rammed the Swedish tanker “Stena Immaculate” (49,729 tdw, built in 2017) off the Humber estuary on the east coast of England at the beginning of March.
One crew member of the “Solong” lost his life and the captain of the ship was arrested. In contrast, the damage to the “Stena Immaculate” appears to be limited. The tanker is still in “a stable condition” at the scene of the collision. The salvage operations led by Smit Salvage are continuing. (mph)
