£500M for a Costa Concordia .........
When you consider the apparent stupidity of the circumstances of the way the Costa Concordia came to grief with the loss of 32 lives, it's hard to imagine how a ship of that size could have [should have] ended up on her side on the rocks in the first place ....
My whole adult working life, has been dominated by ships and shipping. The first ship I saw close up and dangerous was at the tender age of 16.5 years old and it was the ship that would be my home for the next 4 months.
I had signed up to the Merchant Navy and yet I had never seen a ship, let alone been on one. Up to that point I had not been in possession of a passport. Also at that time I couldn't even swim, but some how I was walking up the gang plank armed with a sea survival certificate....but that is another story.....
So there I was a young boy stood on the deck..... there's a joke somewhere in that....there I stood looking at this mammoth ship thinking I'll be truely safe aboard this ship. When ships are in port they seem immovable objects and you cannot imagine them coming to grief..... This ship was relatively small in the world of ocean going ships Mv Border Shepherd [she was not that rusty when I sailed on her] and one of the biggest ships I sailed on was the British Trident*** at nearly a qtr of a mile long, but the reality is no matter how big the ship is, once you get to sea... then there is no guarantee you will survive the mercy of the weather [or the stupidity of Italian skippers] .... but just look at the recent events for the MoL Comfort.
And so watching them raise the Costa Concordia from it's watery grave, you can only but marvel at the skill in getting the vessel upright once more.
The cost of £500M is quite eye watering when you think about, a few years ago many might have simply said leave her to rot and waste away, some would still say it now..... but we live in changing times, and so the money was spent and the engineering work done**. They estimated about 12 hours to get her up to the vertical.
So about half way up, and some dickhead of a BBC reporter asks one of the senior salvage engineers a question..... [BBC reporter] You said it was going to take 12 hours but now it seems that it will take much longer what's gone wrong ?...... Now at this point the engineer gave a thoroughly polite answer and said...... nothing is going wrong, all is going to plan...... what he should have done is taken the microphone off the reporter and shoved it up the reporters poop deck ! What a twat that reporter is....... Salvaging a vessel of this size cannot be timed to the minute..... this was a one off, that took over a year to prepare and not forgetting the £500M spent, so I think the salvage team can be given quite a bit of leeway in not worrying about rushing to meet the 12 hour deadline......
Whether the cost was good value for money is a debate for a different forum, but for this week at least, one can only but marvel at the salvage whilst you sip and slurp your very expensive Costa....
As Desert Island Discs is about to return....
As it is Friday.....
if I was on my Desert Island,
this is the song* I would be humming
as my SoD
*[SoD footnote: I had originally planned to use the great EC's version of this, but as I have not yet aired this band and as this version is very commendable, I chose....... Suede]
**[Salvage footnote: I wonder if we will spend this much recovering wind turbines from a watery grave once they have passed their serviceable life ? ]
***[Ships sinking footnote: The British Trident recovered the crew from the supposedly sunken oil tanker the Salem. It turned out the Salem had not sunk. Part of the clue was when the crew of the ship were recovered from their life boats, they all had packed suit cases with them. When your ship is sinking, packing a case would not be a high priority. As it was, the Salem had not sunk and instead the crew were changed, the ship painted with a new name, and her precious and valuable cargo of oil was sold to the South African Oil Company, as at that time there were trade embargoes on South Africa as a result of apartheid.... oh what a tangled web we weave..... and so as a bonus SoD here is a great track......]
**[Salvage footnote: I wonder if we will spend this much recovering wind turbines from a watery grave once they have passed their serviceable life ? ]
***[Ships sinking footnote: The British Trident recovered the crew from the supposedly sunken oil tanker the Salem. It turned out the Salem had not sunk. Part of the clue was when the crew of the ship were recovered from their life boats, they all had packed suit cases with them. When your ship is sinking, packing a case would not be a high priority. As it was, the Salem had not sunk and instead the crew were changed, the ship painted with a new name, and her precious and valuable cargo of oil was sold to the South African Oil Company, as at that time there were trade embargoes on South Africa as a result of apartheid.... oh what a tangled web we weave..... and so as a bonus SoD here is a great track......]
