Cruise Bruise Blog
April 1, 2009
April 1, 2009
Passenger On Cargo Ship Of Gold & Silver Abandons Ship As It Sinks In Storm

With all the discussion about passengers opting to travel aboard cargo ships, instead of cruise ships, I thought it was time for me to address the topic. Is taking a cargo ship for your dream vacation a really good idea?

That would be a good question to ask the lone passenger aboard the cargo ship Polar Mist on January 16, 2009 when she sank 24 miles off the coast of Argentina with 9.5 tons, 470 bars of gold and silver aboard, valued at $17.6 million dollars. I am sure he had second thoughts during the raging storm that took the ship down.

The seven member crew and one passenger aboard the Polar Mist asked the Argentine navy to rescue them when their ship got into trouble during 140km winds. But, help did not immediately arrive, leaving the eight adrift at sea for 24 hours. Finally a Chilean tugboat, the Beagle, arrived on the scene and took the weary group aboard.

When there is cargo involved there are so many wild cards that control getting from Point  A to Point B, resulting in much more of an adventure than a passenger may have bargained for.

The biggy is that passengers get left-overs of everything, and there are never any lifejackets left over. While authorities and other vessels will rush to the scene of a sinking passenger ship, which is never a guarantee all will be saved, cargo ships go down constantly in rough seas, and there is never a rush to race out into the wild weather that took the ship down, to save a handful of merchant seamen.

A major concern is the frequent problem of "cargo displacement" which happens a considerable amount of the time in rough seas. It can cause such a listing of the ship, it can cause her to capsize.

Such was the case of the Russian cargo ship, Nekrasov, with an unknown amount of passengers aboard, perhaps a dozen, when she sank near Dudinka, in Russia's northern Tamiyr region in September 2005. Only seven people were rescued, though it was thought 20 were aboard.

Tass reported that the Nekrasov can hold 181 passengers and 33 tons of cargo, but that the owner of the vessel did not hold a passenger license.

In the case of the Polar Mist, there are more questions than answers surrounding the sinking, such as, where is the gold and silver, all the gold and silver? Did all the gold and silver sink? Why was the sinking reported to authorities a month after it happened?
The route of the ship was the biggest question. She sunk way off course. Why was the ship in the Atlantic Ocean, when she was suppose to be deep into the Straits Of Magellan, enroute to the Pacific Ocean?

1. The ship left Punta Quilla

2. She was suppose to sail through the Magellan Straits and stop in Punta Arenas.

3. From there, she was suppose to come out on the west side of South America, in Chile, and sail to Santiago.
Once in Santiago, Chile the gold and silver was suppose to be taken to the airport, then flown to Switzerland.

The Polar Mist sank in the Atlantic Ocean, 24 miles off coast, leaving mainstream media outlets to speculate that something was fishy about the sinking.

However, because I do research in dozens of languages, I can answer the question that many are still asking about the location of the ship when she sank.

When the Beagle arrived to assist the Polar Mist, she began to tow the vessel westward, towards Punta Arenas, her next scheduled stop.

However, while in tow, the Beagle was contacted by Argentine authorities, and was told to tow the Polar Mist to Rio Gallegos, on the coast of Argentina. The Beagle and Polar mist were heading east, instead of west as they should have been.

While under tow, the Polar Mist began to list severely with water flooding her hatches. So, the Beagle had to let her go.

This sinking in the Atlantic Ocean confused most people. The speculation was the crew and perhaps even that lone passenger had stopped to off-load the precious metals in a secret location, then scuttled the ship way off course, in very deep waters.

The question of whether all the gold and silver sunk is going to have a delayed answer, as the ship is sitting 225 feet below the surface of the sea, at a time when salvage operations in the region are not advised.

One thing is for sure. Lloyds Of London, the insurer of the load, is going to send a salvage team to the wreck, likely in the fall, to see if it is all there, before they pay the insurance claim. 

If Lloyds can find the cargo, it will be returned to the owners. The cost of salvage is estimated at $3 million, far less than it would cost to pay the insurance policy in full.

On January 1, 2001, another cargo ship, The Pati sunk after being slamming onto rocks in rough seas, splitting her in half.

The Greek captain says as many as 83 people – 10 crew and 73 passengers – were on board the Pati when half the ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea, about 90 meters off the tourist resort of Kemer.

The half of the ship that went down, had the passengers inside,  locked in a cargo hold, unable to get out. It was not exactly the luxury accommodations passengers seeking adventure would be planning on.


Are Cargo Ship Sinking's Really That Frequent?

Of the 200-plus supertankers and large container ships lost to storms from 1985 to 2005, rogue waves are believed by scientists to have been a major cause of the sinking's. It is quite frequent an occurrence, with an average of 10 cargo ship sinking's a year.

However, not only cargo ships take a beating at sea. A 70-foot rogue wave slapped the Norwegian Dawn silly nearly four years ago on April 16th, 2005 off the coast of South Carolina as she sailed from the Bahamas to New York.