MV Tricolor

MV "Tricolor" was a 50,000 tonne Norwegian-flagged vehicle carrier built in 1987, notable for having been involved in three English Channel collisions within a fortnight.

During the early hours of December 14, 2002, while travelling from Zeebrugge to Southampton with a load of nearly 3,000 automobiles, she collided with the "Kariba", a 1982 Bahamian-flagged container ship. The "Kariba" was able to continue on, but "Tricolor" sank where she was struck, some 20 miles north of the French coast in the English Channel. While no lives were lost, the ship remained lodged on her side in the mud of the 30-meter deep waterway.

The Channel is one of the busiest seaways in the world and, despite standard radio warnings, three guard ships, and a lighted buoy, the wreck was struck by the German vessel "Nicola" the next night, which had to be towed free. After this, two additional patrol ships and six more buoys were installed, including one with a Racon warning transponder. However, on 1 January 2003, the loaded Turkish-registered fuel carrier "Vicky" struck the same wreck; she was later freed by the rising tide.

The salvage operation of the Tricolor was led by the Dutch company Smit International, and took well over a year. Starting in July 2003, the operation was declared complete on October 27, 2004. The salvage method included a diamond-encrusted cutting wire used to slice the wreck into nine sections of 3000-tonnes each, a technique similar to one the Smit had used in salvaging the Russian submarine, K-141 Kursk.

C.T. Systems, together with Thales Navigation, installed their Viking Anchoring software to handle the navigational aspects of the operation. The positioning equipment consisted of a Thales Aquarius LRK GPS receiver and a Thales 3011 GPS heading sensor; in conjunction with a Belgian LRK reference station, this provided a locational accuracy of a few centimeters. Using a side scan sonar, all the debris had been located and all the relevant positional information converted to a chart for the Viking software, enabling Smit's Taklift 4 to do a systematic search and recovery of all the remaining debris.

The cargo of 2,871 new cars – mostly from premium German and Swedish manufacturers including BMW, Volvo and SAAB – was removed from the wreck and destroyed, approximately £30m (representing a retail value of £60m) worth. Most oil was removed from the ship's tanks soon after it sank, but during the salvage there was a small 540-tonne oil spill, sparking concern.

External links

* [http://www.tricolorsalvage.com MV "Tricolor" salvage website]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3091948.stm BBC article]
* [http://www.cedre.fr/uk/spill/tricolor/tricolor.htm Photos of the wreck]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050714033910/http://www.blognewsnetwork.com/members/0000001/mpg/tricolorAutos/tricolorAutos.html High-resolution photos of the sliced hull]