The Day the Ocean Caught Fire

By Kenneth W. Banta

Off the South African coast, a supertanker becomes an inferno

The 138,882-ton Spanish supertanker Castillo de Bellver was lumbering around the Cape of Good Hope, some 75 miles northwest of Cape Town, on its way home with 250,000 tons of Persian Gulf crude oil, when at 1:30 a.m. crewmen discovered a fire near the ship's bridge. The crew attacked the blaze with foam extinguishers, but within minutes the fire was out of control. Said Captain Alfonso Civera: "The whole ship became an inferno."

As the crew members ran for the lifeboats, the flames ignited the cargo, which had begun to spill into the sea. For most of the day, the tanker burned, sending thick coils of black smoke rolling hundreds of feet into the air and bathing the area in an eerie orangish glow. Strong westerly winds blew a 75-mile-long cloud of choking smog toward shore, depositing thick black goo on houses and cars and coating newly shorn sheep with an oily film. Up to 25 miles inland, farmers reported an "oily rain" falling on their crops.

Left aboard the Castillo de Bellver were Sailor Jose Vea, who had slept while the ship caught fire, and one other crew member. The two men dived overboard, but after an hour in the icy water Vea realized that he would soon die of exposure.

He managed to climb back onto the vessel and, expecting to die, changed into his best suit. Then he huddled on the stern, trapped between towering flames and the cold sea. At last, four hours later, a rescue-helicopter pilot spotted Vea through the smoke and flew within ten yards of the burning deck to winch him to safety. Vea described his ordeal as "uncomfortably hot." Thirty-two other crew members were safely taken from lifeboats by a trawler; three men are presumed dead.

At 10 a.m., a series of explosions tore the abandoned 1,000-ft.-long tanker in half, spraying burning oil for hundreds of yards in a vast arc around the wreckage. Caught in the curtain of fire that rose from the growing oil slick, the aft section, containing about 100,000 tons of crude, quickly sank. Supported by a pocket of air, the bow section remained afloat vertically, like a six-story-high buoy, with an estimated 40,000 tons of oil still trapped in its tanks.

The hulk, leaking oil at a rate of about one ton an hour, posed a danger to the dozens of ships that round the cape every day. In a daring maneuver, a private helicopter, with air force planes monitoring the situation, lowered two divers onto the wreck to attach a towline to the tanker's bow. A powerful tugboat then began to tow the wreckage 100 miles out to sea, where it will be sunk in some 6,000 feet of water.

The disaster left behind an oil slick that at one point measured 1,200 sq. mi. For at least three days, it threatened marine species along South Africa's coast, including the rock lobster and half the world's population of jackass penguins. But inexplicably, the seasonal westerly wind that was blowing the slick toward shore shifted back to a southeaster, pushing the sticky mass, including a particularly threatening "mousse" of heavy oil, back out to sea. The favorable weather, declared Bill Bricknell, South Africa's chief oil-pollution-control officer, "has been nothing short of miraculous." --By Kenneth W. Banta.

Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.