SS Arrow
The SS Arrow was an
Accident and loss
Arrow took on approximately 16,000 tons (10 million litres) of
The crew was taken off the vessel late in the night on February 4, 1970. After four days of rough seas and weather pounding the vessel against the rock, the deck plates and side plating began to buckle. On February 8, 1970, the tanker split into two sections. Both the
The spill
On February 5, 1970, a mile-long
Removal of the remaining bunker C
The Curb, a salvage barge from New York, was dispatched to pump the remaining oil out of the cargo tanks. In preparation for the Curb, Royal Canadian Navy divers performed tests with equipment that would be used to penetrate the tanks on the Arrow and attach hose fittings. The main challenge was that the oil had to be heated before it could be pumped out. The Curb was equipped with steam pumps that injected steam into the tanks to heat the bunker C. After the oil was pumped out of the cargo tanks, it was transferred to the
The wreck
At present the wreck still rests alongside Cerberus Rock split into two sections. On August 28, 2015, a Transport Canada aircraft spotted an oil leak in the vicinity of the wreck, and closer inspection revealed a crack in one of Arrow's decks. A temporary patch was installed in October.[5] In November 2015, cleanup crews successfully removed another 30,000 litres of oil from the wreck.[6]
References
- ^ Colton, T. (October 5, 2014). "Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point MD". ShipbuildingHistory. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
- ^ Maritime Museum of the Atlantic (5 October 2007). "Arrow - 1970". Province of Nova Scotia. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
- ^ Transport Canada (20 October 2014). "Tanker Safety and Spill Prevention". Transport Canada. Retrieved 18 November 2014.
- ^ Beson, M. (2001). "A View of The Arrow Spill and Its Effects on The Chedabucto Bay Area" (PDF). MSVU.
- ^ Pottie, Erin (6 October 2015). "Infamous oil tanker Arrow still leaking 40 years on". The Chronicle Herald. Retrieved 2015-10-07.
- ^ Pottie, Erin (23 November 2015). "Heavy oil from Arrow shipwreck off Cape Breton removed". The Chronicle Herald. Retrieved 2015-11-24.
Further reading
- Graham D. Taylor: Imperial Standard: Imperial Oil, Exxon, and the Canadian Oil Industry from 1880. 2019 ISBN 978-1-77385-037-5 (Photo of the broken ship): p. 287, online at › bitstream: 978-1-77385-037-5.pdf SS Arrow sinking
External links
- http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?178240
- http://people.stfx.ca/rsg/SRSF/GCIFA/ArrowSpill.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20141217055435/http://www.supsalv.org/SalvReports/ARROW.pdf
- https://historicnovascotia.ca/items/show/174