Toxic Cruise Ship Causes International Trouble

An old American cruise ship sent to India to be demolished has set off a minor international incident. The government of India has barred the ship from its ports, calling it an environmental hazard, and has accused the owners of falsifying the ship’s flag and registration. The incident not only points up the toxic dangers found in old ships but also the horrors of the “ship breaking” business in India.

The ship, currently called the Platinum-II, is said to be contaminated by a number of toxic chemicals as well as asbestos, known to cause asbestos cancer. Her owners were trying to get her to the “ship breaking” yards in Alang, on the northwest coast of India. It is said the shipyards at Alang recycle about half of all ships salvaged around the world.

But the work there is done with primitive equipment and with no safety precautions. Three years ago a study commissioned by the Indian government showed that one in six workers at the Alang shipyard had symptoms of asbestos poisoning.

It appears the current owners were trying to scrap the vessel on the cheap, and got caught.

The BBC mistakenly identified the Platinum-II, a.k.a. the S.S. Independence or the S.S. Oceanic, as a former U.S. Navy vessel, but she was never in the military. Built in 1951 as a cargo vessel, she was rebuilt in 1959 as a luxury cruise ship complete with handsome penthouses and Fifth Avenue shops. She was owned by American Hawaii Cruises, and she sailed under the name S.S. Independence, although for a time she was the S.S. Oceanic Independence.

After American Hawaii Cruises went bankrupt in 2001 she became the property of the U.S. Maritime Administration. She was sold at auction to Norwegian Cruise Lines in 2003. In 2007 Norwegian Cruise Lines announced that the ship was sold again, but after that her history gets murky.

At some point her last known owner, Global Marketing Systems, was fined $518,500 for exporting the ship for scrap without prior removal of toxins such as asbestos and PCBs. It is not clear from news stories whether Global Marketing Systems still owns the ship. In any event, it may be that the cost of removing toxins is higher than what the ship might be worth as scrap, which would provide a powerful incentive to get the ship demolished without bothering with the toxin removal.

Renamed the Oceanic, in 2008 the ship was towed out of San Francisco. Her destination was supposed to be Singapore, but instead she was taken to Dubai. Where the ship is now and what might happen to her next are not clear.

[Image Credit: Christopher Glase, Stock.xchange]

— Barbara O’Brien

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.