Asgard salvage campaigners are angry over comment by Minister that ‘we can’t afford it at this time’
THIS WEEK Capt Colm Newport, master of the sail training ship Asgard II, received an e-mail from a group of Belgian shipowners. They said they had a potential €4 million budget and were interested in salvaging the Asgard II, which sank last year in French waters, and restoring it for sail training.
Capt Newport anticipates that the offer will be one of many such approaches. The e-mail landed as the vessel’s owner, Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, was en route to Chad, leaving in his wake an angry reaction to his decision announced on Monday to leave the hull on the seabed.
O’Dea said spending in the region of €2 million on a salvage effort, the outcome of which is uncertain, was something “we cannot afford at this time”. He said he had accepted a recommendation by Coiste an Asgard, the ship’s management committee, to “initiate planning for the procurement of a new vessel that will be similar in design to Asgard II but with a steel hull”, as steel would be less expensive than wood to build with and maintain.
“While I cannot commit public monies to a salvage operation, I am open, over the coming months, to considering any realistic and funded proposals from private individuals or groups as to the future of the Asgard II vessel,” Mr O’Dea said.
This last statement has upset supporters of the campaign to retrieve the ship, initiated by Afloatmagazine last month. Capt Newport, who was congratulated by O'Dea last year for his handling of the rescue of four fellow crew and 20 trainees when the ship sank 22km west of Belle-île in north-west France on September 11th, is very disappointed at the Minister's decision.
He has spent the six months since the ship’s sinking working with Coiste an Asgard on a salvage, and had secured a contract offer for the State from Dutch salvors, Mammoet. The company is best known for its successful lifting with Smit International of the 9,000 tonne Kursk, the Russian submarine which sank in August 2000 in the Barents Sea with the loss of 118 crew.
The estimated price for the lift would have been around €2 million, and he also identified several French shipyards capable of carrying out emergency treatment work on the ship before full restoration. He commissioned the remote underwater surveys on Coiste an Asgard’s behalf which showed that the hull was upright and capable of retrieval from 83 metres of water.
During the first such examination by remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in September, a significant fracture in one of the hull’s planks was identified. Marine experts believe the fractured plank could have been caused on impact with a semi-submerged container or other object which is a common hazard in busy shipping lanes.
SPEAKING FOR THE first time in detail about the events on and after September 11th last to The Irish Timesthis week, Capt Newport says he still has no idea what caused the sinking. He believes it was pure luck that the vessel did not capsize within minutes of taking water.
The 27-year-old brigantine was en route from Falmouth in Cornwall to La Rochelle in France for a maritime function, to which the Naval Service patrol ship, LE Niamh, had also been invited. Routine maintenance was due to be carried out there.
Capt Newport was off duty and lying on his bunk – “because you never really are off duty and you never sleep” — when the bilge alarm sounded, indicating that water needed to be pumped out of the ship’s bilges, which can be a routine procedure.
“However, within a microsecond, the bo’sun, who sleeps in the trainee mess, said that the floor was flooding. The nature of these ships is that they are built with no keel, which means that any large ingress of water causes a free surface effect, which can cause a capsize within minutes. It was a bit like being a pilot, finding your engines have stopped and your plane has turned into a bus in the sky. We knew we had to evacuate.
“We were taken to Belle-île where the lifeboat service and the community was fantastic. We checked the trainees to make sure no one was in shock or developing hypothermia, and a doctor was provided. I phoned to try and organise a tug, as the ship was still afloat when we left with its emergency lighting. However, the coastguard then told me it had sunk.”
Capt Newport was taken in for questioning in his wet clothes by the French gendarmerie. “This is standard procedure under French maritime law,” he says. The fact that the ship was owned by the Minister for Defence, and might therefore be military, caused some initial confusion.
He had to protect trainees from press interviews on arrival home, as the sinking was now the subject of inquiries by the Marine Casualty Investigation Board working with the French authorities.
HAVING BEEN RETAINED as a consultant to Coiste an Asgard, Capt Newport is now working as a pilot in Dublin Port.
He believes that the State has a duty to retrieve Asgard II at a time when national spirits – not just a ship’s hull – need to be lifted. “Thousands of people grew up on this vessel, it was an ambassador for us abroad in tall ships races, and a bridge between ship and shore.”
He emphasises that a salvage and restoration has to be professional, and he fears any attempt to raise it by private interests without sufficient experience. Allianz, the ship’s insurers, have confirmed that the ship will remain in the ownership of the State even after it pays the €3.8 million cheque for total loss.
Coiste an Asgard says it is committed to continuing the national sail training programme, has berths booked this year on the Naval Service yacht Creidne and the Norwegian tall ship Christian Radich. However, it concedes that it is a matter for the Department of Defence as to how a project to build a replica proceeds.
Capt Gerry Burns, spokesman for the Asgard campaign, says Mr O’Dea has given no clear indication that the insurance money will be used for this and claims that “no one believes the Government will built a replacement ship”.
Capt Newport doesn’t intend to let the issue rest. Back in the days of sail, warship crews often nailed their ship’s flag or colours to the mast to signify that they would never surrender, and would fight to the last man.
“If everyone in the State gave just one euro to bring this ship home, we would already have enough for the task,” he says.
“I think it is time we nailed our colours to our mast, and we’re interested in support from a suitable sponsor.”
A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE
Former defence minister Paddy Donegan, initiated the Asgard II project in 1973, a year before completion of the last official sail training season by the famous gun-running ketch, Asgard, owned by Erskine Childers.
Asgard II was designed by the late naval architect Jack Tyrrell of Arklow, Co Wicklow, and was launched in Arklow by Charles Haughey in 1981. The new ship with a permanent crew of five took 500 volunteers a year, totalling 13,000 in its 27-year lifetime. The annual budget was €1 million.
The ship’s mission was to ensure that anyone over 16 years of age would have the opportunity to spend time at sea, regardless of background or income.
It became an ambassador for Ireland, winning numerous legs of tall ships races, coming just four minutes behind the Russian tall ship Mir on one occasion, and crossing the Atlantic several times.
It participated in Australia’s bicentennial and tall ships race in 1988, when it is reputed that Princess Diana wore green in honour of the Irish brigantine.