Ship disaster teaches Samsa a media lesson

RAY SMUTS
IT HAS taken a ship disaster - in this case the grounding of the container ship Sea-Land Express off Cape Town a little more than a year ago - for the South African Maritime Safety Authority to learn a valuable lesson.
No sooner had the disaster occurred than rumours abounded about the purpose of the vessel’s voyage; was she not perhaps clandestine in view of certain hazardous cargo on board?
There were also public calls for the vessel’s Master (apparently since dismissed) to be arrested over the mishap which cost millions of rand to resolve. The ship was finally pulled free from her Sunset Beach perch 19 days later.
“The Sea-Land Express was a hard lesson for us as we did not realise a story was developing because the ship’s operators (US Ship Management Inc) and a representative for the charterers (Maersk Sealand) refused to talk,” Master Mariner Captain Bill Dernier, intimately involved with many maritime disasters off the South African coastline in his capacity as executive manager:operations, told FTW.
With this experience behind, Dernier says Samsa was well prepared when the next major disaster occurred, the holing of the giant bulk carrier Cape Africa about 300 miles off Cape Town.
Having ordered the Taiwanese-owned vessel to keep 120 miles off the coast, Samsa put together a Ôcasualty response team’ , closely involving the media during the entire salvage operation.
This proactive approach, in Dernier’s view, avoided a repetition of the Sea-Land Express affair.