History of Europe

1998:Pallas accident triggers oil spill

October 1998:An unmanned freighter is ablaze and drifts on the North Sea. The name of the burning ghost ship:"Pallas". An environmental catastrophe is looming in the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea.

A routine trip gets out of hand

When the "Pallas" left the Swedish port of Hudiksvall north of Stockholm on October 20, the situation on board the motor cargo ship from Italy was initially calm. It is to bring 2,500 tons of sawn timber from Sweden to Morocco. The 147 meter long ship struggles through heavy storms and five meter high North Sea waves. On October 25, 1998, however, hectic broke out on board:at around 2:30 p.m. the crew discovered that smoke was coming out of two cargo hatches.

25. October, 11:54 p.m.:The "Pallas" broadcasts Mayday

The captain tries to smother the fire, but the smoke from the hold of the "Pallas" grows stronger. Shortly before midnight, the situation got completely out of control. At 11:54 p.m., the ship broadcasts the international distress call Mayday. A Danish and a German rescue helicopter make their way to the blazing freighter.

Dangerous rescue from the air

Rescuing the crew directly from the deck is out of the question, because meter-high flames and stormy seas hinder the operation. The crew members climb into a lifeboat, which fails to release properly, tilts and hits the ship's side. The men fall into the North Sea, in which burning parts of the cargo are already drifting. A crew member is seriously injured, the ship's cook dies of a heart attack. Again and again the rescuers rappel down from the helicopter until they have pulled all crew members on board the helicopter.

The burning ghost ship runs aground

On the morning of October 26, the German authorities realized that the burning freighter was drifting towards Sylt without a tugboat nearby. In the early afternoon four German ships reach the wrecked "Pallas". They fight the open fire with water and foam from fire-fighting cannons. Two towing attempts fail because the lines tear. A storm from the west drives the still burning freighter towards the coast. In shallow water, the ships of the helpers can no longer follow him. On October 29, the "Pallas" ran aground southwest of the island of Amrum.

All rescue attempts fail

In the following days, two English tugboats also try to salvage the ship on behalf of the Italian shipping company Bogazzi. Almost two weeks after the accident, it became clear that the "Pallas" had a kink in the hull and a crack from which oil was leaking. The wreck can no longer be towed free. 54 degrees 32 minutes north, 8 degrees 17 minutes east remains the final position of the freighter, which has stashed 756 tons of fuel, heavy fuel and lubricating oil.

20 kilometers of oil

The consequences of the accident are clear from the air:a plume of oil several hundred meters wide spills over almost 20 kilometers in the North Sea. First the oil drifts seaward, then it reaches the island beaches - first Amrum and Föhr, later Sylt and to a lesser extent the Halligen Hooge and Langeneß. Firefighters and countless volunteers clean the beaches of oil slicks and rescue oil-smeared birds, special ships dam the oil at sea and pump it out. A total of 450 tons of oil are taken from the North Sea, from the wreck and from the beaches.

Around 16,000 seabirds die in the spilled oil, especially eider ducks. 16,000 seabirds die

The damaged "Pallas" was only finally deleted at the end of November. The national park office estimates the number of dead seabirds at 16,000:Mainly eider ducks and scoters have become victims of the oil. The shipwreck thus triggered the largest bird death on German coasts that an oil spill has ever caused.

Finally, thousands of cubic meters of sand are poured into the hold of the wreck. A special building material should bind the oil residues in the tanks and engine room. Almost 1,000 tons of rubble hold the shipwreck in place, eight kilometers south-west of Amrum. There it is still in about six meters deep water. From the southern tip of the island, the remains of the "Pallas" can be seen with the naked eye on a clear day and at low tide.

The catastrophe has consequences

The shipwreck is also not without consequences on a political level. A committee of inquiry of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament is dealing intensively with the disaster. The final report from the year 2000 comprises more than 600 pages. Among other things, he came to the conclusion that unclear responsibilities delayed the rescue operation. One consequence:In 2003, the Havariekommando, a joint federal and state institution, began its service. Since then, it has coordinated operations in the event of serious shipwrecks on the North and Baltic Seas.


10/25/2018 8:08 am

Editor's note:An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the CCME also coordinates rescue operations at sea. In fact, this is still the responsibility of the German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked Persons. The CCME is responsible for the overall operational management, the salvage of distressed vessels, the fight against pollutants and fire as well as the care of the injured.