In this archive interview about an unfortunate car ship, we look back at the case of the Cougar Ace, a car ship full of brand new Mazdas, that ran into ballast water troubles off the Aleutians in the summer of 2006. While the crew was safely evacuated, the ship remained bobbing on its side, in the relatively calm waters of the ocean, but eventually had to be towed to Portland and her cars scrapped. A member of the salvage team died in a fall on her sloping decks. Her dilemma? A computer failure caused too much ballast water to be pumped into tanks on one side of the ship. The weight imbalance caused her to lean way over, and the crew could not right her.
Photo: Kevin Bell, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Wikimedia Commons.
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