Salem (supertanker)

P1

• Sea Sovereign
• South Sun
• Lema

Lloyd 's Register of Shipping

The Salem was a crude oil tanker that was sunk on 17 January 1980 as part of a 100 - million-dollar fraud off the Senegalese coast.

History

The ship

The tanker was built in 1969 on behalf of the Stockholm A / B Salenrederierna on the Kockums shipyard in Malmö. 1977 sold the Swedish shipping company the tanker to the Liberian Pimmerton Shipping Ltd. , Who renamed the ship in South Sun and the ship management in the hands of Wallem Ship Management Ltd.. presented in Hong Kong. Two years later, the South Sun was sold to the American company Oxford Shipping Inc.. The ship has now received the name of Salem, but remained under the Liberian flag.

Charge and sinking

On November 30, 1979, the Salem left the port of Piraeus with the determination of Kuwait. In the Kuwaiti port of Mina Al Ahmadi, the ship on behalf of an Italian charterer invited approximately 194,000 tonnes of light crude oil to the port of destination Genoa. The tanker, which was covered up with his load in the meantime at Lloyd 's of London, Mina Al Ahmadi left on December 10, drove the East African coast despite its port of destination Genoa along and met on 27 December under the name Lema in Durban, South Africa an. There, the ship put out 170 - to 180,000 tons of cargo and took the same amount of ballast water in order to remain at full depth. Then it left the port again on January 2, 1980 and was found on 17 January under the name Salem off the Senegalese coast in distress. The tanker British Trident took over the crew of the sinking tanker.

Detection of fraud

The oil cargo from Kuwait was sold four days after leaving the port of Mina Al Ahmadi its owners in Genoa for 56 million U.S. dollars to the Shell Group. As the tanker British Trident took the shipwrecked crew of Salem, fell on first, which had taken these both complete their belongings as well as a number of other objects, and even the duty-free goods and sandwiches in the lifeboat. That, although the tanker should be dropped so quickly after several explosions that no longer had enough time to save the ship's log. Far more striking was that the decrease in tankers, despite its ostensible charge of nearly 200,000 tons of crude oil barely left a trace of oil. Already on board the British ship expressed a Tunisian crew member that they had sunk the tanker Salem.

Follow

After losing the Salem Lloyd 's of London insurance received a call about 56.3 million U.S. dollars from the owner of the ship. It was the largest individual claim Lloyds had received up to that time. Investigations by Lloyd's revealed that the South African oil company Sasol had bought the oil of the Lema / Salem in Durban for 43 million U.S. dollars. The tanker had already so why go down to about the embezzlement of deleted in Durban 170 - conceal to 180,000 tons of cargo.