On June 23, 1989, several hundred thousand gallons of fuel oil spilled over the mouths of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island after the World Prodigy MV tankers ran aground on the reef near Aquidneck Island.
World Prodigy , a 532 foot (162 m) ship operated by Ballard Shipping under the banner of Greece, was heading to Providence and Tiverton, Rhode Island when at about 4:40 pm he ran aground on Brenton Reef, about 1 mile (1.6 km) offshore from Brenton Point State Park, after passing the wrong side of the buoy that marks the channel. He has a cargo of about 8.1 million gallons of fuel oil. The runway damaged four of the eight cargo ship compartments; preliminary reports indicate that as many as one million gallons of oil has been spilled, but subsequent estimates say the number is about 300,000 gallons. The oil covers about 50 square miles and is stranded on the shore, but because of its low viscosity and its crashing wave-breaking ocean, it evaporates fairly quickly. The Coast Guard estimates that the cleaning costs are about $ 2 million.
The collision damaged the hull of World Prodigy in two places, but he hovered over the reef in early July and repaired at the shipyard in New York City.
After the collision, World Prodigy Captain , Iakovos Georgudis, was charged with two violations of the Water and Ballard Shipping Act with one offense. Both the captain and the company plead guilty; Ballard paid a $ 1 million fine and Georgudis $ 10,000. In December 1990, the National Transportation Safety Board released the results of their investigation of the oil spill, discovering that Captain Georgudis had suffered from lack of sleep and was troubled by working on documents at the time of the collision. World Prodigy , having arrived at the mouth of the bay earlier than planned, never took a harbor pilot, and shortly before he ran aground, Captain Georgudis had sent his first two officers and the guard away from the bridge to work on his duties, another task, which the NTSB assessed left the ship "without a qualified quality watchman for a few minutes before the runway."
Video 1989 Narragansett Bay oil spill
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Source of the article : Wikipedia
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