Weather hampers bid to salvage sunken cargo ship

Bad weather today hampered the salvage operation on a cargo ship which sank in the English Channel taking with it £30 million of luxury cars.

The Tricolor, a Norwegian-registered car carrier, had 2,862 BMWs, Volvos and Saabs on board bound for British and US showrooms when it was in collision with a container ship.

The crew of 24 scrambled into lifeboats as the 50,000-ton, 200-metre ship went down within 90 minutes.

The men were taken to Dunkirk but were not thought to be injured.

Smit Tak, the company commissioned to do the initial salvage work is , the largest salvage firm of its kind in the world.

Spokesman Lars Walder said a team of eight and a salvage boat were on site 30 miles East of the Ramsgate coast.

Their first priority was to check for any leakage of the 2,000 tons of oil on board.

But high winds and strong sea currents have prevented divers from going down to the wreck to assess the damage.

Mr Walder said: “Our first priority is to see if there is any oil leaking and we want to pump out the oil but we have not been able to send divers down because the weather is very bad.

“They will see if there is any oil leaking from the ship and maybe patch some holes and investigate the status of the ship.”

He said the firm had not been assigned to raise the ship but they would be making a salvage plan.

“That’s something to be decided by the owner but there are not many parties that are able to do it.

“We will need big floating cranes and barges and we have to try to up-right the ship and maybe take out some of the cargo, depending on the state of the ship.”

Mr Walder likened the operation on the Tricolor to that of the Herald of Free Enterprise – which sank off Zeebrugge, Belgium, 15 years ago – and which Smit Tak also salvaged.

He said: “We are the biggest salvage company in the world so we have done many of these jobs. It’s not difficult.”

The French warship Geranium dispatched from Cherbourg, remained alongside to alert other ships to the Tricolor’s presence in the water, said French coastguards.

A single buoy also marks the spot, and once the weather improves, three or four will be put up to prevent collisions with the wreck, a spokeswoman said today.