Ship 'about to split in two' off Gibraltar

A ship damaged in a collision off Gibraltar was expected to split in two and sink, releasing its cargo of 27,000 tons of scrap metal, officials said today.

“The ship is going to break in two in a matter of hours or days,” Gibraltar’s Port Affairs minister John Holiday told Spain’s Cadena SER radio.

He said Gibraltar had “the adequate logistics in place” to cope with whatever happened.

Holiday said the cargo would sink to the bottom of the sea.

A Gibraltar government statement, meanwhile, said the part of the ship containing some 500 tons of fuel was expected to remain afloat and would be towed to safety.

The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship New Flame has been partly submerged since it ran into a Danish tanker carrying 37,000 tons of unleaded petrol on August 12.

The tanker was able to proceed to the Spanish port of Algeciras.