They fit the enormous scale of Alaska, these largest of land carnivores. Shambling along a salmon-packed river, an Alaska brown bear and her cubs suggest ail that is awesome yet vulnerable about the great land the Aleuts called Alakshak. It has been proposed that some 80 million wilderness acres of that great land be [...]
Continue reading Preserving America’s Last Great Wilderness It wasn’t the flares but the concern of Chief Mate Strano that was responsible for their rescue. He knew that Amoco Cadiz would not hold together in those seas. Back in the warmth of the air base, he made his case strongly enough so that the commander consented to send Bravo Alpha out again, piloted [...]
Continue reading The Shore SHE touched aft first, riding a high wave over a spire of rock, then coming down to impale herself on it. The rock cut cleanly through her bottom, thrust deep into the complex network of piping and machinery of the pump room, and ruptured Number 4 cargo tank’s rear wall. The result was spectacular and [...]
Continue reading Death Throes Amoco’s official position is that Captain Bardari was at all times master of his ship, free to make any decision that seemed best. But it is on public record that Bardari was in radio-telephone communication with his Chicago headquarters throughout the day and night. Moreover, while he drifted agonizingly towards the Breton coast, Amoco Chicago [...]
Continue reading One Last Try The hydraulic energies which such steering systems harness are accompanied by a phenomenon that is fraught with danger : high pressures. It is a muscular genie who is bottled up inside those oil pipes and the harder the shove of the rams against the tiller, the harder he is trying to burst out. Shipbuilders and [...]
Continue reading Portsall Rocks The supertanker Amoco Cadiz, 1,096 feet long and 167 wide, her holds filled with 68 million gallons of crude oil, lumbered northwards through heavy seas, rain squalls and gale-force winds at the upper end of the Bay of Biscay. Pushing her 230,000 tons of dead weight inexorably forward at 11 knots, she was sailing a [...]
Continue reading The Wreck of the AMOCO CADIZ