Raise the Costa Concordia: the most expensive maritime salvage operation in history

The Costa Concordia will finally be righted next week in the largest and most expensive maritime salvage operation in history.

The cost of lifting the giant cruise liner, which sank off the coast of Tuscany in January 2012, off the sea bed, has ballooned to £500million - a figure that could rise if there are problems, organisers admitted.

Thirty-two people died when the ship, with 4,200 passengers onboard, hit rocks and ran aground off the island of Giglio after an ill-judged 'salute' to inhabitants by the ship’s captain.

The enormous operation, to pull the ship off the reef where it capsized, is due to start at dawn on Monday, weather permitting, and will take 10 to 12 hours, with 500 people working on the project.

An underwater platform has been built on which the ship will come to rest as a system of jacks and underwater cables haul it upright.

Workers will look for the bodies of two people, an Italian and an Indian unaccounted for since the disaster, as machines haul the 114,000-tonne ship upright and underwater cameras comb the seabed......

A 500-member salvage team from 24 nations will be conducting the operation to move the ship, known in nautical terms as parbuckling, before the autumn storm season arrives, when winds and powerful waves risk battering it to the point it won't hold together.

Dozens of crank-like pulleys will start slowly rotating the ship upright at a rate of about 3metres per hour....

Although parbuckling is a tested way to set upright capsized vessels, the operation has never been applied to a huge cruise liner.

From this webpage:http://www.ussoklahomabb37.ussindianabb58.com/oklahomasalvage.html

The last paragraph is one to pause reflect upon:

The righting and refloating of the capsized battleship Oklahoma was the largest of the Pearl Harbor salvage jobs, and the most difficult. Since returning this elderly and very badly damaged warship to active service was not seriously contemplated, the major part of the project only began in mid-1942, after more immediately important salvage jobs were completed. Its purpose was mainly to clear an important mooring berth (F-5) for further use, and only secondarily to recover some of Oklahoma’s weapons and equipment.

The first task was turning Oklahoma upright. During the latter part of 1942 and early 1943, an extensive system of righting frames (or “bents”) and cable anchors (pad-eyes) was installed on the ship’s hull, twenty-one large winches were firmly mounted on nearby Ford Island, and cables were rigged between ship and shore. In order to distribute the strain fore and aft 21 triangular timber righting frames 40 feet high were erected on her capsized bottom. From the steel cap at the apex of each bent six heavy steel cables led to the 126 pad-eyes (21 bents x 6 cables each = 126 pad-eyes) welded into the inverted vessel’s starboard side along a line where the greatest leverage could be exerted. Also, from each steel cap at the apex two steel cables led to the enormous 16-sheave burton tackle whose pendant was geared at 8000-to-1 ratio to a 5-horsepower electric winch firmly embedded ia a deep concrete foundation on Ford Island. Fuel oil, ammunition and some machinery were removed to lighten the ship. Divers worked in and around her to make the hull as airtight as possible. Coral fill was placed alongside her bow to ensure that the ship would roll, and not slide, when pulling began.

The actual righting operation began on 8 March 1943. The twenty-one 5-horsepower motors pulled the big ship over to a 90-degree position in a little over one hundred hours. The bents and cables were then removed one at a time, and a new hold taken by the refastened cables topside, with rerigging of cables taking place as necessary as the ship turned over. This part of the operation continued until mid-June 1943, until she was righted completely.

To ensure that the ship remained upright, the cables were left in place during the refloating phase of the operation. Oklahoma’s port side had been largely torn open by Japanese torpedos, and a series of patches had to be installed. This involved much work by divers and other working personnel, as did efforts to cut away wreckage, close internal and external fittings, remove stores and the bodies of those killed on 7 December 1941. In Oklahoma, as in all the sunken ships, decomposed organic matter from the provisions, clothing and bodies of the victims generated a gas so deadly that even when water was freed from the compartments men had to work with gas masks. The ship came afloat in early November 1943, and was drydocked in late December, after nearly two more months of work.

Once in Navy Yard hands, Oklahoma most severe structural damage was repaired sufficiently to make her watertight. Guns, some machinery, and the remaining ammunition and stores were taken off. After several months in Drydock Number Two, the ship was again refloated and moored elsewhere in Pearl Harbor. She was sold to a scrapping firm in 1946, but sank in a storm while under tow from Hawaii to the west coast in May 1947.

During the salvage process, when the ship was rolled over and made watertight, about 400 bodies were recovered. Only 35 of them were positively identified, so the rest were interned in a mass grave in the National Cemetery of Hawaii.

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