Ilyasbey is a small, typical coastal fishing and farming town located halfway along Türkiye’s Black Sea Coast. It is an arduous eight-hour drive eastward from Istanbul and what can only be described as challenging driving.
The manic highway traffic of Istanbul City and suburbs transitions to a winding coastal road at the port city of Zonguldak. The one-and-a-half lane, unmarked road weaves around the contours of the west-east running coastline all the way to Samsun.
At the larger river mouths, villages and towns are established on either side of the river deltas, with the bigger towns running upriver until the gradient makes building impossible.
Any motoring mistakes made on blind corners, black ice, dodging motorised carts or sleeping dogs on the road can result in an unguarded 300-metre drop to the Black Sea below. Numerous ravines and valleys host creeks and rivers prone to flash flooding when even moderate rains fall.
This coastline is steep too in every respect, so much so that the southern winter sun doesn’t shine directly on the shoreline for many months of the year.
Many towns have constructed breakwater ports, many whose structures exhibit storm damage caused by sudden northerly gales. The breakwaters provide shelter for fishermen as they pursue and net the schools of herring, pilchard and mackerel along the coast.
The unpredictable gales led the Turks to name the sea Karadenız or Black Sea. The harsh winters result in the towns and villages being left to only their permanent residents, subsistence farmers, fishermen and communal dogs, as seasonal visitors retreat to Istanbul or Ankara.
The grounding
Just to the west of Ilyasbey is Cape Kerempe (Kerempe Burnu) with its historic lighthouse. Between Cape Kerempe and the tip of Crimea (and the Russian Ukraine war) is the narrowest section of the Black Sea at 143 nautical miles.
According to legend, Jason and the Argonauts set out from ancient Greece to find the Golden Fleece in the land of Colchis (now Georgia), a kingdom at the Black Sea’s eastern end.
Fortunately, Jason’s ship the Argo was more successful in rounding Cape Kerempe than the fully loaded container feeder ship Maren, which ran aground near the cape in March 2023 whilst on a voyage, also from Piraeus to Poti, Georgia.
The vessel was declared a constructive total loss (CTL) due to extensive bottom damage that resulted in flooding of three cargo holds and the engine room.
Following the declaration of CTL, TMC Marine was instructed by P and I insurers to attend Maren, supervise the wreck’s depollution, discharge the sound cargo for on-shipping as well as discharge, manage and dispose of the distressed cargo.
ARAS Salvage of Istanbul was appointed as the initial salvors for those works. ARAS is a family company with a long history of successful salvages and wreck removals in Turkish waters as well as in the Black and Mediterranean Seas.
The final task for TMC was to run an invitation to tender process to select a suitably experienced and resourced wreck removal contractor and supervise the full wreck removal of Maren. ARAS was also appointed as contractor for FWR.
Whilst working with ARAS, I gained a deeper appreciation of ARAS’s capability, and of Turkish/Ottoman culture itself.
This became a necessity as the Australian language was barely spoken and so I learnt basic Turkish. In four months, I only met three other non-Turkish English speakers, one an Iraqi gentleman whom I apologised to for the destruction of his country. His simple response was “thank you, what can one do!”
Ilyasbey did not have any accommodation, so we lived in the town of Inebolu 90 minutes drive along the coast road to the east. The daily commute guaranteed long days, often beginning and ending in darkness, as the salvors work is never done.
The potholed road to Ilyasbey port winds through the village, terminating at the fishermen’s tea (Cai) house. Kamal, the retired elderly fisherman, who reportedly spent years in a Turkish prison for crimes unspecified, was always at hand to serve the salvage crew with fresh, strong tea whilst the crew boat Porsuk (Pig) was loaded.
Old men, tanned to leather seated inside the Cai House, nodded sagely skyward in quiet appreciation of salvors work, whilst the salvage crew sipped tea. The communal dogs, hungry after the winter, migrated quayside when they heard the herring fishermen’s air-cooled engines put-putting as the little boats returned to port.
Any herring damaged during extraction from the nets were tossed to the hungry dogs. After a while the salvors saved their lunch scraps for the dogs, ensuring that Porsuk was also always welcomed back to port no matter what the time.
A complicated task
The dangers of travelling from the casualty to Ilyasbey at night were revealed when one of the local fishermen told us that several sea mines had been sighted near Cape Kerempe. The coast guard detonated this Russian ordnance adjacent to the wreck.
I asked Berkan if the Turkish people were worried by the war, he replied that Türkiye was surrounded by Iran, Iraq and Syria and that everyone knew not to mess with the Ottoman Empire. As for the Russians, they were just being Russian.
The depollution of the wreck was complicated by oil migrating beyond the flooded engine room to the duct keel and a cargo hold. Oil was extracted from intact tanks with a steam generation system liquefying the coagulated heavy fuel oil allowing it to be pumped to tanks on the crane barge Koca Seyit.
The depollution of loose oil was painstakingly undertaken using skimmers. Depollution continued to a point where, with the bulk of the hydrocarbons removed, sound cargo discharge could commence.
Onboard the casualty discharge of containers was facilitated by hot wiring the casualty’s cranes to a portable genset. With a five-degree list, container lashings were released using working at height specialists. Containers were loaded onto ARAS’s two self-propelled and dynamically positioned barges.
The ongoing depollution and cargo removal was made unpleasant by reefer cargos of fish, shrimp and chicken that thawed to liquid waste as the days lengthened and warmed.
Depollution and cargo removal was made unpleasant by reefer cargos of fish, shrimp and chicken that thawed as the days lengthened and warmed
Whilst salvors toiled away onsite discharging containers to the barges, ARAS Project Manager Niazi and ARAS’ Mr Fixit Berkan and I drove the length of the Black Sea negotiating with customs officials and harbour masters to locate a port agreeable to land sound containers and even more problematically, the distressed ones.
Eventually, and as a first step, it was determined that sound cargo could be landed at Samsun, 165 nautical miles by sea or eight hours by car, east of the wreck site.
The sound cargo was then to be on shipped to its original destination of Poti. As this sound cargo was discharged, the Samsun authorities finally agreed with strict conditions to the landing, assessing and processing distressed cargo (DC) containers at Samsun.
My previous experience in distressed cargo with Rena and Kea Trader proved invaluable in developing a distressed
cargo system.
Simultaneously, Maren’s charterer pursued cargo interests for notices of abandonment for the 111 obviously distressed cargo such as tobacco, cars and paper products that had been underwater and oiled for eight weeks.
The casualty’s hull condition was monitored daily on board by TMC. Using those inputs, the London Naval Architects used damaged condition software to calculate hull stresses and ground reaction.
The risk being excessive longitudinal stresses resulting in hull girder failure, likewise if the ground reaction reduced too much then the casualty could become lively and start moving. To counter this Cargo Hold 3 was deliberately flooded.
The adventure ends
As the site work drew to a close, TMC in London had issued the wreck removal invitation to tender documents, assessed the bidders with the client and selected ARAS as the preferred contractor.
Despite the wreck being capable of being refloated there were no ship recycling yards around the Black Sea. The Bosphorus Authority prohibited the transit of wrecks through its waterway despite the accessibility of Turkish ship recycling yards on the Mediterranean Coast. This left demolition in situ as the only viable option.
ARAS split their operational team in two, with half the guys relocating to Samsun to receive the distressed cargo. The last container was discharged using a tandem crane lift. The 40-footer of cocoa weighing in at a respectable 65 tonnes.
This signalled the end of our time at Ilyasbey, but not before we vaccinated all the herring dogs for worms, fleas and mange.
A final cup of tea was had at the tea house and one of Maren’s lifebuoys was presented to Kamal. He was so touched that I think I saw the hard old man’s eyes water, just a little.
The remainder of the team and myself relocated to Samsun, enjoying its cosmopolitan vibe and open-air bistros as we dealt with the remaining distressed cargo. By then the team were brothers (Kardeşler), they gave me a nickname Başkan (President) Roger, Berkan was Adam Reis (Chief Man).
The whole city flooded one morning after what I thought was a moderate rain. Our hotel basement and lobby flooded as did our project cars parked in the streets.
We had nowhere to go so we used our salvage skills to pump out the hotel and lived like savages for a few days. As the Iraqi gentleman said, what can one do!
This article appeared in the October | November 2024 edition of DCN Magazine
