It was New Year’s Eve. The last weather forecast had given wind south-westerly force 5 increasing to 6 with poor visibility in sleet or snow showers. Between Land’s End and the Scillies, and already into the northbound traffic lane, the tanker Petros Jupiter, with 57,000 tons of crude for the Llandarcy refinery in South Wales, made a long slow turn to starb’d, finally settling on to a course of 95°.
Her cargo had been resold late that afternoon, but delay in obtaining signature on certain documents had meant that it was not until 22.54 that her master was informed of the transaction and instructed to alter course for Rotterdam. Less than an hour later, at 23.47, the alarm bells sounded on the bridge.
Like many of the early VLCCs, the Petros Jupiter was just about worn out. She had been built for the Gulf Oil Development Company in the sixties, at the height of the Japanese expansion in shipbuilding. Her design life at maximum efficiency was about eight
years and GODCO had sold her to a Greek company in 1975. She was now in her seventeenth year and, since rounding the Cape, steam leaks had been creating an almost permanent fog in the engine-room with the evaporator barely able to produce sufficient distilled water to replace the loss. The log would show that on two previous occasions loss of distilled water had been so great that the automatic cut-out on the single boiler had been tripped.
For ships taking the inside route between Land’s End and the Scilly Islands the northbound traffic lane is the one nearest to the mainland. But the Petros Jupiter had been on the outer edge of the lane when she had made the turn to starb’d, and being on a slow-steam voyage she was moving at barely 11 knots through the water, so that when the alarm bells sounded and the single high pressure boiler cut out, bringing both the steam turbines to a halt, she was still not clear of Land’s End.
Engine-room staff immediately switched to auxiliary power to keep the alternators going and to provide electricity, but power to drive the ship could not be restored until the accumulation of leaks in the steam pipework had been repaired and the loss of distilled water for the boiler reduced. The ship gradually lost way until finally she lay broadside to the waves, rolling sluggishly.
There she remained for over two hours, during which time she drifted about three miles in the general direction of Land’s End. By then emergency repairs had been completed and at 02.04 she was under way
again. And then, at 02.13, the unbelievable happened: the secondary reduction gear, the gear that drove the single propeller shaft, was stripped of its teeth. A journalist would write later that it had made a very expensive sound, which was the phrase used by Aristides Speridion, the Greek second engineer, who had been at that end of the engine-room when it happened.
With the secondary reduction gear useless, there was no way the Petros Jupiter could proceed and at 02.19 the master contacted Land’s End coastguard station on VHF to inform the watch officer of the situation and enquire about the availability of a tug.
The tanker was now lying helpless, wind-rode and wallowing heavily, her hull broadside to the sea, which were big and breaking. If she had been fully loaded she might still have survived, but half her cargo had been off-loaded at Corunna and she was riding quite high out of the water, her huge slab-sided hull acting as a giant sail.
Her position at this time was 8 miles from Land’s End with the Longships light bearing 058°. The wind was still south-westerly, still increasing, and the barometer was falling. The latest forecast was for southwest 7 increasing to gale 8, veering later with a possible temporary increase to strong gale 9.
The coastguard officer on watch at Land’s End told a reporter later that at this point, in the early hours of the morning with the threat of another Torrey Canyon on his hands, he very much wished he still had his SAR radar capability so that he could have monitored the tanker’s drift. Unfortunately, the radar had been
dismantled when the new coastguard station for the South West on Pendennis Point, at the entrance to Falmouth, had been completed. Even so, it did not take him long to figure out that the Petros Jupiter would need to have a tow line on board within the next four to five hours if she was not to be driven on to the rocks at Land’s End. He informed the master accordingly, warning him not to place too much reliance on his anchors and only to use them when the depth of water was shallow enough to give him a good scope of chain. At 02.23 he alerted the Falmouth station officer of the tanker’s situation enquiring, on behalf of the master, whether there was a tug stationed in the vicinity. Fortunately the Dutch tug based on Falmouth was in port.
