UK Detains 10 Ships in February

The Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) announced that 10 foreign ships were under detention in UK ports during February2004 after failing Port State Control safety inspection.

Latest monthly figures show that 4 foreign ships were detained in UK ports during February 2004 along with 6 other ships still under detention from previous months. The overall rate of detentions compared with inspections carried out over the last 12 months is 6.0% which is a decrease of 0.4% on the detention rate to January. Three of the four vessels detained during the month were targeted by the Paris MOU for priority inspection.

The ships detained in February included the following:-

• a Hong Kong flag, 18117 GT, 1981, bulk carrier for 3 days in Portbury with 21 deficiencies including rotten unusable lifejackets, lifeboat davit attachments wasted, unsatisfactory fire drill and failure of onboard Safety Management System

• a Maltese, 996 GT, 1980 built, general cargo ship in Ipswich with 25 deficiencies including no sanitary water, no hot water, lack of provisions for crew, fire pump inoperative, engineroom fire alarm inoperative, poor fire drill, nautical publications and charts out of date, dirty engineroom and windlass drum end broken in two

• a Maltese, 823 GT, 1982, ro/ro cargo ship in Harwich with 16 deficiencies including insufficient charts, 40 degree gyro compass error and damage to hull