River Princess

m/v River Princess during better days in Hamburg, 1997

Credit: Joerg Seyler (shipspotting)

m/v River Princess off Candolim

Looking through my old photo collection, I stumbled upon this image of the River Princess, an enormous bulk carrier that ran aground during a fierce storm in 2000. When I was in Goa in 2009 the River Princess was in this dilapidated condition and it was another 3 years before she was salvaged and removed from the Candolim-Sinquerim beach. During these 12 years the huge bulk carrier sped up the local beach erosion enormously and local villas who had enjoyed a large beach before found it shortening by several meters each year after the monsoon had passed. Over the years the ship has settled nearly 10 meters into the seabed, taking in about 40,000 metric tons of sand. It can be easily seen from the pictures that where the waterline is the bulker appears to be fully laden.

I looked a bit in the interwebs and found some interesting reading about her, see links below. As I was usually anchored around the corner near Aguada Fort, just a short distance away I once took the jetski for a run around her and took some pics. I was itching to go onboard but decided against it as safety concerns were considerable not knowing the condition of the rusty wreck so I just settled on gawking at her from my safe place on the jetski. Anyway, I think after 9 years as a wreck she had been polished of anything useful that could be carried off.

As one can see one of the shipsides had already caved in probably by the monsoons over the years had the seas pound them into pieces.

 

River Princess wreck at Candolim Beach that has eroded the beach by several squaremeters

Specifications of River Princess
Class: Nippon Kaiji Kyōkai
IMO number: 7372177

Flag: Liberia (1975–1998/99) Vanuatu (1998/99–1999/2000)

Ship type: bulk carrier
Home port: Monrovia (1975–1998/99) Port Vila (1998 -2000)
Owner(s): 

Merchant & Miners Transportation Incorporated (1975-1985)
Laurel Shipping Corporation (1985-?)
Onassis Shipping Company (?-1998)
Salgaocar Mining Industries (1998-2003)
State Government of Goa (2003 onwards)
Shipyard: Hitachi Zosen , Innoshima, hull number 4447, delivery 1975
Stranded on 6 June 2000 at 15° 30′ 32″ N , 73° 45′ 44″ E and broken up in situ in 2012/2014

Ship dimensions and crew
Length overall:  261.22 m 
Breadth:  40.26 m
Draft (max.): 15,672 m
Tonnages: 33896 GT / 21286 NT (since 1st Jun 1995, GT 60669)
Crew 14 (last)
Main engine: 1 × Burmeister & Wain 7K90GF diesel engine (two-stroke seven-cylinder engine)
Output: 17,580 kW (24000 hp)
Top speed: 15.25 kn (28 km/h )
Propeller: 1

Capacities
Load capacity: 114.645 tons deadweight

Volume: 159.335 m³

In the web I found a few writings about wrecks of Goa as well as a few new clippings that I've copied below for easy reading. In the first one refers to it as a tanker tanker when she is a bulk carrier, big difference but similar size vessels, had she also been fully laden with oil the damage to the beach would have been many times worse. Initially I guess it was intended to recover the vessel after the monsoon but I guess plans changed when the monsoons passed and they saw the condition of the old lady. According to rediffnews: "We plan to salvage it after the monsoons in September. The ship is very strong and safe," says Anil Salgaonkar, chairman and managing director of Salgaonkar Shipping. He dismisses the fear of oil spillage claiming the ship does not contain any oil.

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Article by O Heraldo, 2 August, 2017, redacted the content only for River Princess:

Grounded ships in Goa: A brief history

On 5 June, 2000, the m/v River Princess ran aground on the Candolim-Sinquerim beach stretch. Due to bad weather the anchor snapped and the loaded oil tanker drifted to the beach. It took the Goa government 12 years, and a whopping 120 crores of taxpayer money, to finally move the ship. The environmental degradation due to this accident has been immense. An estimated 30,000 sq. mts. of public beach area is eroded, along with the livelihood opportunities of those Goans who live in this area. While the beach was slowly being eroded with each crashing wave, the government and the ship-owners dilly-dallied over how it was to be removed. The inability of the government to hold the owners of the ship, the Anil Salgaocar group, eventually meant that the people of Goa paid to clear the mess, and that too only after the beach was seriously degraded.

Brokeandenglish writes the following in 2013, it sounds like he has taken local stories as kosher and as follows one can see the urban myths creeping into the narrative with evil Russian crew (why use Russian crew when there is plenty Indian available? I did find out 5 crew were rescued by helicopter from the vessel but no information of their nationalities though) and the thieving colonial Brits and a dash of some environmental pollution, political inability and thinking it was a laden tanker, also the salvors got a bit of vitriol saying they just took the parts they liked or could it have been that some rogue actors cutting off pieces they preferred or were able to:

"Sat in the surf a hundred yards out to sea was an enormous supertanker that sat at an angle against the coastline whilst the waves crashed against its hull. As we stood and stared at the sad relic, a local explained the situation:

The name of the vessel was the River Princess and she had ran around during bad weather in the year 2000. Having been caught in a storm and having her anchor break off, her Russian crew had bailed out further off the coast, leaving the crippled ship to drift away of her own accord, eventually running aground here. It quickly became clear that the ship had embedded itself deep in the sand and was slowly leaking fuel and chemicals into the sea, polluting the beaches that provided Goa with so much of its tourist income.

Of course, such a large boat would require a considerable salvage effort anyway, but it had sustained structural damage during the storm and continued to sink further into the sand month on month. Unfortunately, India’s lax maritime laws meant that the UK-based haulage business that owned the ship would only have been obligated to remove the ship if it had been blocking a waterway. The steady stream of silhouetted tankers that passed across the distant horizon proved that this was not the case and the company walked away from the wreck without culpability.

In order to try and raise funds for the salvage operation, various salvage companies had been allowed to cherry pick any valuable industrial materials from within the ship itself. However, this was only contributing to the physical degradation of the ship and further jeopardizing her structural safety whilst making the job even less lucrative for the eventual salvager. In time, the issue had become a political football for the Goa state governors who various blamed each other and their predecessors for the inability to remove or break up the vessel successfully. In the mean-time, the hull periodically belched chemicals onto the beach and dropped shards of metal and splinters into the sea. The guy who explained the story to us had no idea what was going to happen to it."

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Wikipedia has a pretty good sum up of the whole story that I've copied below:

The River Princess was built at the Japanese shipyard Hitachi Zosen in 1975 for the shipping company Merchant & Miners Transportation Inc. as an ore carrier. The ship had two cargo holds with a total volume of 159,335 m³ for ore. The shipping company was a joint venture between the Japanese Kawasaki Group and the Australian Mt. Newman consortium. From 1985, the freighter sailed for the shipping company Laurel Shipping Corporation. 

In 1998, the Onassis Shipping Company sold the River Princess to the Indian company Salgaocar Mining Industries. The ship was in poor condition, so the new owner intended to convert the freighter into a transshipper for handling iron ore on the Mandovi River. Shortly after the ship's arrival in Goa, it was reflagged to Vanuatu after losing Liberia as its flag state, but lost this after a year as well. As of 1999/2000, the River Princess therefore no longer had a flag or ship insurance. Before the accident, conversion work had already begun and the River Princess was anchored off the port of Panjim.

Accident 2000

On 6 June 2000, during a severe monsoon storm, the River Princess drifted from its anchorage to the coast of Candolim and ran aground about 200 meters from the shore. The 14-man crew was rescued by helicopter from the Indian Coast Guard. In early September 2000, a small amount of the remaining oil on board leaked into the sea and the River Princess 's engine room filled with water. The remaining oil was then pumped out. The owner initially stated that he intended to tow the ship free after the end of the monsoon season in September. The Indian Coast Guard also signaled its willingness to provide tugs, but was waiting for support from the state government of Goa. 

Salvage attempts and expropriation

In 2001, the Goa state government passed the Goa Tourist Places (Protection & Maintenance) Act, which gave the tourism department the power to transfer a stranded vessel into state ownership if it failed to remove it. Meanwhile, a foreign salvage company had withdrawn its initial commitment to salvage the River Princess. The ship's owner then proposed scrapping the vessel in situ, which the Goa state government rejected in September 2002. In 2003, the state government issued a decree authorizing the acquisition of the River Princess by the state of Goa. 

Protests, state government reaction, judicial intervention and alleged theft

From the beginning of 2009, a protest movement of local residents gathered in the advocacy group River Princess Hatao Manch and demanded that the state government remove the stranded ship. In April 2009, the state government declared the ship a national disaster and in July of the same year formed a subcommittee of the Disaster Management Authority to deal with the removal of the River Princess .

By spring 2010, the state government had not found a suitable company that could salvage the River Princess in one piece and therefore put the ship out to tender for in-situ dismantling. A decade after the accident, the ship had sunk about ten meters into the seabed and ingested about 40,000 tons of sand. In September of that year, the Bombay High Court upheld a lawsuit by the River Princess Hatao Manch and ordered the state government to remove the ship within two months. In November 2010, the tourism department asked for an extension of the deadline. The state government had previously rejected an offer by the former shipowners, Salgaocar Mining Industries, to dismantle the ship free of charge and awarded the dismantling contract, worth 99 million rupees, to the Mumbai-based shipbreaking company Arihant Ship Breakers.

Credit: My Goa group (FB)

In December 2010, it was revealed that copper wires worth 6.2 million rupees had been stolen from the wreck. The ship's former owner, Salgaocar Mining Industries, was allegedly involved in the theft. However, the responsible authority stated that it could not prove any theft because no ship inventory lists were drawn up after the state took over the wreck. 

Demolition of the surface wreck 2011–2012

In March 2011, the shipbreaking company Arihant finally began removing the wreck, after the state government had granted permission for the removal of the wreck three months late. From April onwards, the work was delayed because the state government had the wreck checked for radioactive materials. By the end of 2011, about half of the wreck had been removed. In minor accidents, the safety lines of a work platform broke in November 2011 and the lines of a floating crane broke in June 2012 , causing both work machines to drift ashore. In May 2012, the shipbreaking company announced the completion of the dismantling work. The amount of metal removed during this phase was initially estimated at 11,300 tonnes and later at around 15,217 tonnes .

m/v River Princess being dismantled

Credit: My Goa group (FB)

Removal of remaining underwater wreckage in 2014

Underwater surveys commissioned by the state government, however, after the demolition work was completed, found that wreckage still lay on the seabed. The largest remaining piece was measured at 180 × 40 meters. 

At the beginning of March 2014, the shipbreaking company Arihant began removing the remaining wreckage from underwater. Once again, the necessary permits from the relevant state authorities were apparently granted too late. By the end of March, 500 tons of the remaining wreckage had been removed, and Arihant stated that it intended to complete the remedial work by mid-May, the start of the monsoon. After the monsoon period, the shipbreaking company finally announced the completion of the remedial work on 20 October 2014. During the remedial work, the company had removed a total of 980 tons of wreckage from the seabed. At the beginning of January 2015, the Indian National Oceanographic Institute confirmed the removal of all wreckage from the seabed, but noted that metal residues could still be detected in some places under the seabed.

Credit: My Goa group (FB)

Environment

Just three years after the grounding, the ship was accused of having caused 0.13 km² of beach erosion. Beach dunes , which served as protection from the tides, had already been completely removed in some places by 2008. From 2010 onwards, the coastal erosion also affected the houses of local residents. A 2013 study estimated the extent of beach erosion during the wreck's stay at around 0.11 km² over an area of ​​1.5 km². The coastline is said to have been shifted inland by up to 85 meters. After the wreck was removed, the beach began to spread again. 

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In this casemine excerpt of the Mumbai high court ruling to remove the wreck asap before the monsoon it is also mentioned that he vessel was anchored off the port in 1998 and then in 2000 she broke her anchor chain and grounded. I doubt she was in any condition to move by then unless they kept starting the main engine at regular intervals, also having been at anchor for about 2 years I am sure the corrosion would have been considerable without any cathodic protection on the hull and so forth. When the monsoon started in 2000 I guess it didn't take much to break her anchor chain. Here is also an abstract of the case from Jstor documenting some of the environmental issues. Here is an environmental study from researchgate.

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Then in 2012 in the Goan Messrs Dias & DSousa express their concern of misappropriation of scrap from the wreckage as well as hints to major corruption. Same narrative goes on in this TOI article as well, another article mentions theft:

The River Princess: Rest in Pieces
27th Oct 2012

It is imperative that the sand bottom off the coast of Candolim is monitored diligently so as to ensure that River Princess does not receive a Goan RIP (Rest in Pieces). Our scientific endeavour prompts us to declare that 15000 tonnes of the double bottomed River Princess was covered up in about 40.000 tonnes of sand. We must not be fooled into believing that River Princess was removed lock, stock and barrel and sold into the scrap market, while in fact Arihant ship breakers would have given the Princess a deep sand burial by pouring sand on the buried steel plates. This makes it difficult for sonar techniques to detect the buried remains.

Who were the stake holders directly involved in the exploitation of distressed Princess, costing Rs 75 crores to the National Disaster Control Authority and over Rs 45 crores to the state exchequer? Will our Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar bite the bait or the bullet only time will tell, as future alone will show whether the rested princess remains would surface over a period of time to haunt the fishermen of Goa and unearth another scam.

After repeated interactions with the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and also the local MLA Agnelo Fernandes, the River Princess was surveyed about one and half years ago and it was blissfully reported that the ship was intentionally grounded by allegedly and purposefully puncturing holes, so that sea water and sand could enter and firmly ground the ship by sinking it still further below the seabed.

Due to the decade long neglect of successive governments since 2001, River Princess was not only allowed to suffer the vagaries of weather, but its equipment, machinery, engines and others, along with valuable furnishing worth over Rs 28 crores, was done away with without leaving behind any record of its inventory. We fear that the “vested interest group” who was in charge of safe removal of River Princess, did not keep an inventory of scrap and the Rs. 20 crores worth of iron and steel, along with other rare metals unaccounted for, through administrative manipulations and that Goa Customs did not follow up the whereabouts of the dismantled steel.

In order to get data whether the metal deposits are still lying buried below the seabed, one has to use certain equipment such as shallow water seismic equipment along with other supporting equipment. It is not known whether the Goa Government or the Tourism Dept has the initial positioning data location of the River Princess? If yes, what kind of positioning equipment was used at that time and what was its accuracy? This information is not available with the tourism department. We were told that they have a Google position data map, which is not adequate and acceptable for such surveys. If the proper data from DGPS is unavailable, the surveyor if appointed, may have to carry out the random surveys on wider area thus giving chances to miss the actual spot where the Princess was buried. Any anchor ship is kept at this site, might have drifted its positions during the monsoons. The survey needs to be done with an accurate position fixing equipment having at least plus or minus 3 meters accuracy.

The present CM of Goa has to reconstitute the Monitoring Committee, so as to ensure temporary IAS officials who keep on changing are not placed in charge of sensitive Monitoring Committee as their responsibilities end with their transfer. The entire process, needs to be evaluated, assessed and determined for their effectiveness through a judicial inquiry. The Goa Government can approach NIO for a fresh surveys since the weather is cleared now.

Estevam Dias / Dr Joe Dsousa

Then on 21st March 2025 the high court quashed any claims for recovering the monies spent on removing the wreck, I can imagine the Goan Gov't expecting to take the Salgaoncars Mining Industries to the cleaners but seems like they got free out of jail. See more in the Times of India article.