Hong Kong considers probe of tanker role in wreck of junk

Chief marine accident investor Leung Hou-kin told Lloyd’s List that a decision on whether to start a probe was likely to be made once information had been received from the crew of the junk and the Taiwan authorities.
The junk, Princess Taiping, was close to completing a double crossing of the Pacific when she was struck at around 0340 hours on April 26.
The 1999-built, 43,157 dwt Champion Express, owned by Norway’s Champion Shipping, passed close to the junk, according to radar surveillance data. But some of the 11 crew onboard the Princess Taiping specifically identified the Liberian- flagged tanker as hitting the junk.
Two of the junk’s crew sustained serious head and neck injuries, while master Liu Ning-sheng was treated for minor head injuries.
All the crew, which comprised two from Taiwan, six from the US, two from Japan and one from China, were airlifted to hospital.
Hawaii crew members from the Princess TaiPing are calling for an investigation into a freighter striking their vessel and which left them in the ocean more than 30 miles from Taiwan.
“They hit us and left us out there to die,” Hawaii resident Larz Stewart said.
“It was morally wrong, and the captain and company should be punished by the international community. It is truly a miracle that we are all alive.”
The crash left the 11 crew members, including one seriously injured, clinging to wreckage in the dark for about two and-a-half hours before being rescued. Thomas William Cook, who lived on Okinawa but is originally from Humboldt, California, suffered a cracked vertebra, a head injury and a broken arm and was in intensive care at a hospital, crew members said.
“Everyone else is okay,” crew member Elizabeth Zeiger said.
The 53-foot Princess TaiPing, designed as a replica of a Chinese vessel built hundreds of years ago during the Ming Dynasty, crossed the Pacific to the western United States last year to prove that vessels of this kind could make long-distance voyages.
The TaiPing was in a gale system with strong winds and large waves in short intervals and heading toward the port of Suao when the crew say they saw  the chemical tanker Champion Express off her port side.
Stewart said that about 15 minutes before the collision, the crew on watch noticed the freighter change direction and head toward the TaiPing.
Stewart put a spotlight on the mainsail to make it more visible in the dark, but that and urgent radio calls proved fruitless, he said.
“She continued to head straight for us, and that’s when we realised we had no escape,” Stewart said.
Champion Shipping co-founder Arne Viste told Lloyd’s List the crew onboard the tanker said there had been a “near miss” with a small vessel.
“The Taiwan coastguard asked us to stop the ship, but then it was allowed to carry on,” Mr Viste said.
He added that the company was trying to get as much information as possible about what happened.
Mr Viste agreed that there had been an allegation of a collision, but until more details had been received it was “difficult so say something very precise”.
The Princess Taiping had been specially built using construction techniques from China’s Ming dynasty, which ran from 1368-1644, to show that Chinese sailing vessels could have crossed the Pacific from China four centuries before voyages by Magellan and Columbus.
The 30-tonne junk, which left Hong Kong in June, was on the return leg of the 11-month voyage after making calls in Yokohama, Vancouver and Seattle and San Francisco, when she was wrecked about 40 miles from Keelung in Taiwan.

* With agencies