Every ship owner should and will know what happens to a ship when it’s too old to sail anymore. An article published in Safety4Sea explains the same.
Let’s look at the possible scenarios in this article.
What is a ship’s average lifespan?
The average lifespan of a ship is 25-30 years. After this span, the ship may become too expensive to operate, but most importantly, to become unseaworthy putting human safety at risk.
What happens when it is too old to sail?
Let us explore all the possible scenarios for the fate of an old ship!
Five most common scenarios
- Environmentally friendly ship recycling
Ship recycling is by far the most environmentally friendly and economically sound way of getting rid of old ships, as it allows the materials from the ship, especially steel, iron, aluminum and plastics, to be recycled and made into new products.
Among others, this lowers the demand for mined iron ore and reduces energy use in the steelmaking process.
Meanwhile, all types of household items, like furniture, washing machines, sanitary fittings, etc., are sold at a premium after removal from ships.
2. Beaching
End-of-life ships can contain various amounts of toxic materials in their structure, which need to be properly identified and removed, so lack of standardization can make ship dismantling a very risky task.
Dangerous shipbreaking (mostly in the form of beaching) is a heavy industry that exposes both workers and the environment to great risks.
Currently, about 70% of the end-of-life ships end up in three main shipbreaking yards of Southeast Asia, where they are broken under rudimentary conditions:
- Alang-Sosiya in India
- Chattogram (formerly known as Chittagong) in Bangladesh
- Gadani in Pakistan
The common practice in these yards is lack of proper waste reception facilities and poor training of workers, who are often exploited migrants.
This leads to significant human and environmental costs, felt by many. These negative consequences are better summarized in the following statement by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform:
On the one hand, workers lose their lives and suffer injuries and occupational diseases due to unsafe working conditions and exposure to toxic substances. On the other hand, coastal ecosystems and the local communities depending on them are devastated by toxic spills and other types of pollution.
The problem in numbers
- To put the issue into perspective, approximately 50,000 ships sail the world’s oceans at any given time.
- About 1,000 ocean-going commercial vessels reach end of service life each year.
- Around 70% of these end up in beaches of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
- 674 ocean-going commercial ships and offshore units were sold to scrap yards in 2019, latest data from NGO Shipbreaking Platform showed.
3. Becoming home for marine habitats
As an alternative to ship recycling, ships may be sunk to create artificial reefs after removal of hazardous materials, in order to promote marine life or support recreational diving.
See the sinking of ‘Twin Capes’ ferry for this purpose here:
Sometimes, ships sink accidentally “in the right place”. For instance, the passenger ship Bianca C sank off Grand Anse in Granada back in 1961, accounting for one of the world’s best dive wrecks until today.
4. Passed along
- In some cases, luxury cruise ships pass to a less-luxurious cruise line within the same company towards the end of their lives.
- Sometimes old ships are sold on the second-hand market to budget cruise lines that don’t want to invest in new tonnage.
- We have also seen ships being refitted to become floating hotels, convention centres, restaurants or anything else. For example, Queen Mary retired in 1967 and is still docked off California serving as a movie set. The vessel ‘Rotterdam’ is today moored in Rotterdam serving as a hotel and restaurant venue.
5. Abandoned
It is also common that wrecked ships just stay lying on site, constituting a tourist attraction.
For example, the cruise vessel World Discoverer struck a reef off Solomon Islands in 2000 and remains on site as locals have opposed salvage operations.
Another example is the famous shipwreck of Olympia off Amorgos Island, Greece, that grounded in 1980 but today constitutes a popular diving spot and tourist attraction.
Despite being a tourist attraction, shipwrecks can pose a navigation hazard and are typically considered adverse for the environment.
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Source: Safety4Sea
