Strategy needed to remove dangerous shipwrecks from the Cork coastline 

A NATIONAL strategy and promised legislation needs to be delivered in order to remove the blight of dangerous shipwrecks from the Cork coastline, a west Cork based Senator has said.

Senator Tim Lombard made the call following the publication of a health and safety report on the wreck of the MV Alta which ran aground just outside Ballycotton in February 2020 after drifting from near Bermuda after it was abandoned by its crew.

The 67 page report by London based experts ABL found that the wreck has become an attraction for tourists and vandals alike but should be considered to be ‘high risk’ with a danger that people could lose their lives as they boarded or disembarked from the vessel which has now broken up into two sections.

According to the assessment published by the Department of Transport last week, many people have boarded the abandoned craft and in at least one instance a fire was lit on board the bridge deck and graffiti has also been painted on the hull of the vessel. According to the authors of the report, the people who boarded the vessel were risking their lives by so doing and could have suffered fatal injuries in a number of ways.

“Wrecks like the one down in Ballycotton are littered around west Cork and the county’s coastline – there are some in Kinsale, in Baltimore, all around the coast,” said Senator Lombard.

“If these were cars left in a housing estate the local authorities would have removed them straight away.

“There seems to be no legislation there – they’re waiting for national legislation, some marine legislation, to be passed and I don’t see any drive to get it passed.” 

The report published last week by the Department of Transport follows an inspection in August 2022 by a representative of the London based company.

Setting out the context of the assessment, the report described how the MV Alta was abandoned by its crew 1400 miles south east of Bermuda when it became disabled and then it drifted eastwards until it ran aground on the rocks at Ballyandreen Bay, 1.5km east of Ballycotton. The wreck of the MV Alta has since broken up into two sections, the forward and aft sections, after the midships area collapsed over the three winters since it ran aground.

The wreck sections are now lying hard on the rocky foreshore, listing slightly to the port side. Detached areas of the plating and structure of the vessel have been washed ashore on the surrounding rocks and hillside. The risk assessors who examined the vessel last year believe that the boat’s double bottom and crushed, which is already badly torn could become detached and this would create another hazard.

According to the assessment to the experts who examined the boat, the presence of the wreck on the foreshore was not a high risk in itself but they did associate a high degree of danger to boarding and disembarking from the wreck which, they said, was a risk to life.

While the experts made a number of recommendations to make the wreck safe Cork County Council confirmed in a statement that these recommendations had already been implemented.

“In collaboration with the Department of Transport, Cork County Council arranged for the necessary works to be carried out, which included the making safe of the crane derrick and installation of signage and fencing,” a Council spokesperson said in a statement.

The council said that it had completed its obligations in respect of the threat to marine environment according to the current legislation, the Merchant Shipping (Salvage and Wreck) Act, 1993.