Let’s start with the good news. Despite feverish speculation from Britain’s tabloid newspapers, one of which ran a story suggesting that 10 percent of Bentley’s annual production was affected, we’ve been assured that there are none of the company’s products aboard the car carrier that has partially capsized and run aground in the English Channel.
But Europeans waiting to take delivery of a Jaguar, Land Rover, or Mini might well find they’re facing a substantial delay, with 1200 JLR products and 65 Minis aboard the stricken Höegh Osaka, which is now sitting at a 50-degree angle on the Bramble Bank sandbank near Southampton.
According to the ship’s owners, Höegh Autoliners, the 51,000-ton vessel “developed a severe list shortly after she left port, and the pilot and the master took the decision to save the vessel and its crew by grounding her on the bank.”
It’s certainly going to be an impressive insurance claim. We’re told that a total of 1400 cars are on the ship—135 more than the combined JLR and Mini totals—but we don’t know what makes up the remainder. A source within Bentley has assured us that it doesn’t have any cars aboard, after one British newspaper website excitedly reported that the entire cargo was made up of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. Plant manufacturer JCB has confirmed it has 105 pieces of heavy construction equipment on the ship that, to judge from the photographs, are almost certainly in a big, expensive pile on the starboard side. All 25 crew and the pilot who presumably said “just park it there” were rescued from the wreck.
Car carriers don’t seem to have much luck in northern European waters. The MV Tricolor sank in 2002 while traveling from Belgium to the U.K. with a cargo of 3000 Volvos and BMWs; it was salvaged by being sliced into 3000-ton sections with a carbide cutting wire. And in 2012 the 23,000-ton Baltic Ace was lost after a collision with another ship 25 miles from the Dutch coast, taking 1200 Mitsubishis to the bottom of the North Sea.
