Firm will try to raise bridge – disaster ship

Press, 23 May 1977, Page 7

Firm will try to raise bridge - disaster ship

NZPA Adelaide An Adelaide-based company has been hired to raise the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra from the Derwent River at Hobart where it sank with a huge cargo of zinc after ramming the Tasman bridge in 1975. The company. Explosives Corporation of Australia, specialists in tunnel-blasting, salvage, and demolition, will send a team of seven men' to examine the sunken vessel, which brought down two spans of the bridge' in January, 1975, killing nine persons. The company’s chief engineer and former army explosives expert, Mr John McFayden, who is 35, said in Adelaide that he was “not at liberty to disclose the client” involved in raising the'Lake Illawarra.

“The operation, assuming it is feasible, could be extremely dangerous because we have to move one of the bridge’s 3000 tonne concrete beams that’s lying across the lllawarra’s bow, without jeopardising reconstruction work going on nearby,” he said. “As well as being a considerable navigation hazard the ship went down with millions of dollars worth of zinc — about

10,000 tonnes of it — and this could seriously pollute the Derwent. We could raise her with air bags, although some other means might be required. But we have handled more difficult jobs than this without losing even a finger, let alone a team member.” The team’s next task Mr McFayden calls “the most challenging” of his career —- to defuse 3000 tonnes of bombs aboard the World War II Liberty ship Richard Montgomery which sank near the mouth of the Thames in August, 1944. Mr McFayden is also unable to reveal the identity of the client interested in salvaging the American vessel. “The fragmentation

bombs she was carrying when she went aground on the way to back up the Normandy landings are probably still active. “You can still spot part of her hulk about 2km off the coast, and British experts have kindly told us that if the bombs went off. they would flatten the town of Sheerness nearby and probably everything else for more than 10km around. “The experts reckon it would probably be the biggest non-nuclear explosion seen. If that risk proves too high, the Richard Montgomery might have to stay stuck in the mud.” “But there have been several attempts to raise her. We can learn from them.”