On the evening of December 6, 2024, local time, the deck carrier “Shangde Wuyishan” suffered a serious accident in the Bay of Biscay, about 58 nautical miles northwest of Cape Ortegal, Spain. Due to bad weather conditions, two large gantry cranes carried on board shifted and eventually collapsed.
“Shangde Wuyishan” was on its way from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Thailand with two large gantry cranes, each 100 meters wide and 92 meters high.
According to Spanish media reports, the crew sent an emergency distress signal to the Spanish maritime authority, Salvamento Marítimo, reporting that the crane had shifted, causing the vessel to lose stability.
Spanish maritime authorities sent tugboats, search and rescue vessels and helicopters for rescue. The rescue helicopter first arrived at the scene and found that the cranes had collapsed and most of them had fallen into the sea, with some of the wreckage scattered on the deck, severely damaging the deck and the hull.
The loss of cargo value of the two cranes has not yet been reported, but the “Shangde Wuyishan” will need to be cleaned up and its hull repaired before it can be put back into service.
“Shangde Wuyishan” was financed by Fujian Shangde Shipping and built by Yangzhou Longhe Shipbuilding. The vessel has an overall length of 168.9 meters, a beam of 43.0 meters, a depth of 10.1 meters, a gross tonnage of 24,048, a net tonnage of 7,214, a main engine power of 7,812 kilowatts, a maximum height above the water surface of 32 meters, and the number of crew members on board is 24.
This was the second major accident involving the transportation of gantry cranes in the past two months. In late October, the heavy cargo carrier “Yuzhou Qihang”, carrying three large gantry cranes out of Taiwan Province, encountered heavy winds and waves while crossing the Taiwan Strait, causing one of the gantry cranes to collapse and 17 crew members to abandon their vessel and escape. The vessel eventually ran aground and is still not free.