Yachting-Live

Titanic to the Rescue
Next time when sailing at sea you see a large ship and they are difficult to avoid and more difficult to contact, and you are about to curse all the large ships in the world, spare a thought for the Titanic.

A voluntary organisation of world wide ships which had its genesis with the sinking of the Titanic was last month responsible for yet another rescue of sailors in distress. The organisation - AMVER - rescued of the crew of a drifting trimaran 80 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, as the photo to the left dramatically shows. The ‘Amver participating’ container ship Milan Express rescued the two sailors after the wife of one of the crew contacted the US Coast Guard.

But how is this organisation related to the Titanic? After the disaster of the RMS Titanic sinking in 1912, the world was horrified to learn that ships passing within sight of the ill-fated passenger liner were unaware that it had hit an iceberg and was sinking. Upon investigation, those who had seen the distress flares from the stricken ship admitted they thought they were merely part of the maiden voyage celebrations!

However, while the idea was born here, it was only with the advent of technology that the US Coast Guard were able to turn the idea of harnessing the spread and power of the ships of the world to come to the aid of distressed mariners. From a small beginning in 1958, this Coast Guard ancillary organisation has grown to be a world-wide service, and has many rescues of the crews of sailing boats to its credit. — Benjamin Strong/Sail-World Cruising, full article at www.sail-world.com/indexs.cfm?nid=44292

Popularity: 34% [?]

Listen to this podcast

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.