SS Arrow

SS Arrow was built by Bethlehem Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Baltimore, Maryland in 1948 as the tanker Olympic Games. Renamed the Sea Robin in 1960 and finally to Arrow in 1962, the ship was a Liberian-registered tanker. At 551.2 feet (167.9 metres) in length, 68.3 feet (20.7 metres) in width, and a draft of 29.9 feet (9.1 metres), she was an enlarged version of the standard American wartime tanker design and one of the oldest tankers in the fleet of Aristotle Onassis, owned by the Sun Navigation Company. It remains the most significant oil spill off Canada’s East Coast (with some 10,000 tonnes or about 25% of the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.) Only the MV Kurdistan comes close when that vessel spilled about 6,000 tons of oil after breaking apart just south of Cabot Strait on March 15, 1979.

Arrow took on approximately 16,000 tons (10 million litres) of bunker C oil in Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela under charter to Imperial Oil Limited, bound for the Stora paper mill in Point Tupper, Nova Scotia. On February 4, 1970 in Chedabucto Bay, off the east coast of Nova Scotia in a gale and only 14.6 nautical miles from her destination, she ran hard aground on Cerberus Rock, a known, well-charted hazard to navigation. The tanker ran aground mid-morning, halfway between high and low tide, being driven by 60 knot southwesterly winds and blinded by a heavy mist. The impact drove the forward section of the tanker onto the rock formation wedging it with the starboard side hard against the rock pinnacle. Efforts to free her from the rock failed as did efforts to pump her cargo into salvage vessels and pounded by wind and wave action broke in two on February 8, 1970 spilling about two-thirds of her cargo. The subsequent inquiry revealed that Arrow's depth sounder had not been operational for two months, her autogyro compass showed a permanent error of three degrees west and her radar failed about an hour before she ran aground.

The crew was taken off the vessel late into the night on February 4, 1970. After four days of rough seas and weather pounding the vessel against the rock, the deck plates and side plating began to buckle. On February 8, 1970 the tanker split into two sections. Both the stern and bow sections sank in an upright position and little damage was done to the storage tanks and cargo hold in the stern section. Of the ships 30 cargo tanks, only 9 tanks remained intact after the vessel sank, all of which were located in the stern section of the tanker. Salvage operations began in the end of February 1970 to pump all of the remaining Bunker C out of the tanks which remained intact. After deployments consisting of 22 days all together, all remaining Bunker C was removed by April 11, 1970.

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