The 177-meter-long, fully loaded bulk carrier Achilles Bulker had just left the Australian port of Tauranga in July 2023 when it was shaken by two loud bangs. The pilot immediately lost control of the ship, which veered off course and into shallow water.
The pilot quickly ordered the ship’s anchors to be dropped, and 150 meters later, the Achilles Bulker was brought to a stop with just 1 meter of water under the keel.
A report from the Australian Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC), recently published, now reveals that the bangs originated from the ship’s 14.2-ton rudder, which first came loose
and then fell off.
The cause of the accident was not that the rudder had hit anything, but—as technical investigations later showed—that the roughly one-meter-long pin holding the rudder in place had fallen out due to a series of poor welds.
“These welds were susceptible to cracking from normal vibrations, as they were generally of poor quality with limited weld penetration,” states the TAIC report.
-mauh
