Memories of Seawise University

 Richard Sayer: 'The ship caught fire on January 9, 1972, two days before completion of her conversion into a floating university. Bob flew out to HK on January 10. On January 11 I flew from London to Singapore because a CY Tung tanker - the Atlantic Faith - had collided with the Anson. Remarkably (but those were indeed the days) the AF was leaving Singapore after repairing the damage caused by an earlier collision, which I had investigated for the Tungs in Singapore some months earlier. Having finished my statements on the Anson collision I rang Bob to say that I was in the area. He asked me to come to Hong Kong to assist him in establishing the facts HK maritime enquiry. In those days it was almost unheard of to have two partners work on the same case.

I flew from Singapore to HK on January 16, for one of the most interesting, and exhausting, two weeks of my life. I had worked in a supporting role with Bob before and it was great to experience again his extraordinary stamina, eye for detail, and common-sense judgment. Flat out work but still with some
time for play.  

There had been almost 1,000 yard workers on board the Seawise University at the time of the fire and between us, we took scores of statements. We had the help of fire specialist John Atherton. I returned to London after two weeks, leaving Bob there many more weeks preparing for the enquiry, for which he
briefed Dick Stone QC. Our view was that ship has been set on fire by yard workers, who had not intended to destroy the vessel but merely to cause enough damage to detain the ship whilst repairs were done, to the financial benefit of the workforce. The arson conclusion was confirmed by the tribunal in its formal report. 

The wreck of the ship lay in a position which blocked access to container berths in the harbour. The harbour authority required the ship can be removed to permit such access. As she had fallen onto her side due to the vast amount of water which had been pumped into her during the firefighting attempts, she could not be removed in one piece. 

Bob left Ince's on 31 December 1973 to join Boris Vlasov. Bob handed the file over to me which is why I was then made a member of the UK Club sponsored team - along with Frances Frost of Millers and Jock Anderson - to negotiate the most economical salvage/wreck removal contract'.

The SWU wreck removal file was fascinating for me - RGC left the firm having done the fire case and left me holding the remains of the baby. I learned a lot. The Club instructed us to seek tenders from salvors to raise the wreck in HK harbour. We interviewed a number of them and got down to the last two Smit and Fukada beating the price down all the way through. We made a final recommendation to the club that I think $12m was the lowest price we could achieve for the Club. 

At that point, CY came in and offered to do the deal for $10m(?) which the club accepted. CY used my great friend Jock Anderson and a team of Korean divers and did the job, including getting the HK harbour authority to accept that part of the wreck submerged under thick mud did not need removing.
Having finally done the job Jock killed himself, distraught at the death by cancer of his new bride. I having been his best man in HK then acted as executor of all his various salvage artefacts, arranging for the SA to display some in a cabinet. 

Francis Frost: I recall being cooped up in a very stuffy and gloomy rosewood-veneered internal boardroom in Tokyo when Terence and I (probably with Jock and certainly with Kotsurusan) had to draw out the realities from Fukadasan and his team. We knew it would be a tough slog.

Before matters got underway their interpreter made it very clear that he was the only member of their team who spoke any English. Discussion was inevitably slow. Hour after hour passed before the interpreter said: "Our President wishes to put forward his proposal" (implying that it was non-negotiable) and duly communicated it to us. Terence responded, "Tell your President of the old English expression 'Pull the other leg; it's got bells on." Immediately, and without waiting for the interpreter's assistance, Fukadasan broke into a broad grin.

Terence Coghlin: Mention of “Seawise University” brings back some rich memories — not least of Bob C, crammed into white overalls half his proper size, crawling up the exposed flank of the capsized ship to peer through a hatch to see three decks warped together by the intense heat.

I should not really have been involved at all, the Tung fleet belonging to S 3. But David was tied up elsewhere and phoned me at home with my immediate marching orders. This presented me with the pleasure of working closely with Francis for many months — or, perhaps more accurately, watching in awe his laser-like intensity and white-hot work-rate as he rapidly became a world expert on ’soil mechanics’ (see Binnie & Partners) and methods of big shipwreck removal. A veritable force of nature. I puttered along in his wake, trying to keep up; I remember with shame his frustration when my attention wandered during his report on fluctuations in the price of scrap steel in the Beijing market. 

Apart from Francis, the other hero of the case on the Miller side was Michael Mustill. The wreck removal costs were covered both by the market war risks policy and by the Club rules, each of which excluded claims payable under the other. Michael solved the seemingly insoluble consequent brain-teaser in a way that enabled us to persuade the war risks underwriters that were bound to cough up the lion’s share of the $10 million that we paid to Tung to discharge our liability. (My recollection is that they eventually contributed $7.5 million (their final offer being communicated, I recall,  in this rather strange wording: “OK, tell the Club we will pay 7, plus a further .5 if they really want it” — I said that we did. 

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