hkskyline
July 28th, 2005, 06:50 PM
In Istanbul, When Ships Pass in the Night, Residents Breathe Sighs of Relief
The Bosporus Is a Bit Too Narrow; Oil Tanker Crashes a Fancy Dinner
By Chip Cummins
28 July 2005
The Wall Street Journal Europe
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Omer Isvan was having dinner with business associates in May when he got a frantic phone call. A 100-meter-long cargo ship had just veered off course in the Bosporus and rammed into his waterfront villa.
"The dinner party thought I was joking when I said, `Excuse me, I have a ship in my bedroom and I have to get it out,' " said Mr. Isvan, a hotel consultant.
The Bosporus, a 30-kilometer strait connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, slices through this ancient city of towering mosques and throbbing outdoor discos, and separates Europe and Asia. In the middle of Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, the passage narrows to less than a kilometer from shore to shore. Sharp turns, tricky currents and fog have long made maritime accidents part of life here. But in recent years, surging traffic has raised the stakes for residents who live, work and play along Istanbul's waterfront.
The number of big ships passing back and forth through the Bosporus jumped 16% last year over the previous one, to about one every 10 minutes on average. Shipping authorities say errant vessels smash into houses or other structures along the waterfront at least once or twice a year, and there are many more near misses. Istanbul's Vessel Traffic Service reported 126 equipment failures in the strait last year, including engine and rudder malfunctions that often result in accidents. A captain in the service says there have been two or three groundings this year.
Turkish maritime authorities blame oil-tanker traffic for the bedlam. Cargos of crude and other petroleum products through the strait have soared more than 80% since 1999. Tankers now carry some three million barrels of oil a day through the heart of Istanbul, about 3.5% of the planet's total daily consumption.
The problem is part of a world-wide logjam. The global network for getting oil to market is under unprecedented strain as producers pump all-out to meet soaring demand. The Bosporus is among a handful of waterways where oil-laden tankers converge on their way to ports around the world.
The Panama Canal is mulling a multibillion-dollar expansion to accommodate more vessels. Administrators of the Suez Canal are deepening and widening the Egyptian channel. Unlike these other famous passages, though, the Bosporus waterfront is a thriving urban neighborhood. The lives of many of Istanbul's nine million residents revolve around the strait and its bustling promenades, waterside eating places and historic homes.
"It happens -- you get a ship in the living room," said Cahit Istikbal, secretary-general of the Turkish Maritime Pilots' Association, an organization of skippers who guide tankers through the strait.
The 1936 Montreux Convention granted commercial ships from any country unrestricted passage through the Bosporus except in times of war. To cope with recent traffic, the Turks in 2003 switched on a set of towers to track ships with radar and closed-circuit TV.
Despite the new safety measures, the men who protect the strait remain on constant vigil. On a Sunday evening in March, a ferry carrying trucks full of cooking gas sank three kilometers from a strip of popular waterfront restaurants at the southern end of the strait. Capt. Tuncay Cehreli, the strait's top traffic cop, dispatched police and fire trucks from his control room overlooking the water, and asked city officials to cut off power to several nearby blocks. Two trucks from the ferry floated ashore and grounded on the rocks but didn't explode; tugs towed five others into port.
The year before, Capt. Cehreli led the rescue of a 240-meter-long oil tanker that had radioed in a rudder failure near a tricky bend. "I lost two or three years of my life" during that hair-raising operation, Capt. Cehreli said.
Residents are having close encounters of their own with the traffic. Two years ago, Ibrahim Betil, a former banker, was at a going-away party for a colleague aboard the Alesta, a restaurant boat anchored along the bank of a ritzy Istanbul neighborhood. Sitting with his back to the water, he noticed several people on the promenade waving frantically at the diners.
"We started waving back," Mr. Betil said. When the bystanders started pointing toward the water behind him, Mr. Betil turned around and saw the black hull of a tanker coming at him. "You didn't see the sky, you only saw a tall, iron wall," he said.
Half a minute later, the tanker sideswiped the restaurant before hitting three other boats nearby, sinking at least one, according to Mr. Betil and other eyewitnesses. The Alesta's diners and staff made it off just in time before the crash. The skipper of one of the other boats fell into the water but was fished out with only minor injuries.
Birol Askin saw the accident close up from the deck of the Omega 3, a small wooden boat he uses as a floating kitchen to fry up the fish sandwiches he sells on the quay. The tanker just missed his boat, but the night still haunts him. "I'll be cooking fish and if I hear a ship's horn, I'll look up. It's like having enemies waiting outside for you," he said.
The traffic also causes smaller annoyances. Occasionally, an empty ship sitting high in the water comes close enough to the rented waterside home of Cengiz Israfil to interfere with his satellite-TV reception.
"Some guests are nervous about spending the night," said Mr. Israfil, a former Wall Street banker who now does project-finance consulting. He likes watching the bustling traffic from his home office. As a young man, he spent two years in the U.S. Navy and keeps a set of binoculars on a coffee table where he can look out over the water.
Capt. Cehreli said he remembers two or three groundings in the first few months of this year, none of them causing property damage. That changed in May at Mr. Isvan's family home, perched along the eastern Bosporus shore near the strait's narrowest point. Mr. Isvan, who is also president of Turkey's young businessmen's association, rents out the Mediterranean-style villa and garden to a Canadian couple who were traveling at the time of the accident. After the ship's rudder failed, the 100-meter-long cargo carrier veered toward the shore.
Its pointy bow slammed through the roof of an upstairs study that Mr. Isvan once used as his bedroom. After rushing back from dinner, he found police, salvage boats and a scrum of TV reporters surrounding the house. The structure is two centuries old. It was extensively rebuilt in the 1970s.
"The size proportion of the ship to the house was surreal," Mr. Isvan said. By 3 a.m., the ship had been towed off. No one was injured, and Mr. Isvan recently settled for damages with the ship's operator. He says he got enough money to cover the cost of repairs. A large plastic sheet recently fluttered over one side of the house, shielding the hole.
Sahika Ertan, a nature conservationist, has lived in three different Ottoman-style wooden houses, or yalilar, along the Bosporus during the past four decades. Ships have rammed or sideswiped her various homes four times over the years, she says. A passenger ship hit her last waterside house in 1990, crashing through the wall of a room where a cousin was sleeping. The impact destabilized the 300-year-old home's foundation and sent tiles from the roof crashing into the sea.
That was enough. She and her husband quickly sold the house and moved to the leafy hills above her old neighborhood. "I can sleep very well now, even when there's fog," she said.
The Bosporus Is a Bit Too Narrow; Oil Tanker Crashes a Fancy Dinner
By Chip Cummins
28 July 2005
The Wall Street Journal Europe
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Omer Isvan was having dinner with business associates in May when he got a frantic phone call. A 100-meter-long cargo ship had just veered off course in the Bosporus and rammed into his waterfront villa.
"The dinner party thought I was joking when I said, `Excuse me, I have a ship in my bedroom and I have to get it out,' " said Mr. Isvan, a hotel consultant.
The Bosporus, a 30-kilometer strait connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, slices through this ancient city of towering mosques and throbbing outdoor discos, and separates Europe and Asia. In the middle of Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, the passage narrows to less than a kilometer from shore to shore. Sharp turns, tricky currents and fog have long made maritime accidents part of life here. But in recent years, surging traffic has raised the stakes for residents who live, work and play along Istanbul's waterfront.
The number of big ships passing back and forth through the Bosporus jumped 16% last year over the previous one, to about one every 10 minutes on average. Shipping authorities say errant vessels smash into houses or other structures along the waterfront at least once or twice a year, and there are many more near misses. Istanbul's Vessel Traffic Service reported 126 equipment failures in the strait last year, including engine and rudder malfunctions that often result in accidents. A captain in the service says there have been two or three groundings this year.
Turkish maritime authorities blame oil-tanker traffic for the bedlam. Cargos of crude and other petroleum products through the strait have soared more than 80% since 1999. Tankers now carry some three million barrels of oil a day through the heart of Istanbul, about 3.5% of the planet's total daily consumption.
The problem is part of a world-wide logjam. The global network for getting oil to market is under unprecedented strain as producers pump all-out to meet soaring demand. The Bosporus is among a handful of waterways where oil-laden tankers converge on their way to ports around the world.
The Panama Canal is mulling a multibillion-dollar expansion to accommodate more vessels. Administrators of the Suez Canal are deepening and widening the Egyptian channel. Unlike these other famous passages, though, the Bosporus waterfront is a thriving urban neighborhood. The lives of many of Istanbul's nine million residents revolve around the strait and its bustling promenades, waterside eating places and historic homes.
"It happens -- you get a ship in the living room," said Cahit Istikbal, secretary-general of the Turkish Maritime Pilots' Association, an organization of skippers who guide tankers through the strait.
The 1936 Montreux Convention granted commercial ships from any country unrestricted passage through the Bosporus except in times of war. To cope with recent traffic, the Turks in 2003 switched on a set of towers to track ships with radar and closed-circuit TV.
Despite the new safety measures, the men who protect the strait remain on constant vigil. On a Sunday evening in March, a ferry carrying trucks full of cooking gas sank three kilometers from a strip of popular waterfront restaurants at the southern end of the strait. Capt. Tuncay Cehreli, the strait's top traffic cop, dispatched police and fire trucks from his control room overlooking the water, and asked city officials to cut off power to several nearby blocks. Two trucks from the ferry floated ashore and grounded on the rocks but didn't explode; tugs towed five others into port.
The year before, Capt. Cehreli led the rescue of a 240-meter-long oil tanker that had radioed in a rudder failure near a tricky bend. "I lost two or three years of my life" during that hair-raising operation, Capt. Cehreli said.
Residents are having close encounters of their own with the traffic. Two years ago, Ibrahim Betil, a former banker, was at a going-away party for a colleague aboard the Alesta, a restaurant boat anchored along the bank of a ritzy Istanbul neighborhood. Sitting with his back to the water, he noticed several people on the promenade waving frantically at the diners.
"We started waving back," Mr. Betil said. When the bystanders started pointing toward the water behind him, Mr. Betil turned around and saw the black hull of a tanker coming at him. "You didn't see the sky, you only saw a tall, iron wall," he said.
Half a minute later, the tanker sideswiped the restaurant before hitting three other boats nearby, sinking at least one, according to Mr. Betil and other eyewitnesses. The Alesta's diners and staff made it off just in time before the crash. The skipper of one of the other boats fell into the water but was fished out with only minor injuries.
Birol Askin saw the accident close up from the deck of the Omega 3, a small wooden boat he uses as a floating kitchen to fry up the fish sandwiches he sells on the quay. The tanker just missed his boat, but the night still haunts him. "I'll be cooking fish and if I hear a ship's horn, I'll look up. It's like having enemies waiting outside for you," he said.
The traffic also causes smaller annoyances. Occasionally, an empty ship sitting high in the water comes close enough to the rented waterside home of Cengiz Israfil to interfere with his satellite-TV reception.
"Some guests are nervous about spending the night," said Mr. Israfil, a former Wall Street banker who now does project-finance consulting. He likes watching the bustling traffic from his home office. As a young man, he spent two years in the U.S. Navy and keeps a set of binoculars on a coffee table where he can look out over the water.
Capt. Cehreli said he remembers two or three groundings in the first few months of this year, none of them causing property damage. That changed in May at Mr. Isvan's family home, perched along the eastern Bosporus shore near the strait's narrowest point. Mr. Isvan, who is also president of Turkey's young businessmen's association, rents out the Mediterranean-style villa and garden to a Canadian couple who were traveling at the time of the accident. After the ship's rudder failed, the 100-meter-long cargo carrier veered toward the shore.
Its pointy bow slammed through the roof of an upstairs study that Mr. Isvan once used as his bedroom. After rushing back from dinner, he found police, salvage boats and a scrum of TV reporters surrounding the house. The structure is two centuries old. It was extensively rebuilt in the 1970s.
"The size proportion of the ship to the house was surreal," Mr. Isvan said. By 3 a.m., the ship had been towed off. No one was injured, and Mr. Isvan recently settled for damages with the ship's operator. He says he got enough money to cover the cost of repairs. A large plastic sheet recently fluttered over one side of the house, shielding the hole.
Sahika Ertan, a nature conservationist, has lived in three different Ottoman-style wooden houses, or yalilar, along the Bosporus during the past four decades. Ships have rammed or sideswiped her various homes four times over the years, she says. A passenger ship hit her last waterside house in 1990, crashing through the wall of a room where a cousin was sleeping. The impact destabilized the 300-year-old home's foundation and sent tiles from the roof crashing into the sea.
That was enough. She and her husband quickly sold the house and moved to the leafy hills above her old neighborhood. "I can sleep very well now, even when there's fog," she said.