CARGO SHIP CARRYING LUXURY CARS SINKS

A cargo ship carrying around 4 000 luxury cars have sunk. This happened off the Portuguese Azores archipelago. The ship, Felicity Ace, was transporting luxury cars including Porsches and Bentleys to Rhode Island in the United States from Emden in Germany.

A fire broke out on the ship on 16 February but luckily the ship’s crew members were all evacuated. While no oil leak had been reported so far, Reuters reports that there were fears that the fuel tanks could be damaged while the Bessel lies at the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of around 3 500 metres.

According to Portugal’s navy, no one was hurt by the fire and the 22 crew members that were on board were taken to a hotel. The navy, four merchant ships that were sailing in the area as well as the Portuguese Air Force assisted with the evacuation of the crew members.

Bentley confirmed to the BBC that 189 of its cars were onboard the Felicity Ace while Porsche said it had about 1 100 of its models onboard.

Although Volkswagen’s loss will be covered by insurance, the loss is predicted to be in the region of $155 million.

The BBC reports that one customer tweeted saying his Porsche was on board the ship at the bottom of the ocean but that it has been reordered already.

Image credit: The Drive