HM Coastguard informed that a consortium of salvage companies, Multraship, Ardent, Wagenborg, have been appointed by the owner of ‘Priscilla’ to move the ship. Representatives from Ardent will arrive at the vessel later today, to conduct an initial assessment on Saturday 21 July.
Salvors have already started deploying equipment to the incident site, while it is expected that an outline salvage plan will be prepared. A Salvage Control Unit (SCU) will also be established near the incident site.
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Acting SOSRep Hugh Shaw has set a Temporary Exclusion Zone of 500m around the incident site, in order not to risk to the safety of persons engaged on the salvage operations and for other ships sailing in the area.
‘Priscilla’ remains stable, but is hard aground on the Pentland Skerries with the 6-person crew on board safe and well. No pollution has been reported.
Acting SOSRep Hugh Shaw stated:
This incident has now become a salvage operation in order to refloat the vessel … I am in dialogue with a number of key stakeholders and once we have established and agreed the salvage plan, I will provide a further update on the way forward.
On 18 July, HM Coastguard received a report that a vessel ran aground on the Pentland Skerries approximately 5nm north east of Duncansby Head. The 89m cargo ship ‘Priscilla’, carrying six people onboard, did not report significant damage, while there is no sign of any pollution.
At first, two tugs and the Thurso RNLI Lifeboat were on scene, with a local tug and a more powerful tug attempting to refloat the vessel. However, the first attempts were unsuccessful, as the tugs did not refloat the vessel.
