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Doubts began to emerge Monday over the sinking of the Golden Rose off the coast of China¡¯s Shandong Province on Saturday. According to the Qingdao Zaobao daily, a Chinese sailor who was on the cargo ship Jinsheng said crew did not notice a collision with the Korean freighter. "I was sleeping in the cabin,¡± the paper quoted him as saying. ¡°Suddenly, the vessel began shaking and it slowed. But it soon recovered sailing speed. I never thought it had collided with another ship." But given that all hands on the Golden Rose were lost, that account seems unconvincing.
According to Bukwang Shipping, which managed the Golden Rose, a ship insurer investigated the Jinsheng in Dalian port and concluded it collided with the starboard side of the Golden Rose at a 45 degree angle. The right side of the Jinsheng¡¯s bulbous bow, the protuberant front below the waterline, was twisted and there was a 6-m scratch along the ship¡¯s right side.
Marine transport industry officials say sailors on the Jinsheng would have noticed a collision of such force no matter how foggy the night. The crewman¡¯s recollection was therefore likely an attempt to justify their failure to save the Golden Rose crew after the collision.
Another suspicion focused on the fact that the Golden Rose and Jisheng are similar in size but the damage to the latter was huge. The Golden Rose is a 3,800-ton freighter 105.5 m long, 16.3 m wide and 8.4 m high. The Jinsheng is a 4,822-ton cargo ship 113 m long, 19 m wide and 8.5 m tall.
But a maritime police officer said the damage was due to the difference in cargo weight. The Golden Rose carried a whopping 5,900 tons of steel coils while the Jinsheng was lightly loaded.
Why, finally, did the Golden Rose not send an SOS? The ship was equipped with Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPRIB), an emergency location transmitter that sends out a distress signal allowing the beacon to be located by satellite when it sinks, but the beacon was not working when it sank.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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