Word: tankerful
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...storm-tossed waters off Massachusetts last week, 7.6 million gal. of oil slid slowly seaward. In the Delaware River, southwest of Philadelphia, 134,000 more gal. of deadly goo spread toward rich tidal marshes. In Los Angeles, the wreck of a blast-shattered tanker still lay smoldering at its berth. Suddenly, on East Coast and West, the U.S. was undergoing an ordeal...
...disasters began more than two weeks ago, when the Liberian-flag tanker Argo Merchant, well off course, ran hard aground on the Nantucket shoals, a well-charted section of the sea just southeast of Nantucket Island. After a week's battering by wind and waves, the 640-ft. ship began breaking up, spilling its entire cargo into the frigid Atlantic. Immediately endangered were not only the sandy strands of Nantucket and Cape Cod but also the rich fishing grounds of Georges Bank. Shortly after the Argo Merchant grounding, another Liberian ship, the Sansinena, exploded in Los Angeles harbor with...
Heavy Traffic. Last week two more accidents occurred. Another Liberian tanker, the Daphne, ran aground off Puerto Rico and still another, the Olympic Games, grounded and suffered a hull puncture during a docking maneuver at Marcus Hook, Pa. Moving downstream in a slick 32 miles long, its cargo seeped into marshes, coating wintering waterfowl with a sticky layer of oil that matted their feathers and robbed them of their insulating properties. Tens of thousands of birds were endangered...
Because the catastrophes were clustered so closely, their drama was heightened. But they may be only a sample of things to come. The transportation of oil by sea has increased enormously in the years since World War II, and oil tankers, once a little-noticed breed of ship, now constitute more than half of the world's merchant-ship tonnage. In U.S. ports, tanker traffic has increased proportionately as the nation has turned heavily to imports to meet its growing thirst for fuel. In 1966 the U.S. imported 940 million bbl. of oil and petroleum products. Now nearly three times...
...tanker of 28,000 tons was considered so impressive that Britain's Princess Margaret formally launched it. By 1960, tankers of more than 100,000 tons were becoming commonplace. Now the supertankers make the 18,743-ton Argo Merchant seem like a skiff by comparison. Over 30% of the world's tanker fleet consists of ships with capacities of over 200,000 tons. Japan's Globtik Tokyo (length: 1,243 ft.; draft: 91 ft. 11 in.) can carry a whopping 476,292 tons. The hazards such ships pose are correspondingly enormous...