 It is the 12th of April 1991 and an oil tanker is being towed since the day before she had been on fire. Crude oil was flowing into the sea and in a bid to try and reduce the environmental impact, the stricken vessel has been dragged closer to the Italian coastline. The vast vessel now starts to disappear beneath the waves, the effort has been wasted. The disaster would become one of the worst environmental accidents in Italian history and cause the largest shipwreck in European waters. Today we are going to be having a look at the empty haven. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. The ship. So our story will begin with the launching of a new ship, but not in Italy in the early 1990s where she would eventually find her watery grave but in Spain in the early 1970s. A new very large crude oil carrier is being built by Astilleros Españoles SA in Cadiz Spain. The new vessel was launched on the 20th January 1973 taking the name Amoco Milford Haven. She was a crude oil carrier and in her early years was pressed into service transporting oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. The ship was an absolute unit at 334 metres or 1069 feet long with a beam of 51 metres or 167 feet and a gross weight tonnage of 230,000 tonnes. This gave her the classification of a very large crude oil class tanker. As a side note her sister ship Amoco Cadiz would sink in the late 1970s causing one of the worst oil spills of its type in history, leaking 256.2 million litres of oil into the English Channel. Maybe this will have to be a subject for a future video. Anywho's back to the Haven. She was operated by Amoco, an American chemical and oil company and as I said earlier she transported oil from the Middle East. This part of the world during the 1970s would become a little bit tense as Iran and Iraq were involved in a few disagreements which would lead to a very big unfriendliness called the Iran-Iraq War which ran between 1980 and 1988. What's the point of all of this I hear you asking, well the Amoco Milford Haven would unwillingly get dragged into the war. The Persian Gulf had become a bit of a battlefield in the 1980s and both sides would target all tankers in an effort to screw each other's economy. During this period the Haven would be hit in the late 1980s by an exocet missile. Needless to say this caused damage to the ship and she was required to be sent to Singapore for refitting and repairing and after which she was sold off to a broker. Now under the new ownership the Amoco Milford Haven would get the new name, the MT Haven or Motetanker Haven. She would work a route between the Mediterranean and Iran's Kargh Island, the country's main oil terminal. The terminal, like the MT Haven, had received damage during the Iran-Iraq War and as a side note in the 1960s it was the world's largest offshore oil terminal. The MT Haven was operated by the Trudos Company owned by Locus Haji Lianobi and his son Stelius. Who would later go on to set up EasyJet? So the MT Haven carried on working the oil routes or would be good, I suppose, until a day in April 1991, a disaster. So it is the 11th of April 1991 and the MT Haven is at the Maltido floating platform, roughly around 6 miles off the coast of Genoa, Italy. The plan is to offload her 144,000 tons, roughly 1 million barrels of oil. The process involves connecting and disconnecting from the platform. This was to allow the oil to be pumped around her various storage tanks. You see oil tankers aren't just one big tank, but several smaller ones, as it helps with ballasting the ship to make it all level and happy. It also helps in the case of a collision, in theory, in stopping all of the ship's contents being released into the ocean. The first 80,000 tons of oil was transferred safely. Next came disconnecting from the platform to pump the oil from the MT Haven side tanks into her centre tanks. Not long after the pumping began at roughly 12.30pm, a loud metal rattling could be heard. The ship's crew were baffled by this, but not for long. An explosion ripped out of the MT Haven's front section, killing six of her crew immediately. The explosion was caused apparently by a spark during the ship's tank cleaning process as part of the oil transfer. Flames erupted 100 metres into the air and enveloped the ship. Her hull, now damaged, began leaking oil out into the sea. Multiple rescue boats were dispatched to try and save crew members stuck aboard the tanker. Whilst this was happening, strong winds pushed the flames along the ship towards the stern. Fire crews were dispatched to the disaster scene and began frantically trying to put out the inferno. It proved to be a bit of an impossible task as the MT Haven began groaning under the heat as some of her hull plates melted. More explosions rang out from the Haven, breaking off parts of her bow. With the fire still burning and the ship leaking oil, authorities deployed floating barriers in the effort to try and corral the thick flammable material oozing out into the sea. A plan was hatched to try and get a better hold of the situation. Due to the distance from the shore, firefighting was less than ideal. As such, it was decided to drag the MT Haven closer to the Italian coast. The next day, a tugboat was attached to the MT Haven and the blazing ship was pulled towards Aranzano. It now had a horrendously weakened structure and, unsurprisingly, after a bit of tugging, she would begin to break up. A section of the vessel broke off sinking in roughly 480 metres of water, but that wouldn't be the end of the break-up and sinking. At around 10am on the 14th of April, the stern sank, plunging 80 metres below the water level. As the final part of the MT Haven sank, the fire was finally extinguished after 70 hours of burning. It is thought that up to 50,000 tonnes of crude oil had been released into the sea, with the remaining of the Haven's cargo going up in flames. The disaster was an environmental nightmare affecting over 25 miles of coastline. Once she had came to rest, the MT Haven was now Europe's largest shipwreck. Over the coming months, oil seepage would be plugged by divers and submersibles. Years would pass by and the wreck would become a tourist attraction for divers. But what of the disaster's immediate aftermath? The aftermath. Oil had contaminated the Italian and French coastlines with thicknesses of oil between 1 and 2 inches. This ended up costing millions of dollars in clean-up and remediation works. Reportedly, there was a 43% decrease in fish captures compared to the year before the disaster. So the operators of the ship would be brought before the Italian courts. The allegations were of negligence in maintenance of the MT Haven, as well as manslaughter. It was theorised that she probably should have been written off after the missile incident, but we'll never know for certain as the refurbishment in Singapore did certify the ship for work. Lucas and his son Stelios were charged but acquitted after three retrials, with the last taking place in 2002. Similarly, in a court case, the company was also let off. Obviously, Italian officials and the public weren't too happy with this outcome. In a bit of a tone-deaf statement after the final trial, Stelios was quoted, my main comment is to ask why it took so long to clear innocent people of these terrible charges. Of course, at the time that went down like a lead balloon. It turns out that April 1991 was a bit of a rubbish time for Italian disasters. As only a day before the MT Haven, the Moby Prince Fairy had collided with the Agit Abruzzo tanker off Leverno, which left 140 dead and also caused an oil spill of just over 2,000 tonnes. Now I think I'll probably have to cover this one in another video. What do you think? This is the Plain Difficult Production. All videos on the channel are creative, comments, attributes, and share alike licensed. Plain Difficult Videos are produced by me, John, in a currently very cold and miserable corner of Southern London, UK. I have Instagram and X or Twitter and a second YouTube channel, so check them out for all sorts of other random bits and pieces of what I get up to when I'm not working on Plain Difficult Videos. I also have Patreon and YouTube members, so thank you very much for your financial support, as well as the rest of you for tuning in every week to watch my videos. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr. Music, play us out please.