The latest news shows that the cargo ship that caught fire in the waters near the Azores Islands in Portugal last month, after nearly half a month of rescue, still failed to escape the fate of sinking, currently located at a depth of 3500 meters under the Atlantic Ocean, with the ship sunk thousands of Volkswagen-produced cars, including Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley and a large number of luxury cars, Porsche alone has 1100 vehicles, some of which are even limited edition, with a total value of more than 550 million US dollars.
It is reported that the large freighter Felicity Ace, which is about 199 meters long, full of 3965 Volkswagen brand cars, departed from the German port city of Emden on February 10 and sailed to Rhode Island in the United States on the other side of the ocean, and was scheduled to arrive on the 23rd.
This route is the regular route for Volkswagen exports, and since Emden itself has many Volkswagen factories, the cars produced here can be driven directly to the port for loading, and the whole process is very convenient. The Felicity Ace itself is a cargo ship specializing in transporting cars, and its interior is like a huge parking lot, with all vehicles entering the cabin and densely docked together, capable of accommodating nearly 4,000 cars when fully loaded.
However, no one expected that this ordinary journey had a major accident. On the morning of the 16th, when the freighter was driving near the Azores, the cargo deck suddenly caught fire, followed by billowing smoke. Seeing that the fire was getting bigger and bigger, the captain sent out a distress signal. The nearby Portuguese Navy rushed to the scene and 22 crew members on board were rescued. But the freighter is still on fire and unmanned, drifting at sea.
According to the captain, the cause of the fire is suspected to be the lithium battery of an electric vehicle on fire, because the new cars in the cabin are densely arranged, once a fire starts, it is easy to spread, and the fire of the lithium battery requires special fire extinguishing equipment, the crew was in a hurry to find it, and the result was that the fire was uncontrollable and getting bigger and bigger.
At the same time, it has also been reported that the freighter is also carrying nearly 2,000 tons of fuel and 2,000 tons of oil, and the cargo ship is in a misfire unmanned state, which will be more serious once the hull leaks oil. So after the crew was rescued, a fire extinguishing operation was urgently launched. By February 24, under the repeated efforts of three fire-fighting tugboats, the open fire on the freighter was finally extinguished, leaving only the devastated Felicity Ace and 3,965 new vehicles burned to ashes.
Fortunately, the fire was extinguished in time, and there was no oil leakage in the hull and no casualties. Originally, the salvage company was going to drag the Felicity Ace to a nearby island, wait for the freighter to dock and then carefully investigate the cause of the fire, but who could have imagined that a week later, the Felicity Ace, which had been rescued for more than half a month, would still sink.
Subsequently, volkswagen and Porsche spokesmen reminded owners who ordered new cars in North America to contact the dealer as soon as possible, and all the cars on the Felicity Ace number will be cancelled. But Volkswagen may not be the most miserable, the owner of the Felicity Ace is even more wronged, the ship is gone, and the cause of the fire cannot be found.