Finding a Tragedy (Cheng Lu 15)

Nick and I went looking for sea glass today, but instead we found a salvaged sunken ship.  Seriously. We later learned that this Chinese cargo vessel sank at Pohang's northern port--just minutes from us!-- in fall 2013--while we were here!  Very exciting--like a close call with a world event!  But more research revealed where I was and what I was doing during the ship's sinking, and that hit way too close to home.

One of the tiny "beaches" by Jukcheon1-ri;
you can see Pohang's city lights in the background.

Here's the story. Yesterday was a lazy Sunday afternoon, kids were playing with friends, and Nick and I decided to take a beach stroll. I was in the mood for sea glass, so we drove to the closest seaside village (Jukcheon1-ri), whose many small "beaches" (skinny slits of sand and rock between road/seawall and sea - mentioned before) normally boast buckets of glass. It appears that the villagers and their fishing friends consume vast quantities of soju (think Korean vodka) then dash the bottles overboard or against the fishing piers, where ocean waves tumble smooth the glass and carry it to shore. (Mind you, I am not judging these bottle-smashing soju drinkers: breaking glass makes a decidedly lovely sound, reminding me of glorious hours spent at the Chicago and Sioux Center city recycling bins, relieving much stress.  However, I do find it odd that they'd so willingly pollute their own fishing waters, but that's for another day).

Today, though, the beaches only offered a tremendous amount of seaweed, which (a) covers up any sea glass, (b) smells pretty bad, (c) is very slippery, and (d) is itself covered with ajummas seeking the best bits to fling up on the road to dry in the sun for later snacking.  The seaweed, that it, not the ajummas.

Our route from Handong, through Jukcheon-ri, to Youngilman port where we found the ship.
The rectangular port proper is about 1 x 2 kilometers in size.  

So, we drove down the precarious sea-side road, fruitlessly seeking a seaweed-free zone.  Alas, poor Yorick, the seaglass hunt was not to be. Heading home the long way, we drove past the new-ish Youngilman Port (opened in 2009).  The area has many enormous steel and ship-related warehouses, and it's not unusual to see huge ship-bits scattered alongside the road, waiting for welding or painting or other shippery things, I suppose. But today, as we neared the port, we noticed a very unusual shape, like a ship, but in the shipping terminal area rather than back in the industrial park.

Our first sighting of this strange ship-bit.

Being curious, and having plenty of time on our hands, we briefly weighed the wisdom of sneaking a closer look given the risk of arrest by angry Korean-speaking port authorities.  But when two cars zoomed through the slightly-open barrier and past the empty guard shack, we did too.  The ship's hulk was terribly rusty; a fishing net was snagged on its deck. The hull looked viciously smashed, the metal curled like an alien had exploded out of the bilge tanks. We concluded it was certainly not a newly manufactured ship, but probably an old boat the local steel industry folks brought up to salvage for its metal.

We continued driving in the prohibited area, feeling slightly naughty, and at the very end we found the other half of the ship, rusting badly and steadily leaking oil onto the cement.  We walked around it, noticing dozens of "Oil Sorbent" boxes, piles of towels, platoons of acetylene tanks, and a crumpled heap of oily plastic floats (for a brief oil containment education, check here).  Aha - maybe this old boat was salvaged because of an oil spillage problem?  We tip-toed through the kitty-litter-like absorbent stuff, and eventually came across a badly torn, muddy mattress, apparently pulled from the ship; a large kitchen ladle and a beat-up fire extinguisher were further signs of humanity.  We re-adjusted our conclusion once again, realizing this wasn't merely a rusty, leaking hulk destined for recycling, but possibly the remains of a tragedy at sea.

Remnants from Cheng Lu 15's stern, taken at Youngilman Port, Pohang.

Back at home, my trusty research assistant (Google) was surprisingly peckish about giving us more information on this ship. But what I finally pieced together astonished us. The Cheng Lu 15 is (was) a cargo ship from China, sailing under the Panama flag (for what bureaucratic/political purpose I don't understand).  Just 7 months ago, it had unloaded its cargo at the Pohang port and, because of the afternoon's storm, the captain decided to spend the night anchored near the port's breakwater before heading to Japan.  The ship had 130 tons of oil and diesel still on board, plus 19 crewmen.

The raging storm repeatedly slammed the Cheng Lu against the concrete wall, tearing a hole in its side. As the ship quickly sank beneath the towering waves, the captain ordered all hands to abandon ship. They quickly donned life jackets, then some rapidly climbed the mast and others jumped for the seawall or boarded a life raft. Hundreds of rescuers arrived but were helpless in the wild wind and waves. Hours later, the 8 men clinging to the tip of the sunken boat's mast were finally saved; the other 11 crewmen died at sea.  (For the best articles, photos, and videos, see these three sites: here, here, and here).

The Cheng Lu 15 before and during rescue operations (photos from sites linked above).

In reflecting on how this ship had sunk just a few minutes' drive away, and without me ever hearing about it, I wondered what I was doing at the time. I looked through my pictures for October 15, 2013, and found... oh.  Oh no. This was the very storm, the very afternoon when Nick's parents, Sam, and I went to Pine Resort Beach (often called Chilpo Beach) to see the stormy waves, and we marveled at the hugely strong winds that lifted us at each step and at the sand that exfoliated any exposed skin.

Pine Resort Beach (Chilpo) two hours before the Cheng Lu 15 crashed at Youngilman Port;
you can just see the port's cranes over Ray's shoulder (upper right).

Within 2 hours of our beach jaunt, at the port just a mile or so away, the Cheng Lu 15 sank and many men died. And we didn't even know about it.  (For readers familiar with Sioux Center, IA, it's like you're happily flying kites in Children's Park and then a big plane crashes in Sandy Hollow and you had no clue about this until you stumbled across the plane when you went camping a few months later.)

I couldn't get past the sharp contrast between the storm I had associated with joyous playfulness and the mortal tragedy for this wrecked ship and the lives of many families. Maybe my problem was the realization that my blithe attitude toward the ocean's power (and lots of other things outside my control) needs adjustment. Or maybe it's twisted guilt for having giddy fun on the beach when folks nearby would die in that same storm.  Or that bad things can happen, nearby, and I have no clue about them in my little ex-pat bubble.