Tragedy on Aegean Angel

The above is a nice picture of the Oil Tanker Aegean Angel I found in vesseltracker.com which is the same shown in the Maritime Executive magazine that was credited to Arcadia Shipmanagement Co. Ltd . The tanker encountered an unexpected wave at the end of last year and resulted in two lost lives. Somehow the news did not gets around, it has only came to my attention recently. Here's what reported on January 31, 2011 by the editor of the Triton Nautical News:

On Dec. 30, the master and a chief engineer onboard the Greek-owned tanker, M/V Aegean Angel, were killed after a wave hit the ship in the mid-Atlantic, according to a story in Maritime Executive magazine.

The ship was sailing from Tallinn, Estonia, to Houston, Texas, with a cargo of fuel oil when it encountered rough weather northeast of Bermuda. The wave instantly killed the ship’s 47-year-old master and 33-year-old chief engineer and left the 34-year-old chief officer seriously injured, the magazine reported.

On Jan. 2, the chief officer was transported by U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to King Edward’s Memorial Hospital in Bermuda, where his condition was reported as stable. Ship manager Arcadia Shipmanagement Co. reported that the incident occurred when the officers were inspecting the deck for damage following rough weather.

There was no damage to the ship.

So it was just a wave hit the ship. But in another sounding about the case in Royal Gazette, Edward Harris described it as

"a 'freak wave' hit the supertanker Aegean Angel on December 30, 2010, killing two members of the crew".

I guess no one would really argue the terminology to say it's not a freaque wave that caused the tragedy. Unless, of course, when it is involved in the legal hassle then the distinctions may become critical such as what had happened in the case of SS Prestige in 2002.