TORREY CANYON, United Kingdom, 1967

TORREY CANYON ran aground on Pollard Rock on the Seven Stones Reef, near Lands End, Cornwall on 18^th March 1967. Thousands of tonnes of oil were soon spilling from the stricken vessel's ruptured tanks and during the next 12 days the entire cargo of approximately 119,000 tonnes of Kuwait crude oil was lost.

A wide variety of methods to mitigate the spill were tried. Burning the slick proved unsuccessfu

l, and eventually the British Government gave orders for TORREY CANYON to be destroyed by aerial bombardment in the hope that all the oil still remaining on board would be burnt off. This operation was partially successful, but did not prevent escaping oil from polluting many parts of the south west of England, causing the deaths of thousands of seabirds and threatening the livelihoods of many local people in the forthcoming summer tourist season. Later the drifting oil polluted beaches and harbours in the Channel Islands and Brittany.

A distinguishing feature of the TORREY CANYON response operation was the excessive and indiscriminate use of early dispersants and solvent based cleaning agents, which caused considerable environmental damage. The dispersants were generally successful at their task of reducing the amount of oil arriving ashore and subsequently expediting onshore cleanup operations, but they were considerably more toxic than those used today and were applied in far greater concentrations, often being poured undiluted on slicks and beaches. Many of the detrimental impacts of the spill were later related to the high volume, high concentration and high toxicity of the dispersant and detergents used.

The TORREY CANYON was the first major tanker disaster to be brought to the notice of the general public due to enormous media coverage, and drew universal attention to the dangers of dispersants. The spill triggered the international Conventions, which form the basis for compensation for damage caused by tanker spills, and interim voluntary agreements to bridge the gap before the Conventions entered into force and became widely accepted.