/ 7 September 2001

SA firm diving in to rescue subs

The company has started a comprehensively equipped deep sea rescue and recovery facility

Barry Streek

In the wake of the Kursk submarine disaster off the Russian coast, a Cape Town entrepreneur, Gary van der Merwe, has spent more than R120-million to establish a submarine rescue operation in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.

His Win group of companies has bought three submarines, two of which are already in Cape Town and the third is due to arrive from Canada with a fully hospitalised “mother” ship with decompression chambers.

One of the submarines, the Mergo, will primarily be used to take tourists down to 125m below sea level and is expected to be operational by the end of the year under the control of British submarine expert Allan Whitfield.

The other two submarines, which will also be used for adventure tourism, can take three passengers and a pilot. These submarines, which can go down to a depth of 600m, are to form the basis of the rescue service.

The Win group has a marine ship division, which services oil tankers and rigs, and an aviation wing with five Bell helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft, primarily aimed at the tourist industry. The helicopters could also be used in rescues.

Apart from rescuing stricken submarines, the newly acquired submarines will also be used for recovering black boxes from sunken aircraft, the salvage of wrecks and undergoing scientific and geological research by South African and overseas universities and companies.

Van der Merwe says he has already spent R120-million on the acquisition of the submarines and the mother ship, to be called the Cormorant, and he hopes to conclude negotiations for two more submarines soon.

He is “happy” with his investments, but will he get a return on them? He says: “I hope so, that is why people are in business.”

Asked how he had raised the capital for the submarines, he merely shrugs his shoulders and says: “It has been self-financed.”

Whitfield, who has been involved in a number of submarine rescue exercises but has never been involved in a “live” rescue, says the rescue submarines carry a device, which looks like an upturned teacup, that is placed over the escape hatch of the disabled vessels. The “teacup” is sealed and the water pumped out to enable the rescue crew to get into the sunken submarine and the trapped people to escape.

Roy Allen, Win’s logistics and military consultant, says apart from Australia, which has its own rescue facility and a local facility in South Korea, there are no submarine rescue facilities in the Southern Atlantic and Indian oceans, “probably one of the most important and strategically significant regions in terms of international seaways and of large vessels that cannot navigate the confines of the Suez Canal.

“Since some of the world’s navies operate their submarines in the international waters adjacent to the Cape, there exists a very certain, urgent need for the establishment of a comprehensively equipped deep-sea rescue and recovery task force.”

The company would also like to establish a submarine-training facility in Cape Town that could be used by participating navies.

Whitfield says that in the case of the Kursk no rescue operation was mounted until it was too late, but in accidents of this kind it was usually a matter of hours or days for people in damaged submarines to be saved.

Win’s rescue submarines weigh about 20 tons and can be carried on board the Win ship with an A-frame loading device or in a large aircraft such as a C130 or an Ilyushin 76.

The Mergo, on the other hand, is suitable to ferry 10 tourists and a pilot, who would sit in a cabin with windows. She will be based in Cape Town but it could be used anywhere off the South African coast.

“It should be very exciting. The first tourists on the Mergo will be seeing things that have never been seen before, particularly because of the cold water in the Cape.”

The cabin will be air-conditioned at normal room temperature. The deeper you go, the darker you get. A diver uses a torch but it is a bit like using a torch in the garden at night. You don’t see much. Your diver’s torch is 40W to 50W, your motorcar is about 60W. The submarine throws out 6000W so that you can light up the whole seabed.

“For us, it is like a floodlit stadium. There are over 3000 shipwrecks off the Cape coast but only 10% have been discovered and they are still looking for the Waratah,” Whitfield explains.