Red Sea Abu Nuhas
Kimon M began life as the Brunsbuttel at her launch from the Stulcken & Sohn Shipyard, on the Elbe River at Hamburg on the 11th February of 1952. The picture above is the actual Brunsbuttel, which became the Kimon M, I have seen several other pictures in other publications purporting to be her, that have used vessels of the same name, from the same yard, but with a little diligence they can be clearly identified as later launch dates (1955 or 1963). Heinrich Christoph Stulcken founded H C Stulcken Sohn in 1846, his father had been in shipbuilding in the Hamburg region from 1833 and Heinrich had inherited his profession and eventually rented a yard to carry out repairs to yachts, he moved on to build wooden sailing ships and progressed as did the industry, into Iron ships around the late 1870’s and ultimately to steel ships accordingly
By 1952 Stulcken Werft had become one of Hamburg’s largest shipyards, it was still in family ownership as far as I can determine up until at least 1925 under the hand of Heinrich von Dietlein, the eldest grandson of the founder. Stulcken Werft supplied the German Navy in WWI and again in WWII which included building the infamous “U-Boats” and survived both World Wars, despite severe damage from allied bombings, building, amongst other things, the iconic giant V shaped heavy lift cranes of the 1950’s. Stulcken Werft developed the “Hamburg” and “Koln” class frigates for the modern German navy in the late 1950’s but was eventually taken over by Blohm und Voss in 1966, having built some 60 warships and a total of around 930 vessels. For those of you who, like me, love to visit the historic remains of such sites, the Stulcken Werft is now occupied by the two harbour theatre buildings, “Theater im Hafen Hamburg” and “Theater an der Elbe” almost directly opposite the Hard Rock Café Hamburg
A fairly elegant ship for her time, considering the prevalence of the war era “liberty” class ships in the coastal trades that had been sold off, post war, by the USA and which offered cheap, but hardly cutting edge transportation, the Brunsbuttel was a general cargo configuration with “derrick” masts (essentially, jib cranes) fore and aft to service her holds, two at front and a second pair to her stern. She was built and designed to be deep-sea or coastal, and to carry a wide variety of cargoes mostly in her holds, however she also had some usable deck space and often timber would be carried on deck by vessels like Brunsbuttel. For those of you who relish the technical, her details are below
Willy Bruns & Company (W. Bruns & Co) were founded in Hamburg in 1950 by Willy Bruns, a fruit trader working primarily in the transportation and selling of Bananas from the Dutch East Indies, established somewhere close to the end of the Second World War. Willy, born in 1904, was 49 at the close of hostilities and, in partnership with two others, owned two ships from Scandinavian yards which he fitted out with rudimentary cooling capabilities for the fruit trade. Business must have been reasonably good as by 1955 he had added two more steamers, this time from Stulcken & Sohn, the Brunsbuttel being one of them. The Brunsbuttel would be with Bruns for just a year, being sold on to become the Ciudad Ce Cucuta in 1953
Cucuta, or San Jose de Cucuta, is a municipality of Columbia, at the foot of the Andes mountain range and now one of the more populated areas of Columbia, founded by Juana Rangel de Cuellarin 1773, on lands owned by Cristobal de Araque Ponce de Leon, and has been known mainly for gold mines, dairy produce and textiles through its history. The Ciudad de Cucuta was registered to the Grancolombiana Company of Bogota who, by 1953, had a not insubstantial fleet of 17 or so commercial vessels, including several from the Stulcken & Sohn shipyard. The “Flota Mercante Grancolombiana” or Merchant Fleet of Greater Columbia, was formed from the first Grancolombiana shipping conference which met in Bogota, the idea of then President Alfonso López Pumarejo and his Venezuelan counterpart Isaias Medina Angarita, created to form a joint merchant marine company for Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. This was eventually ratified by the second conference held in Caracas In April 1946, and funded with 45% Colombian, 45% of Venezuelan and 10% of Ecuadorian capital. The fleet began operations in March 1947 with 8 new ships purchased in the United States from the US auxiliary fleet of World War II. (“Flota mercante Grancolombiana Historia” Pulido. L. P. April 14 2011. On-Line Resource: prezi.com/otskw1wrdehv/flota-mercante-grancolumbiana/ Accessed 20/11/2024) “…..By 1953 it had 12 of its own ships, it had facilities for technical organizations in the United States, in the three partner countries and in several Central American countries. In the same year Venezuela withdraws from society. Such were the proportions of the demand that the company was forced to order the construction of 6 new ships of the same type but with greater capacity”
The Ciudad de Cucuta served Columbia for over ten years, from 1953 to 1964 when she was again sold-on, on this occasion to William C Mallas of New York, and she entered service with his Maritime Shipping Corporation (Steamship Brokers Agents & Operators 26 Broadway New York) as the Angela. I can’t find a great deal about this shipping agent, suffice to say there were many shipping agents and shipowners on Broadway and some of the blocks of Broadway had some 600 plus businesses registered around that time, clearly the Maritime Shipping Corporation was not stand-out particularly amongst them. I can find several other of their ships, a couple laid up in the Green River Fleet which we have dealt with elsewhere in this blog (Vassilios T) and at least one other with a Lloyds Register entry or two, but nothing on the Ciudad de Cucuta. This story repeats for successive owners, Malataras (1975) where she sailed as the Kimon & Transmar Agencies (1976) where she was finally given an “M” to her name and became the vessel we now know as Kimon M, as both later owners were Greek in origin (although Transmar is registered out of New York) I am not really surprised at the lack of information, at the time Greek shipping changed owners on an almost daily basis and records are perhaps, if kept at all, stuck inside a drawer in a derelict Piraeus office somewhere……..
Sometime in 1976 Kimon M transferred ownership for the last time to S. Halkias & M. Raftopoulos, Greek owners of the Ianiossos Shipping Co S.A. and based out of Piraeus, (although wrecksite.eu has this as Janissios Shipping Co based out of Panama) she was engaged in general cargo trading until her loss 12th December of 1978 on Sha’b Abu Nuhas. There is an ancient saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” which harks back to Homer’s Iliad and the story of Helen of Troy, “The face that launched a thousand ships” both coined following the siege of Troy and the Greeks supposed gift, after nine years of siege and dozens of skirmishes with the Trojans outside the walls of Troy, so heavily fortified as to be impregnable. I’m sure most, if not all, are familiar with the story, the abduction of Helen, Queen of Sparta and wife of King Menelaus, stolen by Paris, emissary for Troy and son of Troy’s King, Priam. The war that follows between Greeks and Trojans, and the eventual “gift” of a huge wooden horse, seemingly from the Greek King Menelaus (suggested by Odysseus) and the pretence of the Greeks sailing off from the coast of Troy, whilst the Trojans embrace the huge Horse and celebrate it within the city walls, only for Greek soldiers to appear from it at night, and open the gates of Troy to the revenge of Menelaus and his army. Perhaps the modern equivalent, (at least up to the loss of the Kimon M and Chrisoula K in the 70’s & 80’s) might be “Beware of Greeks, sailing ships registered in Panama, into the Red Sea”
The photo above is telling, although there are two more wrecks on Sha’b Abu Nuhas which are fully submerged, to the Left of the first Bow, one, the freighter Ghiannis D, another Greek owned, Panama registered vessel, and the far older, Carnatic, a British sailing ship (both covered elsewhere in this blog). I believe this photo adds some fuel to the heated debate surrounding the identity of the wrecks on Sha’b Abu Nuhas, it seems to show a fifth vessel, the one sat intact but hard ashore, perhaps I “want to see it”, but the name, although not at all clear, seems to me to be very possibly “Sea Star”. I will leave that little “hand grenade” to sit & fester as there are those who will be incensed at the mere suggestion, in equal number to those who will cry “I told you so”, for the rest of you, it is just another story you can dig into for yourselves, suffice to say “most” believe there are only four wrecks on Sha’b Abu Nuhas, where some say there are five……….me I’m just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk!
So why would Kimon M be under a Panama “Flag” (often known as a flag of convenience….) when owned by a Greek Shipping agent? Why the question? Panama has the largest shipping fleet in the world, despite a population of only some 3 million inhabitants and, although it has two coastlines, one on the Caribbean Northern side, out to the North Atlantic Ocean, and another on the South Pacific Ocean, it also has a rather convenient 48 mile long canal joining those seas for commercial purposes. So Panama is no stranger to shipping companies, and despite only having one shipping company itself, has around 8,600 ships flying its flag, compared to c3,400 flying US flags and 3,700 flying the Chinese flag (BBC: “Why so many shipowners find Panama’s flag convenient” On-Line Resource: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28558480#:~:text=Most%20merchant%20ships%20flying %20Panama’s,to%20 employ%20cheaper %20foreign%20labour. Accessed 22/11/2024). Panama realised that the high taxation and rigorous seaworthiness standards required by Great Britain and the United States was a potentially lucrative market for those who’s ships were older, and those who wished to pay less for the privilidge of operating them, consequently they opened their own “registry” of shipping (as did Liberia, Hong Kong, Singapore and several others), open to foreign operators and owners, and it quickly flourished as can be seen from the stats provided above. The Panamanian registry is not without criticism as the BBC piece notes: “…..The registry is lucrative for Panama, bringing in half a billion dollars for the economy in fees, services and taxes. However, critics of the system point to the ease of hiding the true identity of shipowners and the lax enforcement of rules and regulations” I will leave the reader to decide why, at 26 years old and under Greek ownership, Kimon M might have been chosen for Panama’s registry………..
The loss of Kimon M follows a trip to the Turkish Levante port of Iskenderun, where, on 08th December of 1978, she loaded a 4,500 Ton cargo of Hessian bags full of Lentils from the Southern & South-eastern region of Anatolia, bound for Bombay in India. In a daring and most shameless & tenuous of links, the ancient city of Troy is but a 1300Km coastal ferry ride North of Iskenderun……… but… I digress, Kimon M made her way from Iskenderun under Captain Juan Cavilieri, Kimon M’s Master’s guidance, through the Suez Canal on 10th December of 1978 and, by the 12th December, she had made her way out of the Canal and down the Gulf of Suez (with Captain Cavilieri spending most of the time commanding from her bridge), to the Red Sea itself and, following a period of rest in his cabin, if this is to be believed, just as he came back onto the bridge to resume command on the 12th she ran full speed into Sha’b Abu Nuhas……
I have a couple of issues with the navigational skills of the various Captains that have found their way onto the various reefs and outcrops in the Red Sea and surrounding straits, the view above, whilst in perfect conditions visibility wise shows perhaps why, at least in this case. If the Kimon M was on a Southerly heading down the Gulf of Suez, a. the course taken was far too far across to the West, b. even if a “far West” course had been deliberately steered to progress South, then the vessel had strayed way too far South before executing either a correction or a turn, either way, if you are in a vessel heading directly for an Island, any Island, at full speed…….I would confidently suggest, despite possessing only limited personal seafaring skills, that something is very obviously amiss…….
There are several Lloyds Casualty List entries for the Kimon M’s grounding, 13 December 1978, Lloyds stated the following: “KIMON M. (Panamanian). Port Said Dec 12 – MV Kimon M, Iskenderun for Bombay with about 4,500 tons of Lentils, reported stranded near Safaga, exact position still to be ascertained. All crew reportedly abandoned vessel and rescued by MV Interasja, arriving Suez Dec 13-14. (Note Kimon M had passed Suez Dec. 10.)” The Interasja immediately responded to Kimon M’s distress call eventually managing to rescue the full crew, and dropping them at Port Suez on the 15th December. Kimon M, travelling at full speed, 11 or so Knots even at her age, meant she struck hard, her bow driven out of the water, high on the reef, she remained there for several days and, at least some salvage of the ship’s cargo was attempted
There is a second Lloyd’s entry the following day: “KIMON M. (Panamanian). London, Dec 12 – Kimon M struck wreck in position lat. 27 35N, long. 33 55 E. Strait of Gubal. Vessel requires tug assistance on Lloyd’s open form (See issue of Dec 13.)”Despite the latter appeal for tug assistance, Kimon M would not be re-floated, the hull settling back down after the bow section parted at hold No1 and her remains, as can be seen from Rico Oldfields’ excellent drawing and Holger buss’ cloud point photogrammetry model above
Kimon M was originally known to the Red Sea wreck safari’s and live-aboards as “The Lentil wreck” before her identification as Kimon M, I cannot determine exactly when she was finally “officially” identified, and named accordingly, however it would have been somewhere around 1995 as in 1996 with the release of Ned Middleton’s superb book “Shipwrecks from the Egyptian Red Sea” (ISBN 1898162719) she was reviewed as the Kimon M, when I dived her in 1997 the dive guides had her identified as “Sea Star” and mentioned her cargo of Lentils, we were diving her as part of a dive on the Chrisoula K, the dive is described in my little Red Wreck Book as: “06.08.97 SEASTAR a continuation of dive 272. Seastar was a cargo ship carrying Lentils and stone slabs when she hit Abu Nuhas in 1976. Navigation aids were removed during Arab/Israeli war so Nav-error is probable.We came across her at mid-ships and had a good look over her length from the deck area she’s over to her starboard side but angled at about 20’ there are stone slabs all over her decks, the rigging is partly intact off her bows she would warrant another longer look, a pretty wreck”
It would be 6 long years before I got to dive the Kimon M again, this time on the Blue 02 liveaboard “Blue Horizon” in 2013 with Craig as buddy. We had decided to again dive the two wrecks in one go, although I’m not sure I would recommend this approach given both wrecks warrant a good single dive, our motivation was the limited time the Horizon intended staying at Abu Nuhas and the distinct difference between the two extremes of North and South with the Ghiannis D being the most popular wreck and for good reason
I describe the dives here as they were written in my Green Navy Log: “30/07/13 Kimon M & Chrisoula K – Abu Nuhas – Red Sea dropped onto Chrisoula K we spent time diving the prop & rudder before entering the stern section and winding our way round the battered stern hold area which is collapsing in on itself slowly a long swim from stern to bow along the port side to exit at the break aft of the bow which is missing. Through the remains of the starboard side & hold to exit & transit the reef for a couple of hundred meters to the Kimon M again down the starboard side to the prop & rudder which lie on the sea bed to starboard. We swam through then circled to the stern deck housing and wended through the collapsed rear section which is dangerously collapsed in but can still be negotiated up through the hull which leads to the engine room which was swam through & then back into go through the port side which allowed a swim through and out to turn back at the missing bow section & a swim along the hull to deco below our moored boat Air In 210 Out 80 Buddy Craig”
I have not had another chance to dive the Kimon M since 2013 and can imagine her condition now will be far more of an issue to penetration in her stern holds and engine room, I loved diving her on both occasions and would have happily spent an entire dive on each wreck separately had time not been limited. Suffice to say, that opportunity will not present itself in wholly the same manner again I’m sure. I love nothing more than finding ways into the less visited areas of wrecks where I feel it is safe to do so, the engine and stern spaces on Kimon M, although collapsing even then, still had great routes through and great areas to ferret around in and it is sad to think they will only have become less accessible in the ten years or so since
As usual, there would be no piece worth writing if it were not for the wonderful pictures used to illustrate it, as such I am indebted to grafasdiving.gr, Rico Oldfield, deutsche-digitale-bibliotech.de, Andreas Hoppe, Howard Rosentstein, Plongee.info, Ned Middleton, divers-guide.com, Holger Buss of Dive3D.eu, experience Egypt, wikipedia and Edgar