Constructed in 1953, the Argo Merchant enjoyed 23 years of service before sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1976. And during that time it suffered virtually every maritime disaster known to mankind.
In 1967, the Argo Merchant took eight months to sail from Japan to America, a journey which should normally have taken days. During this momentous journey, it collided with a Japanese freighter, caught fire three times, and had to stop for major repairs five times.
The following year, the crew mutinied. In 1969, she ran aground near Borneo for 34 hours.
Over the next five years, the Argo was laid up for repairs in Curacao, ran aground again off Sicily, and had to be towed to New York when it completely broke down during an Atlantic crossing.
In 1976, her boilers quit six times, and during one voyage she traveled with two red lights flashing, warning other ships that the Argo was no longer under the control of the crew. (The steering had failed.) Philadelphia banned her completely, as did Boston, and the Panama Canal refused her access.
She finally ran aground off Cape Cod, smearing the doorstep of Massachusetts with the biggest oilslick in American history.
At the time of her sinking, her crew had been 'lost' for almost a full day. She was 18 miles off course and the crew was using the stars to navigate because their 'state-of-the-art' navigational equipment had failed. To top it all off, the helmsman was West Indian and could not read the course logs because the handwriting was in Greek!
The Argo Merchant was later described by naval experts as 'a disaster looking for somewhere to happen'. Apparently, it found a lot of places!
