1 Dead, 28 Missing as Tanker Breaks Up

A Greek oil tanker was found broken in half and burning in the North Atlantic on Friday and a daylong search found the body of only one of the 29 people believed to have been aboard.

The charred remains of a crewman was recovered off Newfoundland near the smoking wreckage of the tanker Athenian Venture, but there was no sign that anyone from the ship survived, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said.

“(The dead man) had the ship’s log and some personal papers and was definitely from the ship,” Chief Warrant Officer John Hollis said in a telephone interview.

“He was badly burned,” Hollis said. He added that the victim was a Polish national.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Kent Fisher said that 24 crew members and five passengers believed to have been their relatives were aboard the tanker when it caught fire and broke in two about 372 miles south of Cape Race. All were believed to be from Poland, Fisher said.

Sections Miles Apart

The crew of the Canadian research vessel Hudson discovered the burning bow and stern of the Athenian Venture about two miles apart before dawn, but there was no clue as to what had caused the trouble.

“It’s one hell of a mess,” Capt. Loran Strum said in a ship-to-shore interview from the Hudson. “She’s a 30,000-to-40,000-tonner broken in two--both ends burning.

“We could see fire through the house windows, so she’s all burned out in the bridge sector. I think I could quite safely say it would be impossible for anyone to be alive aboard.”

The stern section of the tanker, which had been carrying gasoline to New York from Amsterdam, was still afloat and ablaze late Friday night, Hollis said.

Search Continues

Seven merchant ships and a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft remained in the area and most intended to search through the night.

Fisher said there was no indication of what caused the fire aboard the Cypriot-registered tanker, which did not send a distress call and was identified by the Coast Guard only through conversations with companies known to have tankers in the area.

Strum, who took part last year in the dramatic rescue of 24 men from a Panamanian-registered freighter off Newfoundland, said he could not determine why the fuel ship broke into flames.

“We have not sighted anything at all. When we went by her at 4 o’clock this morning, it appeared through the smoke that the starboard lifeboat was gone, was missing,” Strum said. “That’s all we know about it.”