Sea Empress

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Cleanup in difficult places still ongoing over a year later near Angle Bay

The Sea Empress was the name of a single hull oil tanker that became infamous during the mid 1990s for the devastation it caused to the coastline of south-west Wales when the ship ran aground.

On the evening of 15 February 1996 the Sea Empress was entering the mouth of the Cleddau Estuary on her way into Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire to deposit its oil cargo at the refinery. Sailing against the outgoing tide, at 20:07 UTC the ship hit rocks in the middle of the channel, which punctured her hull causing oil to pour out into the bay. Over the days of the disaster an estimated 73,000 tonnes out of her 130,000 tonne cargo of North Sea crude oil spilt onto the surrounding coast, causing a great deal of environmental and aesthetic damage to the coastline and its marine life and wildlife in an area which lies within the protection of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Cleaning up the beaches and the sea bed was a hugely expensive and durable operation as well as the thousands of birds smothered in oil which had to receive treatment.

It took almost five years for the coastline to be fully cleaned up and restored by the Pembrokeshire Council and wildlife conservationalists

The oil tanker was recovered and was subsequently renamed continuing to operate until 2004. There was much speculation in the media at the time over the fate and unreliability of old single hull tankers which had been the cause of another disaster in Scotland just a year earlier