The Ardlough (Wreck)

 shipwreck, interesting place, invisible

A leak in her hold was caused when she hit a lock wall when leaving Garston Docks, but it must have been a big hole by the time the Ardlough, a heavily laden, 998 ton West German steel motor vessel, 262ft long with a beam of 47ft, finally sank. She was bound from Liverpool for Belfast in September 1988.

The Ardlough didn't get far. Her Mayday call went out from the middle of a gale at 3.24 in the morning on 26 September, before she had even left Liverpool Bay. Her West German captain and his eight Filipino crew were lifted off safely by an RAF search & rescue helicopter just as the 12 containers on deck broke loose as she sank.

What those deck containers held is not listed separately, though, in addition to the 91 containers she carried, her cargo included steel in the shape of bars, sheet and rods; coal; rolls of newsprint; tobacco; biscuits; foam blocks and one container of low-level radioactive material routed to Belfast. Other cargo included drums of hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite.

The Ardlough, which had been built in East Germany in 1968 as the Barbel Bolten, was soon buoyed by Trinity House and was wire-swept to 16m in 1993. Salvage was carried out, but some of the containers were swept great distances from the wreck and were never found.