# The S.S. Sansinena explosion...



## jamesgpobog (Feb 18, 2012)

I live in SoCal and was at home 18.25 nautical miles from Sansinena when she blew up at the fuel pier at San Pedro, 12/17/1976 at about 7:38 pm. Three fourths of that distance is across water, so the sound and blast wave really carried well to where I was. It didn't rattle my windows, it shook them. Hard. The 'boom' of the explosion was audible. It was very clear that something very bad had just happened somewhere fairly close by. My father, who as a WWII vet, was even closer to it than I (about 10 statute miles) and he said he thought a 1000 pound bomb had gone off near him.

I do not remember if it was immediately carried on local news, but I sure never forgot the event. As far as I know the Maritime museum in San Pedro still has an exhibit about it. It rained steel rivets across the channel into the residential area.

Rather than post pix, the two links below are to Google searches for the event. There are many very good pix of the fire and wreckage, though some of the pix are in do***ents such as the PDF files of the accident report. In both links, the best results are near the tops of the search returns.



Google image search for S.S. Sansinena explosion


Google text search for S.S. Sansinena explosion


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## Long gone (Jun 20, 2009)

That sounds like almost a carbon copy of the 'British Crown' disaster, of which there has been plenty of discussion on this site. If you try and get in touch with Graham Wallace, he'll tell you more, or put 'British Crown' in the search function


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## Andrew Craig-Bennett (Mar 13, 2007)

I have an idea that it was the explosion of the _"Sansinena"_ and the _"British Crown"_ disaster that went a long way to doing away with the midships wheelhouse on tankers. I have a dim recollection of the wreck removal operations for the _"Sansinena"_ but I had not appreciated that she was a sister of the _"Torrey Canyon"_.


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## Cisco (Jan 29, 2007)

I think the big shift to 'all aft' came as a result of the Stanvac Japan explosion in 1958. In Stanvac the next new build -Stanvac Horizon - was one of a class of three. The first in 1958 -Bideford- was completed for Fred Olsens with midships accom while the next two - S/V Horizon and F.H. Kockum were completed as all aft.


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## Wallace Slough (Mar 21, 2009)

The Puertorican, a house aft tanker, exploded at sea off San Francisco while conducting a pilot change. If my memory is correct, 3 people including a sailor, the officer on watch, and the pilot were on deck when the ship exploded and were blown through the hand rails and into the sea. As I recall, the sailor was lost, but the other two survived and were picked up by the pilot boat. Jim Nolan was the pilot, and was severely injured with multiple fractures to his legs. The stern section sunk, and the bow section was towed back into San Francisco. The bow section looked like a can of sardines with the deck peeled up, and one can understand the reasoning behind having the accommodation aft when viewing the aftermath of this type of explosion. As I recall, everyone in the accommodation escaped injury and survived.


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## gadgee (Jul 24, 2005)

Images in SN Gallery

http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/78326/title/ss-sansinena/cat/523

and USCG report=

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/docs/boards/sansinena.pdf


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## Spurling Pipe (Feb 20, 2012)

Andrew Craig-Bennett said:


> I have an idea that it was the explosion of the _"Sansinena"_ and the _"British Crown"_ disaster that went a long way to doing away with the midships wheelhouse on tankers. I have a dim recollection of the wreck removal operations for the _"Sansinena"_ but I had not appreciated that she was a sister of the _"Torrey Canyon"_.


Me too, I always thought the 'Lake Palourde' was the sister.

Dave


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## Cisco (Jan 29, 2007)

There were 3 sisters......


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## George Bis (Mar 8, 2014)

Spurling Pipe said:


> Me too, I always thought the 'Lake Palourde' was the sister.
> 
> Dave


Not a great operation to loose two out of three tankers in peace time!


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## George Bis (Mar 8, 2014)

I was watching a report of this disaster on YouTube and it would appear that this disaster came from (a) water ballast being pumped into empty cargo tanks (b) gas leaving tanks (c) flat calm. gas hanging over ship (d) flame screens on tank inspection hatches not fitted (e) gas eventually finds source of ignition and ignition enters the tanks.
It is always said that ships are never lost for one single reason and it is good that more lives were not lost.


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