What we said
How long will the agony of the former French aircraft carrier last Foch, renamed Sao Paulo after its resale to the Brazilian Navy in 2000? In an article of September 3, 2022, we left the former flagship of the Royal now flying the South American flag near the coast of Morocco. The ship had been reduced to a 250-metre, 24,000-ton iron bar being dragged by a Dutch company’s tugboat. He had left Rio de Janeiro the previous August 4 for what was to be his last trip.
Bought by a Turkish company, SÖK Denizcilik, for a derisory sum (1.6 million dollars), it was to be dismantled in a shipyard in Aliağa, Turkey, and its metal resold by weight. But as the convoy approached the Strait of Gibraltar, the Turkish government turned around and refused permission, citing the presence of asbestos and other toxic products, including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Presence confirmed by expert reports, in proportions that are currently being debated.
Terrible humiliation to be considered toxic waste for someone who was a symbol of power on all the seas of the globe. Leaving the Saint-Nazaire shipyards and commissioned in 1963, the Foch, alternating with its quasi-twin, the Clemenceau, roamed everywhere the country wanted to show its muscles. Replaced by Charles de Gaulle, it was then bought by the Brazilian Navy, which had accumulated technical setbacks until it decided to scrap it.
What has happened since
Turkey having therefore refused to accept him, the Sao Paulo recrossed the Atlantic in the fall. It began to turn in circles, at the limit of Brazilian territorial waters, 25 kilometers off the port of Suape, in the state of Pernambuco. The Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, suspended the export authorization, in the name of ecological risk. But, in the name of this same risk, the local authorities have prohibited entry into the port and dry docking for expertise…
The Turkish company that acquired the aircraft carrier wanted to break the contract with the Brazilian Navy. The latter refused and estimated in a press release that “the responsibility for knowing what to do with it lay with whoever bought it”. An injunction from a court in Pernambuco prohibits any abandonment by the buyer. It is against the backdrop of this legal imbroglio that, under mysterious conditions, the Sao Paulo went back to sea on January 19. The Brazilian tug then cut the cables and spun at full engine, leaving the wreck in international waters, 320 kilometers from the coast, at a place where the seabed reaches 5,000 meters.
Environmental defense associations now fear that it will be sunk, perhaps by invoking a principle of maritime law, force majeure, which makes it possible to scuttle a ship presenting a danger to navigation. “It would be an environmental disaster,” summarizes Jacky Bonnemains, of the Robin des Bois association. Continuation and end, then? Not sure: before ending its life in a British shipyard, the Clemenceau had wandered for three years, likewise chased from port to port. the Foch may not yet be at the end of its journey.