The Cause of the Grounding of M/V BRAER, How Crew Morale, Equipment Failure and Weather Conspired to Wreck a Tanker

The chain of events of January 5, 1993 that had started innocently enough involved a number of reasons including human error by not adequately preparing a vessel for sea, the extreme weather conditions that the vessel proceed into, and later, the lack of lead time for a rescue tug to prepare for a ship in distress. With all that had gone wrong that day, the very forces of nature that had assisted in the creation of this disaster actually worked to spare the region of the worst of the ensuing spill.
The MV BRAER began her voyage with a load of 85,000 tons of light crude from Mongstad, Norw…