MV Baltic Ace was a Bahamian-flagged car carrier, that sank in the North Sea on 5 December 2012 after a collision with the Cyprus-registered container ship Corvus J.
Baltic Ace was a car carrier, a roll-on/roll-off ship designed to transport vehicles in a large, fully enclosed garage-like superstructure running the entire length and width of the vessel.
[1] The vessel was under long time charter with Euro Marine Logistics, on a regular loop service calling Europe north continent and Baltic ports.
On 5 December 2012, Baltic Ace collided with the Cyprus-registered container ship Corvus J in the North Sea while underway from Zeebrugge, Belgium, to Kotka, Finland with a cargo of about 1,400 Mitsubishi cars likely headed to the Russian market.
According to Netherlands Coast Guard, the chance of finding more survivors was "virtually zero" and the search for the missing crew members, who might have been trapped inside the wreck, was called off on the day following the accident.
[16] In March 2014, Rijkswaterstaat awarded contract for the complete removal of the sunken car carrier to the Dutch company Royal Boskalis Westminster and its partner Mammoet.
[17] The same method was previously used in the salvage of MV Tricolor, a car carrier that sank in the English Channel in 2002, and to remove the bow of the Russian submarine Kursk before the rest of the hull was raised.