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Journalism of Courage
Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi visited the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai on Tuesday (July 23) to assess the situation after an on-board fire caused heavy damage to a naval warship.
The INS Brahmaputra guided missile frigate listed heavily towards its port side following the fire on Sunday (July 21) night, and could not be uprighted. The fire was put out by the crew of the warship with assistance from firefighters at the dockyard by Monday morning.
Here’s what is known about the mishap and the significant concerns that it raises.
The INS Brahmaputra is the first of India’s indigenously built Brahmaputra-class guided missile frigates. It was built by state-run Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Limited in Kolkata, and it was commissioned into the Navy in 2000. The INS Beas and INS Betwa are two other warships in this class.
The INS Brahmaputra has a length of 125 metres, beam (width) of 14.4 metres, and displacement of 5,300 tonnes, and is capable of speeds in excess of 27 knots (50 km/h).
The ship is manned by a crew of 40 officers and 330 sailors. She is fitted with medium-range, close-range and anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, and torpedo launchers.
The ship has a wide array of sensors, and is capable of operating Seaking and Chetak helicopters, enabling it to perform a variety of roles including coastal and offshore patrolling, monitoring of sea lines of communication, maritime diplomacy, counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations.
The warship was in Mumbai undergoing a refit.
All warships of the Navy undergo periodic refits, alongside their operational cycle, during which they undergo various upgrades, including on their sensors, weapon systems, and other critical systems and equipment on board.
The specific cause of the fire on board the Brahmaputra will only be established by the inquiry that the Indian Navy has commissioned.
However, in general terms, a fire on a ship can be categorised into a general, an electrical, or an oil-based fire, for which there are separate dousing mechanisms — using seawater, foam, or carbon-dioxide fire extinguishers respectively.
The ship was in the dock for major retrofitting, so the fire could have been caused by ongoing welding work, or perhaps an electrical short circuit. The ship could also have caught fire after high temperatures ignited the vast amounts of oil on board.
Officials told The Indian Express that efforts would be made to repair the ship and make her sailworthy as soon as possible.
They said that while the extent of the damage was yet to be ascertained, it was likely to be less than an accident involving, say, a collision or a dry dock fall, which is often irreparable. (A dry dock is a small basin or enclosed space in a shipyard into which a vessel that is being built or is in need of repairs is emptied of water, so that the entire vessel can be worked on.)
The officials added that in all likelihood, attempts to douse the fire on board led to an accumulation of water in the upper compartment of the ship, which caused it to become unstable and to ultimately keel over to one side.
It is learnt that the INS Betwa, the second ship of the Brahmaputra class of frigates, had in fact, suffered greater damage after it tipped over to one side in 2016 while undocking in Mumbai, but it had been successfully salvaged by specialists.
An American firm called Resolve Marine, which describes itself as a “global leader in maritime response, recovery and compliance”, was contracted to salvage the warship. Resolve Marine states on its website that the 3,800-tonne Betwa “capsized on her port side due to a loss of stability while undocking”.
It says that Resolve Marine was “contracted to conduct an immediate dive survey, then to stabilize, block and support the vessel to allow the drydock to be fully dewatered”. Specialists from the company, “working alongside the Indian Navy…inspected all compartments of the vessel, then proceeded to patch and repair all damages, and secure all openings”, Resolve Marine says on its website.
The salvage operation was concluded in less than two months with the help of “complex hydrodynamic calculations and the use of intricate measuring and monitoring systems”, the website says. “By systematically flooding and pumping compartments, the vessel was rolled upright and done so without the use of any external lifting force,” it says.
* Three naval personnel died of injuries caused by an explosion on board Indian Navy’s destroyer ship INS Ranvir in 2022. Eleven other personnel were injured in the accident.
* Two sailors were killed and 15 others were injured in the accident involving the INS Betwa in 2016.
* In 2014, a fire in another Kilo Class submarine INS Sindhuratna resulted in the deaths of two sailors 50 nautical miles off Mumbai. Former Navy Chief Admiral D K Joshi had resigned taking responsibility for the incident.
* In 2013, the conventional Kilo Class submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank at the Naval Dockyard after an explosion in the forward compartment of the vessel that was loaded with armaments. Eighteen crew members were killed in the mishap.
* In 2011, the Nilgiri-class frigate INS Vindhyagiri collided with a German merchant vessel at the entrance to Mumbai harbour, leading to a fire on the ship. The Vindhyagiri subsequently sank.
