SS Wafra oil spill
SS Wafra, a Liberian-registered oil tanker built in 1955-56, left Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia on 12 February 1971 carrying about 472,500 barrels of Arabian crude oil (roughly 63,000 tonnes) for Cape Town, with half the cargo owned by Chevron and half by Texaco.
On 27 February, while under tow near the Cape of Good Hope, a piping failure that cooled the steam turbine caused the engine room to flood. The tow was first taken by the Russian steamer Gdynia and then by Pongola after the Gdynia proved unable to continue. The tow line broke and Wafra ran aground on a reef near Cape Agulhas on 28 February. The grounding ruptured six cargo tanks and released about 26,000 tonnes of oil (some sources say up to about 45,500 tonnes). A oil slick up to about 20 miles by 3 miles spread along the coast, fouling beaches from Gansbaai to Cape Agulhas and a penguin colony on Dyer Island. Detergent was sprayed to help prevent shoreline contamination.
The ship was refloated on 8 March but began breaking apart. To prevent further oil pollution, the larger section was towed 200 miles offshore to the edge of the continental shelf, leaving a 160-km oil slick in its wake. On 10 March 1971, the South African Air Force tried to sink the wreck with missiles but only started a fire; a Shackleton aircraft eventually sank it with depth charges at about 6,000 feet depth.
The Wafra incident prompted South Africa to establish Kuswag, an oil-spill response service, and to commission two large salvage tugs, John Ross and Wolraad Woltemade, to improve future spill responses.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 11:03 (CET).