Off the pristine Croatian coastline, a multi-million dollar ferry carrying 200 trucks and fuel tanks full of oil is burning out of control. After two days of aerial fire assaults, the Adriyatik fires are finally under control and salvage crews climb onboard, but the air is filled with poisonous gas. Looking for lingering blazes, the team ventures into the deepest part of the ship where one slip or wrong turn could prove fatal; it is easy for crew members to become disoriented in the total darkness, water and fire. Six days after catching fire, the salvage team has successfully tamed the inferno. In the Irish Sea, gale force winds and seven-metre waves batter a truck ferry, running it aground near the beach at Blackpool, U.K. Low tide completely exposes the boat for three hours a day, and the team must work frantically to clear the debris and refloat the ship. The Riverdance is listing badly – truck trailers precariously chained to the deck could snap at any moment, and waves begin ripping trucks from the deck. A storm packing a hurricane punch deals the Riverdance a savage blow – tipping the ship to an almost fatal angle. The sea is tearing her apart – is the Riverdance too crippled to be saved?
Two rookie salvage masters face a baptism of fire as a Russian freighter gets battered by typhoons in Japan and a stranded ferry in Mexico threatens a holiday playground with environmental disaster.
Blocking a heavily-travelled ocean highway, a sunken freighter slows traffic off the coast of Gibraltar. The New Flame’s engine room – one of her most valuable assets – is miraculously dry, but water is seeping in at an alarming rate. To remove the ship, crews must cut the boat in half. Using special thermal lances, divers take on the exceptionally risky task of cutting cranes on board in preparation. But an approaching storm forces the crew to abandon ship and much of its equipment. Returning to the New Flame, the salvage team finds its equipment gone– the engine room is lost and it is now impossible to refloat the stern. The team must now race to cut up the ship and remove her piece by piece and save 30,000 tons of scrap metal worth millions of U.S. dollars. Off the coast of Japan, the Russian coal freighter Jane refuses to budge – beached throughout typhoon season and rapidly corroding. Divers must now assess whether the Jane is too damaged to refloat.
The New Flame – a sunken freighter in the Strait of Gibraltar – has been relieved of its valuable cargo and salvage masters now attempt to slice the boat into sections for removal. Divers face a vicious current and heavy swell to wrap chains around the ship, which act as giant “cheese cutters” to remove the ship’s 600-ton accommodation block. But the fierce swell zone around the top of the wreck throws off the dive team, and they struggle to connect the shackles and secure the enormous floating heavy lift crane. A test lift snaps a wire; will the team be able to remove the wreck? Firmly embedded in the seabed, the New Carissa lies prone to the fierce ocean swell, thwarting salvors since sinking off the U.S. west coast in 1999. Salvage masters must devise a way to access the ship without contending with pounding waves. They invest in jack-up barges and a specially-tailored cable car system to ferry salvors from the beach directly to the wreck. The team uses cranes to lift the enormous hulk of steel from the sand, and the metal is sliced up section-by-section. Once the wreck is light enough, hydraulic pullers heave the last remains out of the seabed.
Catching fire after an explosion at sea in 1991, the Haven burned uncontrollably for three days with one million barrels of oil on board. Now heavily corroding at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the ship is an environmental time bomb, and in jeopardy of releasing the remaining oil into the water. The salvage team must employ pioneering diving techniques to pump the boat dry of oil. Divers do a preliminary boat investigation, but a rookie diver suffers from decompression sickness, and the team is now a man down. To reach the ship bottom, divers will have to swim 70 metres below the surface. The salvage masters use a high-tech saturation diving system – which the divers will live in for two weeks – to help their bodies acclimate to the heavily-pressured environment and a pressurised diving bell will be used to transport the divers to the wreck. The diving bell and saturation accommodation must be air tight – any leak could be fatal for the divers inside. But before the mission can begin, a fire in the store room of the salvors’ ship sends crew members scrambling. Thankfully, the fire is extinguished and the team sets to work, sealing up the Haven’s captain cabin and installing piping to pump out the oil.
The battle for the MSC Napoli, her oil, and thousands of tons of cargo spilling onto British beaches and into the hands of looters. Challenging the toughest experts in the business; blasting, tearing, plunging into battle with the ship that would not die.
After an oil tanker is threatened by one of the worst typhoons in Taiwan's history, the salvage team fight to avert an environmental catastrophe.
A chemical tanker caught up in the devastating Typhoon Marakot drifts towards a million-dollar aquarium. Can the team prevent a disaster?
As violent storms gather, a gigantic bulk-carrier runs aground off Cape Town, leaving the team with little time to save its hazardous cargo.
With the typhoon over, salvors attempt to refloat stricken tanker the Colombo Queen. Meanwhile, another storm threatens shipping in the Gulf.
Get the inside story of what really happened in the first 36 hours of one of America's biggest environmental disaster. See unseen footage shot as salvage crews battled to get close to the burning rig and hear harrowing interviews following the realisation that time had run out for missing crew members.
The salvage team must save the cargo from a vessel that has run aground.
Salvage Code Red Special: Dead in the Water Salvage Code Red returns with another action packed special, character-driven adventure follows the real-life heroes from some of the world’s biggest salvage companies as they fight against the elements to rescue stricken ships, crews and cargo. Salvage Code Red brings more high profile salvage operations that portray a fascinating insight into the world of maritime emergency response. Travelling all around the world to ships in distress Salvage Code Red debuts never-before-seen-on-TV footage of the inside of sunken vessels, the removal of hazardous materials threatening protected coastline as massive shipping vessels are thrown out of control – threatening to destroy everything on board and anything in its path.
