Salvage Tug ‘Abeille Languedoc’ Ensures Safety in French-English Channel

Chartered by the French Navy for the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, the response, assistance and salvage tug will ensure safety on this maritime zone.

The Abeille Languedoc, a response, assistance and salvage tug operated by Les Abeilles, a BOURBON affiliate, has just arrived in Boulogne-sur-Mer (north of France). Chartered by the French Navy for the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, she will provide coastal protection on this maritime zone.

With almost 90 000 vessels travelling through the seaways every year (an average of 250 vessels per day), the French-English Channel is one of the busiest and most dangerous seaway.

Chartered since December 14, 1979 by the French Navy, the Abeille Languedoc has completed more than 500 interventions, 200 of them being salvage and assistance, in the Channel and the North Sea between 1979 and 2005, before being dispatched to the harbor of La Rochelle.

Her missions are:

*Shipwrecks prevention

*Vessels in distress assistance and salvage

*Pollution remediation

As each BOURBON vessel chartered by the French Navy to protect the French coastline, the Abeille Languedoc is on permanent watch, ready to sail in less than 40 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For more than 30 years, BOURBON, in charge of protecting the French coastline, has conducted more than 430 assistance and salvage operations and has escorted 450 vessels and provided more than 700 stand-by ships near vessels in trouble.

4 response, assistance and salvage tugs operated by Les Abeilles (Abeille Bourbon, Abeille Liberté, Abeille Languedoc, Abeille Flandre), 1 oil spill response vessel (Jason) operated by Les Abeilles and 3 others oil spill response vessels (Argonaute, Alcyon, Ailette) from the BOURBON fleet are chartered by the French Navy.

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ource:  BOURBON, September 30, 2011.