Today in History—September 5: The Garbage Ship Sets Sail
On this day in 1986, about 28 million pounds of incinerated garbage set sail from Philadelphia aboard a rusty ship called the Khian Sea, kicking off one of the most absurd voyages in history.
The destination? A man-made beach in the Bahamas, where the waste management company expected to dump the ash as fill. But the Bahamian government, concerned about environmental effects, turned the ship away.
By the time this tale ends—nearly two decades later—the garbage barge (gar-barge?) would be infamous, the story littered (pun intended) with denied dockings, questionable and outright illegal activities, and, ultimately, more than 10,000 tons of toxic ash dumped in the ocean.
After the failed Bahamas trip, the Khian Sea returned to the U.S.—before embarking on more sailings. As the ship wandered waters from West Africa to the Mediterranean, its manifest changed from “incinerated ash” to “general cargo” to “bulk construction material” to “topsoil fertilizer,” presumably to make the refuse harder to refuse.
The countries where the ship attempted to dock and unload were generally poorer than the U.S. and largely unindustrialized. At least two of them sent the ship away at gunpoint.
In late 1987 Haiti seemed prepared to accept the shipment: Nearly 4,000 tons of ash were unloaded onto a beach before the government ordered the ship away.
The ship went home again. Next stop, Yugoslavia, in the summer of 1988. The ship was now the Felicia. In November the Felicia became the Pelicano and docked in Singapore.
It took 128 shipments to a landfill in the U.S. to dispose of the trash recovered from Haiti.
It was empty. The trash had been dumped in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Except for that pile left in Haiti.
That was later cleaned up by a waste management company with ties to the original company, as a gesture of goodwill during the new company’s bid for a lucrative New York City contract. In exchange, they’d take care of the ash, which contained heavy metals (including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium) and still-identifiable trash (including aluminum foil and legible newsprint).
What was left of the ash in Haiti was shipped to Florida in 2000. The last ash was disposed of in 2002.
In Pennsylvania, no less.
- 466 feet: Length of the garbage barge
- 11+: Countries that refused the garbage barge
- 4: Continents where the ship attempted to dock
- 1957: On the Road by Jack Kerouac is published (after being written in three weeks in 1951)
- 1976: The first episode of Jim Henson’s The Muppet Show airs
- 2000: The coral island chain of Tuvalu joins the United Nations
