Posted on May 13, 2026
When a vessel gets into distress, it usually happens offshore, so damage to a historic building on land is not the first thing that comes to mind. In the case of the grounding of the 80-meter-long Defiant, however, things were different. During a storm, the tank barge ran aground on a reef adjacent to the centuries-old Castillo San Felipe del Morro fort in Puerto Rico.
A salvage team from our American Salvage Marine Fire Fighting (SMFF) provider Donjon-Smit, which was joined by our colleagues from SMIT Salvage in the Netherlands, was mobilized to remove the oil from the Defiant and refloat the vessel. Despite its hard-to-reach location, the team succeeded within a few days, preventing large-scale environmental pollution from an oil spill.
