Bourbon

Assistance & salvage

More than 30 years’ recognized experience in deep sea assistance.

Seasoned professionals, more than 100 operations aboard vessels and 250 people rescued in difficult conditions...

Under contract to the French Navy since 1976, Les Abeilles ensures the protection of the 3,120 km of exposed French coast.

Its duties includes: preventing vessels from running aground, assistance and salvage operations to vessels in distress, preventing the risks of pollution.

For this, 5 sea-going tugs and their crews are on call to respond to emergencies 24 hours a day, including:

• the Abeille Bourbon (Brest),
• the Abeille Liberté (Cherbourg),
• the Abeille Languedoc (La Pallice),
• the Abeille Flandre (Toulon),
• the Carangue (Toulon).

In the last 25 years, the Abeille Flandre tug and its crew have helped to prevent 16 disasters on a scale similar to that of the Amoco Cadiz disaster (4 million tonnes of oil), salvaged 214 vessels, assisted 7,200 sailors and prevented the certain death of a further 150 sailors.

In 2005, 2 new tugs have been added to the fleet: the Abeille Bourbon in Brest and the Abeille Liberté in Cherbourg.

Professionals based permanently in Le Havre.

Experienced in all the latest assistance techniques, they are:

• in permanent contact with emergency response stations,
• permanently on call to provide support to local crews,
• undergo continuous training in the co-ordination of special operations.

If necessary, they can set up a crisis centre, in liaison with all the different partners involved, in order to deploy the resources needed for an assistance operation.

Management Chart for conducting a major assistance operation.

Specialised assistance teams are mobilised depending on the nature of the operation

Always ready to respond, these teams are made up of:

• Professional salvage and assistance personnel: salvage masters, salvage officers, salvage engineers, etc.
• Naval architects, experts in structural analysis and computing for vessels in distress.

The teams at Les Abeilles have access to additional resources: floating cranes, barges, lightering vessels, underwater welders, etc.

In fact, for some operations, it may be necessary to discharge part of the cargo (solid or liquid) in often very bad weather conditions or in inaccessible places, i.e. not in port (on a beach, at sea or in a sheltered bay, etc.). It may then be possible to help the vessel regain sufficient buoyancy and thus use Les Abeilles tugs to refloat it and tow it away. Barges must be chartered to discharge containers, for example, or small oil tankers (lightering vessels) to perform « ship to ship transfer or STS ». We may also need to call on underwater welders to temporarily repair a hole below the waterline so that we can use our high-speed pumps to pump out the flooded area.



Personnel are given continuous training in both the theory and practice of salvage and assistance. This training includes courses on how to handle salvage equipment, such as bilge pumps, electric generators and inert gas generators, etc. Furthermore, the Salvage Master systematically draws conclusions based on actual cases that have been dealt with.

Les Abeilles possesses the legal and administrative competencies needed to provide immediate assistance. Speed is of the essence especially when the risk of pollution is often only a matter of minutes.

The company co-ordinates all salvage operation resources and personnel to ensure the best outcome possible.

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24 hour Salvage and Assistance Hotline:
+33 (0)2 35 19 77 85.