Firefighting boats head to burning ship carrying Volkswagen, Porsche and Bentley cars

First boats set to reach Felicity Ace transport ship in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday.

A fire broke out on Wednesday on the Felicity Ace, a vehicle-transport ship, shown here in a photo provided by the Portuguese navy.

Firefighting tug boats were headed on Saturday toward the Felicity Ace, a 60,000-ton ship ablaze in the Atlantic Ocean that is carrying thousands of Porsche, Bentley and Volkswagen vehicles to US dealers.

The shipping company and the car makers said it was still too early to determine what caused the ship to catch fire on Wednesday.

“It will be months before we have completed an investigation and know what happened,” said a spokesman for MOL Ship Management (Singapore), which owns the company operating the Felicity Ace.

The fire is the latest supply-chain setback for the auto industry, which for much of the pandemic has struggled to meet increased consumer demand amid continued shortages of semiconductors and other parts. All the car brands on the ship are made by Volkswagen.

Spokesmen for Porsche and Volkswagen declined to comment on whether electric vehicles were on board the ship. Lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars are flammable and have combusted in rare circumstances.

The Felicity Ace left Emden, Germany, on February 10 and was scheduled to arrive in Davisville, Rhode Island, on February 23. A fire broke out in the ship’s cargo hold on Wednesday morning, forcing the evacuation of the crew, MOL said. With the help of commercial ships in the area and a Portuguese navy helicopter, all 22 crew members were rescued uninjured and flown to the Azores, MOL added.

MOL said Saturday that the fire continued to burn but that there wasn’t any oil leakage from the vessel. The ship itself remained stable, MOL said, addressing concerns that it ship could capsize and sink.

Videos of the ship posted online show plumes of smoke billowing out of the hold as the ship drifts crewless. A video posted by the Portuguese navy shows the approach of a helicopter as it flew in to rescue the crew.

The boats carrying firefighting equipment were en route to the ship, which is adrift near Portugal’s Azores islands. The first, coming from Gibraltar, was expected to arrive on Sunday, MOL said. A second is to follow on Monday, and a salvage ship sailing from Rotterdam, Netherlands, is expected on Wednesday or Thursday.

Royal Boskalis Westminster NV, a maritime-services company, said Friday its subsidiary SMIT Salvage dispatched a team of 16 experts to the Azores to assist in salvaging the ship.

The Wall Street Journal