Photos of the vehicles destroyed in a fire aboard the car carrier Fremantle Highway have been leaked to a Dutch media outlet, irking the company in charge of salvage operations.

The Panama-registered Fremantle Highway caught fire off the Dutch coast on 25 July 2023, burning for almost a week before it could be safely towed to port. One crew member was killed and several others injured after reportedly attempting to bring the blaze under control.

Reports claim the ship was holding 3,784 cars, all of which were new and included vehicles from brands including Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen and Mercedes. Of the cars on board, it’s reported that 498 were electric. The cause of the blaze has not been established.

Peter Berdowski, CEO of salvage company Boskalis, has told media that “around 1,000” vehicles on the bottom four decks of the ship are still in good condition, with most of the damage confined to the fifth deck.

Fremantle Highway

New images taken on board the vessel were leaked this weekend to Dutch outlet RTL Nieuws, and shared on Twitter by German politician Andreas Mrosek. The photos show evidence of the intensity of the blaze, with numerous cars turned into burnt-out wrecks. Evidence of destroyed Porsche Cayenne and 911 models can be seen among the images, alongside Mini Clubmans.

It’s not known how the images surfaced. On Monday (14 August 2023), a Boskalis representative issued a statement to Dutch media: “We have no idea how these photos ended up with RTL. They were not made by us, and we are working to find out who is responsible for these images.”

Later the same day, the firm added: “The images currently circulating on the internet and now being disseminated by the media, including photos of the interior of the Fremantle, were not taken by the [salvage company’s] Boskalis subsidiary SMIT Salvage and Multiship Salvage. To our knowledge, these photos were taken by a party appointed by the Japanese owner of the ship and the insurance companies.”

Boskalis says it will be a huge challenge to remove the thousands of burned and partially melted cars from the Fremantle Highway, as many of the decks have partially collapsed.

Fires on car-carrying ships are increasingly the source of major losses, some insurers say. In 2022, the Felicity Ace sank off the coast of the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean with some 4,000 vehicles on board.

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