''Abeille Liberté'' is an

emergency tow vessel An emergency tow vessel, also called emergency towing vessel, (ETV) is a multi purpose boat used by state authorities to tow disabled vessels on high seas in order to prevent dangers to man and environment. The disabled vessel is either towed to ...

(

salvage tug A salvage tug, also known historically as a wrecking tug, is a specialized type of tugboat that is used to rescue ships that are in distress or in danger of sinking, or to salvage ships that have already sunk or run aground. Overview Few tugbo ...

) based in

Cherbourg Harbour Cherbourg Harbour (French: ''rade de Cherbourg''; literally, the "roadstead of Cherbourg") is a harbour situated at the northern end of the Cotentin Peninsula, on the English Channel coastline, in Normandy, northwestern France. With a surface ...

, France. It is a

sister ship A sister ship is a ship of the same Ship class, class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They o ...

of . It was built at the Myklebust Verft shipyard in Gursken, Norway, which is part of the Kleven Maritime group. It was delivered in October 2005 and officially inaugurated on 17 November 2005. ''Abeille Liberté'' is owned by Abeilles International, a unit of

Groupe Bourbon A group is a military unit or a military formation that is most often associated with military aviation. Air and aviation groups The terms group and wing differ significantly from one country to another, as well as between different branches o ...

. The crew is made up of sailors of the merchant marine. It is chartered to the French government and can be called upon by the Maritime Prefect of the English Channel and North Sea at any time.

Notable operations

It was one of two French tugs called upon to tow the damaged

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal ...

in January 2007. In March 2018 the ''Abeille Liberté'' was one of several vessels which towed the cargo ship ''Britannica Hav'' to the Port of Le Havre after it collided with a Belgian

fishing vessel A fishing vessel is a boat or ship used to fishing, catch fish and other valuable nektonic aquatic animals (e.g. shrimps/prawns, krills, coleoids, etc.) in the sea, lake or river. Humans have used different kinds of surface vessels in commercial ...

References

External links

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''Abeille Liberté''
at Netmarine.net Tugboats of France 2005 ships Ships built in Norway {{boat-stub