The Exxon Valdez was built by National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego, ordered in August 1984 and launched in October 1986: a 987-foot very large crude carrier with a full load displacement over 240,000 long tons, room for 1.48 million barrels, a 31,650 horsepower diesel, and a crew of just 21. Like most tankers of its day it had a single hull, since a double hull cost more steel and cargo space. On March 24, 1989, under Captain Joseph Hazelwood and carrying about 53 million gallons of crude from Valdez toward Long Beach, it left the shipping lane to avoid ice from the Columbia Glacier, turned back too late with its radar reportedly broken or off, and grounded on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. Estimates of the spill range from 10.8 to 31.7 million gallons, still the second largest in US history, and much of the cargo stayed inside the intact tanks.

By June 1989 the ship was back in San Diego, where about 1,600 tons of steel were replaced for $30 million, but the single hull stayed. A jury in 1994 awarded $287 million in compensatory and $5 billion in punitive damages to 38,000 litigants, cut to $2.5 billion on appeal and capped by the Supreme Court in June 2008 at $507.5 million, with a further $480 million in interest ordered in 2009. The ship was renamed Exxon Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, SR Mediterranean, and Mediterranean. In 2008 it was sold to a COSCO subsidiary in Hong Kong, reflagged in Panama as the Dongfeng Ocean, and converted from a tanker to an ore carrier, then badly damaged in a November 2010 collision with a cargo ship in the South China Sea.

• The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 barred any vessel that spilled over a million gallons in Prince William Sound after March 22, 1989, exiling this ship while its twin Exxon Long Beach kept sailing.
• It later flew the Marshall Islands flag of convenience, and EU rules closed European ports to single-hull tankers.
• In March 2012 Global Marketing Systems bought it for scrap for about $16 million.
• Renamed Oriental Nicety, it faced activist claims that scrapping it at Alang breached the Basel Convention.
• India’s Supreme Court cleared the breaking on July 30, 2012, and it was beached at Alang on August 2.