Hand out photo - The VN Partisan ship fitted with anti-pollution gear departs for the zone where the Italian cargo ship Grande America burned and sank off the western French coast. French authorities are bracing for the arrival of an oil slick that is creeping toward its southwest coast and should make landfall on March 17 or 20. The 10-kilometre (six-mile) by one-kilometre oil sheet was first spotted by a French naval aircraft in the afternoon of March 14, after a fire aboard an Italian cargo ship that sank on March 12 300 kms west of the town of La Rochelle. Brest, western France, March 14, 2019, Photo by Marine Nationale via ABACAPRESS.COM