By Scott Seiler, Merchant Marine Officer and Hawse-Pipe Mate.
I understand tankers and container ships as I have sailed for many years from a lowly Ordinary Seaman to a Bosun to a fully qualified deck officer of unlimited tonnage.
American Mariners must be very good to conn a ship, and merchant marines are extensively trained. I have years on LNG ships, but I worked for Sealand on the S/L Long Beach and later for Maersk on the Tennessee. I sailed the integrated barge ITB system called the MV Baltimore. I also sailed out of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Sailed up and down the East coast and through Panama and Suez Canal. I used to like to sail out of the port of Houston, but the first ship I even sailed as a 3rd Mate was out of Baltimore and also my first as a Boson job was out of the S.I.U hall in Baltimore. I have been all over this world sailing unlimited tonnage vessels.
Tugboats are not used for following ships up and down the Patuxent River. They are strictly used when docking and undocking. Tugboats are not often used because they are expensive, costing thousands of dollars and hour and you need a minimum of two to safely work a ship. Once the ship gets underway, when it gets to a speed of about 5-6 knots, then the ship is pretty much on its own. You do have an awake crew consisting of the ship’s master, a qualified mate and helmsman, and up on the bow of the ship will be a chief mate and a boson standing watch on both the starboard and port side anchors. More to that later.
Down in the engine room you will have an oiler, at least an assistant engineer, and usually, when they are doing confined maneuvers with a lot of different changing engine speeds and rudder maneuverings, the Chief Eng or the First Assistant Engineer will be up on overtime working to keep things safe. These Engine Officers are day workers but also the most experienced engine crew aboard that vessel. So, they are on overtime during all critical maneuvering time. It is important to bear in mind, this Singapore flagged container ship gigantic size is most likely over 800 feet in length and maybe 105 -115 feet wide or ‘on the beam”. The box ship, which you would call a container vessel, will probably be powered by 20K horsepower slow speed diesel engines being controlled from the engine master control space. It is important to understand there will also be a cook on duty and other Able Seaman who are fully awake. This all-hands crew will be looking for fire and other emergencies that can occur in addition to preparing the ship for running in the upon ocean once they clear the bridge tunnel down near Norfolk. The deck crew are patrolling all around the ship. At least they are supposed to be.
What the public is not aware of is that sometimes you can have a multinational/ multi language crew situation aboard a foreign flag ship. In other words, communication effectively between the crew and the Chesapeake Bay Pilot can be a real issue. Maybe the ship’s captain speaks bad English, with a heavily accented Mandarin lilt to it. The engine department does not fully understand what their captain is saying to them because they speak Russian, Tagalog or Arabic as their principal language. With a Singapore flag this is the typical standard crew of Philippine or Chinese or Russian crew personnel who speak hardly any understandable English at all. (I know because I have experienced this on way too many ships.) Now the bridge is trying to communicate to their engine room by sound powered phones, so they are not dependent on electric power to talk in an emergency. There’s also a sound powered phone by the anchor station, right where the anchor release brakes are. Most of the officers have walkie talkies that work OK throughout most of the ship’s compartments.
So, if you were to look at anchor brakes, they look like a wheel with a steel pole penetrating the main deck. The brake wheels are very simple to use. If you turn the brake wheel to the left, on the left-hand side the port side anchor will drop to the bottom. Turning the brake wheel to the right will stop the anchor chain from paying out more chain. The Bosun is on the left and right anchor wheels and the Chief Mate is on walkie talkie communicating with the bridge., they are in constant communication with the bridge waiting to deploy the anchors if a maneuvering emergency should occur. So, if they turn the wheels a pin will pop up, some chain will play out, and the anchor will drop to the bottom.
Now, all that background is for you to understand what probably happened next.
All modern seafaring communities are supposed to go through something called “Bridge Team Management” You can think of this training very similar to the kind of training commercial jet pilots go through. Jet pilots will fly simulated flight emergencies in the type of aircraft they pilot. Ship Mates, Captains and Pilots might be involved in thousands of hours of ship simulator training going through a simulation of engines failures, ship collisions and groundings hundreds of times and still safely dock their ship to pass their Mates exam. This training is true of a well-trained merchant marine crew. So, the Bridge is in communication with the Engine Department by sound powered phones, walkie talkies, and, yes, they still using old fashion telegraphs units with signals like “dead slow ahead” and my all-time favorite telegraph when everything goes wrong “Full a Stern” which means you are turning your propeller backwards and trying to slow the forward speed of your ship.
Now apparently what happened is that they The Singapore container ship had an engine room casualty caused by an engine room fire within just 3-4 minutes of approaching the Key bridge. The crew is trained for this emergency. You don’t have to be a super brain to do a couple of things. If you are having an engine fire, you can put on an oxygen mask, of which there are several in the engine control space. And they are good, the same kind that the fire department uses. With the bunker gear and everything else. so, you can have a hot engine fire and still not have to abandon your engine room. All officers must be trained in advanced shipboard firefighting according to something called STCW which stands for Standards of Training and Certified Watchkeeping
The Singapore container ship had an engine room fire, and they lost the electronic control; to steering and motor controls too also they were not able to manually move the rudder in time. The crew was not adequately trained in firefighting or emergency steering procedures like moving the rudder manually in time to maneuver the ship away from the main bridge pier. The ship’s rudder can be moved manually, and it hurts to do it, but it is possible, and especially when you are scared because the engine emergency bells are all ringing and the captain is yelling in Chinese at you which you cannot understand because you are a Philippine Oiler and cannot understand Chinese only Tagalog and a little English over a big speaker bolted over your head.
Up on the bow of the ship, you can be certain that the Chief Mate and the Bosun observed the smoke coming out of the engine room and probably could even feel the engine acting in a peculiar way. They might have been able to hear emergency bells ringing or the ship’s whistle blasting away so that even a stupid person could come to the conclusion that something terrible was about to happen.
Now, what should have happened is that they should have had aboard ship that Singapore container ship an elite Chesapeake Bay Pilot on board who was familiar with the Chesapeake bay and all tides current’s bridge lights, and weather as they approached the bridge, A Chesapeake Bay Pilot is a senior master mariner who has taken the hardest exam that the coast guard can offer but maybe the Chesapeake Pilot could not communicate swiftly with the captain because, in bridge team management system, a helmsman or mate on watch should have instantly noticed that they could no longer maneuver properly and that the helm/ship’s wheel was not answering to the command to steer away from the bridge pier. They had language and cultural barriers against them as well.
They have one last chance. But it seems they did not even attempt to drop their anchors to slow down or change the course of the ship. If I had been captain of that ship, and I was more than 1000 meters away from the bridge pier, I would have dropped my starboard anchor and chose to hit the embankment with the side of my vessel. Think about using this desperate maneuver like volleyball on a tethered string. If they had dropped their starboard anchor, or even both anchors, they would have pivoted along the length of chain and swung their ship sideways to the bridge pier, thereby tapping the bridge pier instead of ramming it head on. Still tons of pressure per square inch, but nothing like slamming the pointy end of the ship at 6-7 knot directly into the bridge pier.
Now the U.S. Coast Guard will have an investigation and , depending on what was happening on that bridge, which is all being recorded, the very least thing that will happen is the Chesapeake Bay Pilot will lose his license, the captain of the vessel with also lose his license, the Helmsman may lose his seaman’s papers for life for not responding to a direct order from the captain or pilot, or, worse yet, not reporting the loss of steerage to the bridge crew. As for the engine room that caused this mess, all of them will be fired. If any alcohol or drugs are found in their blood, they are liable to go to prison for many years. The entire crew will be tested for drugs and alcohol. The USCG will investigate and will put out a full report in a few months.
Now, these foreign flag ships are bonded by a classification society like Lloyds of London and that shipping fleet out of Singapore probably has a bond in keeping for their whole fleet of about $100 million. And that will, of course, will not cover the cost of replacement, which is probably something around a half a billion dollars. Also, that company, if they reflag will be tracked by the USCG and all the world’s international CG and will probably not be allow that ship’s company into a US port again. All North America will be on alert, because they the Singapore foreign flag ship caused a catastrophic accident that did lead to the total destruction of the Key bridge and loss of human life and a major part of the navigation infrastructure of the Chesapeake Bay and Beltway 695. The city of Baltimore is losing the trade from the ships, and it will be shifted to Norfolk.
It is possible that the entire Patuxent River channel is blocked by bridge wreckage and the ships in the port of Baltimore can no longer get in or out of port. However, salvage barges, lots of money, and weeks of hard work will clear the shipping channel with top priority. The facts of what really happened will be leaked in a timely manner to the American public. The full story of how this terrible ship disaster happened and its total impact on trade and ocean commerce may never be fully revealed because of the embarrassment to US federal authorities in an election year.
Scott J Seiler, now just a school teacher
Mate, unlimited tonnage. Steam motor vessels, LNG, Chemical Barges
Sailing upon western rivers and the Great Lakes, and all over the world.
My thanks to the Seafarer’s Internation Union, who gave a young boy a chance to do greatness.
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