Quote:
Originally Posted by ithos
Good Point. They probably will be required after the bridge is reopen.
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Former oil tanker captain and ship pilot here (my expired license is covered front to back with east coast waterways endorsements). Tugs are generally picked up for maneuvering towards a dock and for docking, mostly inbound cargo. Also for very narrow passages and turning where ships are not able to turn in place.
Was once on a ship into Philadelphia, docking at the Gulf Oil terminal on the Schuylkill River, with the tugs assist to dock. I was on the bridge on watch when the engine stopped responding as did the rudder. I being very inexperienced in real life, asked the captain if he would like me to call down to the engine room to tell them this fact. He said no, they are not idiots and are trying to get power back up and running ASAP as they know we are docking. Old steam engine, which are finicky engines.
Outbound with tugs, less likely as the ship is leaving port, has no need to perform any close quarters maneuvering, in this case there was plenty of open water for maneuvering, and slow / half speed ahead is required for steerage through harbor waters.
On my first ship out of USMMA, the chief mate was one of the pilots on the ship that took down the Sunshine Skyway bridge. I heard the story first hand, and he was on our ship after he quit the piloting job, because the next ship he was piloting had foreign stowaways who started jumping overboard while steaming up the tampa bay channel. Second time with Coast Guard inquiries, and that put him over the edge.
As far as notification to shut down the traffic on the bridge, that was missing in the sunshine skyway bridge. That was one of the biggest learning outcomes, and the quick stoppage within minutes and the early morning very light traffic resulted in only worker deaths, unfortunately but minimized additional potential loss of life. Yeah NTSB improvement recommendations
The new bridge over tampa bay does have some cason protection. However, that may or may not protect a ship hitting the bridge from all angles. ie, ships hitting bridges are very rare, time between events is about 40+ years. In this case, technology and engineering and ship sizes have advanced in size and safety from when the bridge was built, you can't use today to insist on yesteryear should have done. Your PhD in hindsight must have come from Google.
Lastly, my brother is a marine chief engineer of steam, motor (diesel) and gas turbines (he has done it all). There is a theory of bad contaminated fuel which caused the motor (multi fuel) to stop. From my brother: Maybe, but ships have systems built to prevent dirty fuel from getting to the engines with settling tanks and filters. However, the area is a designated clean distillate fuel area, and the ship being mostly foreign also burns an international type of fuel. Any switchover of fuel types has the potential to be problematic, and his words "Doing a change over in restricted waters is my idea of maritime suicide" He has done the problematic changed over fuel types and they have been problematic.
As far as the harbor pilot, he did everything correctly, and dropping anchors is the correct answer. The anchors almost stopped the ship in time, but anchors aren't brakes at this size. If he hadn't dropped the anchors, the ship would have kept going much farther, potentially rupturing enough of the hull to sink it. By the looks of it kept most of the flooding forward of the forward bulkhead, if not all of it.
peace out.