Some professional information on the FSK Bridge accident
 

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.

Interesting

Question
As most major and I guess smaller port cities are doing this morning.....assessing the way they enter/exit bridges. Can only speak to reporting in Boston where they say tugboats are the rule not the exception. As a lay person, do the tugs significantly reduce the possibility of these kinds of strikes?

better question is "can the tugs. . .?"

Answer is yes, but also may be overkill / waste of money / a fearful answer to a very, very low , minute probability event.

Example, I was a captain on a small coastwise tanker, empty after delivering a load of gasoline and heating oil up the Chelsea Creek to one of the terminals you drive past on your left going north on 1 or 1A after leaving Logan airport.

We sat at the dock overnight due a northeaster, and left the next morning, heading south to our home port of Newark, for another load. Halfway down Cape Cod bay, we heard a bang, the auto pilot started steering funny, and so we slowed down. The engineers did an engine room inspection, nothing abnormal. We all looked over the side and we were pretty sure we were missing a rudder. Twin engine, twin screw vessel, twin rudders. Ruh Roh. . .

Called the home office, we agreed to go directly to Providence for a Coast Guard inspection. The USCG commander there was one of my roommates' brother in law, and we knew each other. I talked with him, and his only comment was, get the hell out of RI ASAP. I asked him later, he reasoned if you got in just fine, you can get out just fine.

Great, head to NY harbor down Long Island Sound. However, the USCG required me to take a tug whenever we were within NY Harbor as a precaution. In this case, even though we were able to maneuver in the open water just fine, narrow channels lots of traffic, not as normal. Did they help, well, hardly ever asked them to do anything other than to adjust speed so that the drag did not create a lot of remaining rudder steering issues. It was a safety issue and the counterfactual is impossible to prove. . everything works until it doesn't. . with a partially disabled ship and a gasoline bomb type tanker, lets be safe. :a040:

With the bridges in Boston Harbor, all the large ocean going tankers I was on took tugs inbound and outbound from around Logan Airport on further up the change near Fort Point, by the No Name restaurant most definately. Tugs were dropped off between there and Logan Airport. Going up the Chelsea creek, the bow tug boats had to let go, go through the bridge ahead of us and then tie up again. . .

Its a rare accident, so will there be an over reaction for awhile? most likely, but will wait and see on the NTSB / USCG final reports. The question to ponder is: how wide of a navigable span is safe enough to assume there are not any tugs needed? The wider, the less needed. The bridge abuttments are in 10 ft of water by which time any ship would be hard aground prior to hitting it? needed? Ships going through the Cape Cod Canal, how big before needing?

One other point, this accident may be human error or human error from lack of maintenance, which when forgone, everything works until it doesn't, usually at the worst time.

Time and again, good maintenance programs show no adverse results, which causes humans to believe that its wasted money. recent examples are

Ship accidents (maybe)
Rail road accidents (Ohio)
Golf course playability demise.. (hmmmm)

Maintenance pays in dividends, but not as an expense. . .

You had to drop the great...and now defunct No Name restaurant in the Seaport on me. Along with Anthony’s Pier 4 and Jimmys Harborside....all close neighbors/competitors. You definitely ate good in South Boston waterfront!

Great insight on the waterways...thank you for that

I got a close friend who needed some deodorant and ran into a Dollar Tree to grab one....he always tells us it made him smell like the ‘Chelsea Creek’! Too funny
(I know you know that smell!)

Interesting, do you know Jeff Ling? A good friend and neighbor of us in the day.

Not off hand , sorry.

Here is a Maersk engineer’s explanation, which, from an engineering point of view, is highly probable

https://x.com/mercoglianos/status/1773123345820614699

Everybody has to air their 2-bit opinion on this accident. Why don't we wait for an official report from the experts who get paid to investigate these kinds of things?

You mean like The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of JFK where they claimed it was miraculously achieved by a lone wolf shooter with a wimpy gun and from behind the motorcade?

Or the official 9/11 Commission Report purporting that a bunch of foreign guys with box cutters managed all that destruction? And that the report makes no mention that a third tower in the WTC complex collapsed that day, in the same manner as the other two, although it wasn't struck? Do folks realize that millions of Americans still don't know that a third WTC tower collapsed in free fall on 9/11/01?

I await with giddy intensity the "official report" of the FSK incident.

are you a lawyer who only deals with facts?
or do you have a cognitive authority bias, where everyone is a moron until the authority has spoken?
The Expert is Always Right? Authority Bias

geez, that will be years away, and am sure that the NTSB report will be very dry and by then the bridge will be finished.

Being retired means that we all bring our stories, true and fishing, to social locations and either bitch about the world, or help explain to others how our experiences helps others understand what's going on. .

if you don't like a thread, post, etc, you always have the option to pass and ignore.
like your mom should have told you, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything."

Well said!

Since the ship was moving at a good speed wouldnt the rudder enable them to at least partially stay out of danger?

maybe a bit, but really without power its not very effective AND we don't know at what position the rudder was at, when the last power went out. If for any reason the rudder was not at zero degree angle to the center line, and unable to turn the rudder, the ship was at the mercy of currents, wind, the position of the rudder and the dragging effect of the port anchor.

I believe, in my opinion, the captain dropped the port anchor to help turn the bow away from the bridge. However, the anchor was dropped into mud, and dragged through the mud and in my opinion slowed the turn to the right towards the bridge, but couldn't stop the ship in time. I don't know if the captain dropped the starboard anchor, and that might have helped, I am not sure as I haven't seen really clear pictures.

I heard on Bloomberg that the salvage team, which demolished the Hudson River Tappan Zee Bridge and removed it, is heading to Baltimore. They have some pretty massive cranes. Some of them are HUGE, and will help clear the channel as fast and safely as possible. We would see them every time we drove to my son's house on the NJ/NY border from MA over the new Mario Cuomo Bridge.

That should answer most people's questions, but there are conspiracy theories about sabotage or hacking or terrorism. Lets put people's over active imaginations to rest. . .

Hacking, not possible, its a human/electronically controlled system, no outside connections, and no wireless internet, wired internet nor bluetooth nor all the shore side computer stuff. No servers, no mainframes, no laptops to control the engines.

BUT the type of electronics used has no manual ability if there is an electronics failure, per my brother the chief engineer of similar types of ships. Similar to a car with a computer board failure, you can't click a switch and start the car up and manually override the electrical engine controls. I am not suggesting electronics failure, but more the scenario if there was an electronics failure.

Next: sabotage or terrorism, if so, its a lone actor in the engine room doing something, damaging something or switching something. . very doubtful, I would NOT say ZERO probability because it involves stupid humans, but pretty close to zero probability.

Happy Easter everyone!

I thought you might get some of those references! I used the no name on purpose. my dad used to drive us through south boston water front over all the cobblestones when i was barely old enough to remember, I can't remember if there were still horses being used or not. .

:1rotfl: :eek: