MORE FROM THE US WATERWAYS
The Sultana on Fire. Contemporary Illustration.
In any competition for the seriousness of marine disasters the Titanic always comes up top of the list, and so it was a surprise to me to find out during some research into how sternwheel paddle steamers manage to change direction, I found the Sultana disaster. The Sultana was one of the many side wheelers operating on the Mississippi offering a service between St Louis and New Orleans. It was part owned by master, Captain J.Cass Mason. At Vicksburg, he was approached by a Colonel Hatch with an offer to supply him with a large number of passengers who were POW Union soldiers being repatriated to the North. Colonel Hatch guaranteed the Captain 1400 passengers at the price of $10 for each officer and $5 for each enlisted man. The Captain agreed to the job, but first went on the New Orleans.
On leaving New Orleans steaming northward on April 21st 1865 one of the four boilers sprang a leak, and the ship limped into Vicksburg for repairs. The Captain was faced with the prospect of having to wait a number of days for a substantial repair to be carried out, which would ensure that the 1400 passengers would go to another ship. And so he persuaded the repair man on the job to patch the boiler, which only took one day.
The ship was only licenced to carry 460 passenger and crew, but left Vicksburg with about 2100 former prisoners on board, who crammed into every possible space and deck area of the ship. It fought its way north against floodwaters which in some places had broken the banks of the river, arriving at Memphis in the evening of April 26th,, where it stopped briefly to unload a cargo of sugar. At 0200 on April 27th 1865, seven miles north of Memphis three of the boilers exploded, depositing almost all the passengers into the water. All were debilitated from their time in prison, and so found swimming difficult, and it was an hour before another ship arrived on the scene and started to rescue survivors. In the end more than 1700 people were lost, 200 more than were lost from the Titanic.
SHORE LEAVE
Over the years I have been writing this newsletter I have on occasion lamented the fact that it has become less and less possible for seafarers to get off their ships in port. In some places of course even if the ship is tied up, what it is tied up to is some distance from terra firma. And in other places even if the ship is in port and alongside no-one would want to venture down the gangway. But this still leaves quite a few places where it would be refreshing to be able to walk ashore and enjoy a different environment, a possibillity often prevented by the lack of suitable identity documentation. Well, The Numast Telegraph reported this month that their General Secretary attended a meeting in Geneva where the unions the owners and the ILO made some progress with the developent of a Seafarer’s Identity Document (SID), which it is hoped will overcome current problems with visas, repatriation, transit and shore leave. Fingers crossed then!
THE VIC 32
Readers of this newsletter will be aware by now that I have serious doubts about the ability of those in charge of the increasingly large passenger ships to actually keep the passengers safe, but nevertheless I am occasionally attracted by the possibility of a voyage of some sort.
In Scotland there is the possibility of a trip on the VIC 32 which is a former Royal Navy “Victualling Inshore Craft”, one of many built in the Second World War to support the fleet in the lochs and harbours in the North of Scotland. The design follows that of the traditional Scottish “puffer”, a small ship powered by a steam engine which in its original form exhausted the steam used up the funnel. Hence the name. By the 1940s the engine reused the steam and so they did not puff any more.
Today the VIC 32 is one of the half dozen or so puffers left in the UK of the 106 built during the war, mainly at small shipyards in England. And it is the only one on which you can take a trip, usually round the Scottish islands on the west coast.
Over the weekends the crew carry out maintenance and “coal ship” with the seven tons of coal required to keep it going for a week, and you join on Monday morning as some port in Scotland. There are 12 berths, including two doubles and eight twins, and according to the website the 12 passengers dine at a single table, one assumes in the middle of what used to be the hold. It sounds like fun, and obviously the seagoing public thinks so. Even at £750 per person there are currently only four places left this summer.
A SWING ROPE ACCIDENT
A Swing Rope in Action. Photo Derek Latter
It seems to be one of those things that accidents in the marine world get a lot more coverage than good news. Of course shipowners produce press releases which are for the most part extremely boring, except for those for passenger ships, which offer all that stuff which amaze us. How did they get a climbing wall onto a ship? And so on.
So it’s back to the accidents again, and in the offshore business again, about an accident in the Gulf of Mexico which occurred on 16th February 2011. I have chosen it because it sheds some light on the very unusual business that the offshore oil industry is, and to an extent on how the U.S Coast Guard view ship command.
This is an article about people using a “swing rope”. Actually the report calls it a rope swing, which it is, but I’m going to stick to the former title. So one of the things which go on in the Gulf of Mexico is the maintenance of unmanned platforms by groups of workers who are housed either on shore if the platform is very close to the beach, or on a platform in the vicinity of the worksite which is provided with living quarters. The men are transported to the worksite either by helicopter, or else by what is known as the “field boat” which is either a small supply ship or a crew boat. And now we get to the nub of the business
If a boat is used for the transport, the workers have to transfer from the platform to the deck by stepping across, just as you would to get in a rowing boat on the local boating lake (In my case the one in the Retiro, the park in the centre of Madrid). But the small ship, of what ever sort is held in position by the man at the controls, and the people step across, holding onto the “swing rope” which is intended according to some, to provide a safety system. It is not, apparently, something one holds onto to swing across a gap between the ships and the platform deck.
So having said this we go back to February 13th 2011 when the field boat, the Starfleet Patriot, was delivering a group of workers to an unmanned platform. The deck to which the men were attempting to access was about ten feet above the sea – yes - the “Plus Ten Deck”, and the deck of the ship was about five feet above the sea. The seaman on the deck hooked the swing rope with a boat hook and handed it to the first man who was to get onto the platform. On the controls of the Starfleet Patriot was Captain Cameron Hudson, the Mate of the ship. He was apparently designated as Captain because that was how he was qualified, but he was not actually the Captain. The Captain was Byron Trosclair. The disembarkation process was difficult because not only was the Plus Ten Deck five feet above the level of the deck, the ship was kept about five feet away from the platform, so that it was necessary for the workforce to grab the swing rope, and take a leap across, swinging upwards to get onto the catwalk. It was difficult to do this and the guys going to work kept asking for the ship to be moved closer. The ship was not moved closer.
On the morning of 14th February the Starfleet Patriot was again tasked with the job of taking workers from the accommodation platform to the work platform, and once more the workers asked the man on the controls who was again Captain Hudson to move the ship closer and again the ship was not moved closer. So the guys going to work were being asked to swing across a gap with the sea a few feet below them, and did it virtually under protest, which one could understand. They had signed up to weld, pipe fit, clean and paint, not to engage in some sort of Tarzan act.
So the next morning during the same disembarkation process a man called Joseph Bruno complained to the master of the ship, Captain Byron Trosclair, that he lacked upper body strength and that he needed the ship to be closer to the catwalk, because he did not feel safe swinging across. Captain Trosclair said that he did not want to damage the tyres and chains of the ship. But on the evening of 15th February, apparently in response to the complaints from the workers, the oil company Dynamic/Apache had a higher platform known as a “swing platform” or “jump platform” to be installed on the ship (the names say it all really), which is a platform three or four feet above the deck which would make the transfer easier.
So we get to February 16th 2011. The sea was choppy with waves of one or two feet, and once more Captain Hudson was at the controls, which just for those who are not familiar, will have been at the after end of the wheelhouse overlooking the afterdeck, and at the stern would be the swing platform. Next to him overlooking the afterdeck was the master, Captain Trosclair. A number of the workforce made the transfer and then it came to Mr Bruno’s turn. He climbed up onto the swing platform but had difficulty holding onto the rope, and apparently it was obvious that he was afraid to make the jump. So he signalled to the man on the controls to back up closer to the platform, as did other workers who were still to make the transfer However the ship was not moved closer. Mr Bruno attempted the swing and fell into the sea. Thereafter the Starfleet Patriot drifted about 80 feet downwind while the casualty was pulled out of the sea. He had been in the water for about 30 minutes, and it was found, when he was recovered, that he had died.
As it turned out Mr Bruno had died of a heart attack, but nevertheless the US Coast Guard took Captain Trosclair to court to have his marine licence revoked for firstly, not conducting a proper transfer operation, (when it had been time to take the body of Mr Bruno ashore the ship had easily been put alongside the platform), and secondly even though the ship had conducted training in the use of its “man overboard platform”, no attempt had been made to carry out a rescue.
Despite his defence which was that when he was not on the controls he was not the master, and that when Mr Bruno fell into the water the guys on the platform had shouted over to the ship that they would rescue him, the court found that Trosclair had been the master, being in overall charge and that it was an unassailable requirement that a ship, from which someone had fallen overboard, was required to attempt a rescue.
What an amazing number of questions this accident raises to those who are looking at it from the outside, rather than being used to the process, as workers in the GOM obviously are. Why should any workers be required to hazard themselves on their way to do the job? How could two people on the same ship be called “Captain”? Was there no-one in charge on behalf of the owners of the platform? And finally, how is it that the whole process has not been investigated by the BSEE, who had recorded it as a fatality in 2011?
THE EUROPEAN SPIRIT
The gCaptain website very recently featured what might be a press release from Teekay, the Vancouver based tanker operator which contains a two minute forty second video of its ships the European Spirit on a voyage.
The video shows the ship leaving a port, probably in the USA and then features some of the crew members doing their work. The cook prepares food, the engine men are seen in their control room and a couple of people are seen on the bridge. A watchkeeper, a man at the helm, and the Captain talking to the pilot.
It occurred to me that the film was not taken while the ship was on a voyage, it was taken before and during the departure from a port, and probably the film cameraman got off the ship with the pilot.
Why would this be? It would be because the ship was not going to be back in port for some weeks, and indeed at the time of writing this the AIS shows it to be sailing north at 12 knots off the coast of Baja California, its last port of call being Punta Arenas at the southernmost end of Chile.
My point is that it is very difficult to describe the boredom involved in a long ocean voyage, particularly for the bridge watch-keepers who can spend eight hours a day staring out to sea without seeing anything, but sea. If the video had been extended for one minute of a view of the sea, how many people would have lasted until the end of it.