Very sad breaking news out of Baltimore…..yet another allision. M.V. “Dali”

A one millon HP tug would not made a difference.

There is no VTS but surely someone records 13 and 16.

That’s a silly comment.

A one million HP tug, centerlead, with a line up would have stopped that ship in half a ships length.

Too bad they don’t make them.

4 Likes

From a Fox Philly article:

“The pilot of the ship that caused the Baltimore bridge collapse tried to slow it down before the crash, the head of a trade association for maritime pilots told the Associated Press.

Clay Diamond, executive director of the American Pilots’ Association, said he has been in close contact with officials from the Association of Maryland Pilots who described to him what happened as the ship approached the bridge. He said when the ship was a few minutes out, it lost all power, including to its engines.

The pilot immediately ordered the rudder hard to port to keep the ship from turning right and ordered the port anchor be dropped, which it was, Diamond said. The pilot also contacted a dispatch office to get the bridge shut down.”

New 3m… perhaps you did not get the irony in my comment. Nothing really saves you in close quarters when the plant goes down.

2 Likes

4 minutes is a long time. An 80 ton tractor tug on the stern would have certainly helped and probably completely changed the outcome of this incident.

2 Likes

The USCG records VHF traffic essentially nationwide, but usually only channel 16 (it may be 13 in some ports). When the sewage barge ran over the duck boat in Philly the text couldn’t confirm the claims that the duck boat gave a security call because commercial traffic there exclusively uses 13 and the USCG only records 16 there.

Yea nobody uses 16 inside the port.

I am about 99.5% sure the pilot had no idea who was on or off the bridge and would have had no common radio frequency to call them directly on.
EDIT - If this had happened when the bridge was NOT getting worked on and cops were NOT already there to control traffic the casualty count would be in the hundreds, not 6.

3 Likes

Blockquote

The MD Pilots now do the transit and docking/undocking, all as one big association. They merged together a few years back. Everyone gets trained up to do both.

1 Like

It’s one pilot organization but separate skill groups and last I knew very few were qualified to do both. Plus, after an 8+ hour transit in you really need a fresh pilot to do the docking.

Exactly my thoughts. Cold water and people don’t mix well.

Anyone know who was steering?
A lot of the media is blaming the captain of the ship but wouldn’t the harbor pilot be steering at this location? Correct me if I am wrong here.

In that police radio conversation you posted one cop asks another cop to contact the foreman of the work team, but the guy said he was going to wait for someone else to come then go and get the team.

If they had been able to call the foreman immediately and tell them to get off the bridge they might have been able to get into their vehicles and drive off the bridge.

1 Like

Well, technically an AB would be steering.

One of the pilots likely had the conn.

But nothing relieves the master of their responsibility.

4 Likes

I wonder how many of the crew will languish in prison for a few years till the court case?

None

1 Like

Can You please name the source or provide links to above mentioned media ?? Your help will be very much appreciated

From Reuters.

Baltimore key bridge collapse | Update| 22 Indian crew safe | Casualties feared| Container ship Dali (youtube.com)

  1. Anybody here knowing abt weather conditions during the accident?? Wind force and dir.??? , state of current if any?

  2. Can not see any comments from old salts regarding latest
    Q&A on MV Dali versus Bridge with What’s Going on With Shipping and gCaptain

Interested in :
a) fuel switchover during navigation in restricted waters during first 30 minutes from leaving berth

b) " engine crew going to sleep " switching all from " attended" to " unattended" ECR mode.

a) & b) quoted by John Konrad

Interesting video clip here: channel “casual navigation”

Facebook