Collision at sea: A sailor's perspective

A Navy destroyer

As a Navy destroyer blasts through the night, a hesitant voice crackles to life on her VHF marine radio.

"Vessel approaching at high speed to my west, you are advised to change course."

The Navy captain, gilded and resplendent at the helm in the glow of his instruments, glances at his radar and bellows into the transceiver:

"I am vessel at your 270. Warship USS Saybrook. Advise YOU change course, over."

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And as the captain's proud ship crashes through the waves, again the nervous voice –

"Received and understood, Captain. But – I'm afraid I cannot change course, over."

The captain's response, staccato and fierce –

"Sir! I am a ten-thousand-ton United States Navy guided missile destroyer making over 20 knots, course 0-9-0, with full weapons compliment, on exercise. YOU will CHANGE COURSE IMMEDIATELY, over."

And after just a moment of air silence, the faint reply –

"Received and understood, Captain. But – I am a lighthouse. Over?"

As we grieve the loss of our sailors and await the results of official investigations, the classic sea narrative may help us understand the tragedy of the USS Fitzgerald and M/V ACX Crystal collision off the coast of Japan Saturday. Modern container ships – even small ones – are lumbering behemoths frequently undermanned by third-world crews and, though conditions vary in accordance with their flags of registration, sometimes run by semi-conscious captains. (I regularly boarded such ships for two separate seafarers' welfare interests in the U.S. and abroad; at times the only literate and sober man on the ship is the engineer.)

Damage suffered by destroyer USS Fitzgerald.

Undermanned? Possibly un-manned. A careful look at what we know of ACX Crystal's Automatic Identification System track indicates she may have struck USS Fitzgerald and continued on under autopilot. As Steffan Watkins of Vessel of Interest notes:

"Did the ACX Crystal spear the USS Fitzgerald, and just shake it off? That's right, after smashing into another ship, the 30,000 ton container ship is swinging around and increasing speed. If anyone was at the helm, this would not be happening."

Modern freighters of this type can take as much as half-an-hour to stop and – I have passed too close to too many of them at sea – are often lit up like Christmas trees with not even one blinded "lookout" on the bridge. Transoceanic sailors stay well away from shipping lanes because freighters and tankers are fast as sin and many will not see us. Even when they see us. (This we know. What we suspect is that they "will not see us" even when they see they hit us. Alas no dead yachtsman has yet testified in this matter.)

Conversely, a stealthy, dark-ocean colored Burke-class Navy destroyer is jam-packed with sensitive navigation and contact-pinpointing equipment, well-trained sailors and, compared with a freighter, is just about as maneuverable as a jet-ski.

It is, of course, foolish for recreational or commercial vessels to approach military vessels of any kind unnecessarily – when they can be seen! Once, in moonlit hours approaching King's Bay, Georgia, alone and under sail, I was surprised and nearly run over by a mission-bound submarine and her armed USCG cutter escorts, their .50 cal. BMG machine guns and lights suddenly trained on my sloop as the monolithic sail of the submarine bore down and Zeus himself thundered You are in the presence of a United States Navy Submarine. Move your vessel to the port side of the channel NOW! One stays well away from Navy ships at sea.

I am reminded of the many times, approaching Tel-Aviv offshore from Cyprus or Greece in the dead of night, Israeli Navy "Sa'ar" missile ships stealthily crept up to within meters of our stern. (We never heard them or felt their vibrations, ever. Under sail alone!) Then – BOOM! – blinded us with a devastating burst of light and the incongruously friendly "Shalom!" Warships surprise you. Not the other way around.

I seem to digress, yes – but there is a reason.

The writer at sea.

It is almost certain that this catastrophe was a "system" or "normal" accident, i.e., a series of otherwise relatively minor errors or unfortunate events which coincide to produce disaster. One wonders, for instance, whether avoidance of collision with a third vessel may have been a factor: this is an extremely busy seaway, after all, with some 300 vessels moving through daily. It seems more than likely the ACX Crystal did not have "right of way" (she appears to have been erratic in her course and speed, making a wide, staggered "360" shortly before the collision, possibly to burn time), but whether this was a botched bow-to-bow passing, or crossing, or whether the freighter was out of human control: As with the lighthouse tale, none of that matters once the collision is imminent.

Despite the fact that at least half a dozen extremely sharp officers and petty officers were on the bridge at the time of the collision, and despite the fact keen watches were surely posted on the bow, stern and "wings" of the bridge; either by action or omission, barring an attack, lax readiness on Fitzgerald will likely be deemed the ultimate culprit.

But what, exactly, is readiness in a busy seaway? Sure, our boats have radar, Aegis, AIS and many other active and passive detection systems. But how useful are these in a chaotic, noisy, high-traffic environment? Bear with me.

I will never forget the shock I felt – and the lesson I learned – the first time I sailed into St Augustine Inlet, in Florida. I was a young sailor running my first big boat, a 1939 40-foot wooden cutter. It was night, and I had no modern electronic aids. (GPS / chart-plotter: I really didn't have the money at that time. I wince to confess I didn't even have a depth-sounder and ran aground and frequently "kedged myself off" sandbars and the like.) At the same time, my charts indicated there were plenty of aids to navigation with the familiar and systematized flashing red, green, or sometimes yellow lights on floating markers, and Ì felt confident about the approach– until, after many hours in comforting darkness at sea, I had to make those miniscule flashers out against a dazzling billboard of urban lights, nightclubs and cars. Suddenly, like radar in chaff, I was completely blinded by information. There were lights everywhere! Everything was too close to go on compass alone, and for more than a few terrible moments in a current, in traffic, running a full-keel boat in a complex and unfamiliar seaway, searching desperately for markers (and needing to stay in the deeper channel), I had absolutely no idea where I was.

Ironically perhaps, I am reminded of that unsophisticated formative experience when I encounter what I perceive to be over-reliance on technology. Not much later I found myself on the bridge, at night, as part of a skeleton delivery crew of a 68-foot motoryacht. We were going like gangbusters in an inland waterway, it was springtime, and there were attendant hazards such as large wooden logs racing past. I will never forget the sight of the captain and helmsman, my friend, with his face glued to his laptop computer, "looking at" our course. He was as blind as I was at St Augustine, and at high cruising speed, far more dangerous. I stepped outside to play "lookout," but I knew we would not have time to avoid a collision anyway. It is a scene I've seen over and over again since: sailors staring endlessly at seductive instruments of one kind or another, often oblivious to their actual, three-dimensional surroundings.

It's understandable. We live in an era in which folks' very identities and senses of self-worth – who we are, where we're going – are determined by pixels on a screen, likes, "friends," and what-not. AIS tells us "where we are and where all the other vessels are" (if it's turned on), and GPS-linked computers can do pretty much everything for us, until things get a little too crowded, too messy, or too close for comfort.

At that point, of course, we have to take our eyes off the screen, look at the other boat's faint green or red and white navigation lights, find his course and position relative to us in the darkness, in the fog, or the chaff – and answer the questions all mariners have asked:

What is he doing? What is he thinking? Is he thinking? Is there a man at the helm out there? Where is he going? Why is he not showing clear intent? What can I do to avoid him now? And … Now?

We must wait for formal inquiries to illuminate what really happened in this tragedy, but my gut tells me that if there was a failure on USS Fitzgerald, it wasn't the "Internets" and GPS.

I will surely again be the target of nasty, anonymous emails and posts such as: What the heck does some luddite civilian sailor's experience have to do with the power and capabilities of the United States Navy?

They will be making my point. It is my experience that the useful and valuable paraphernalia – the lights, the screens – can sometimes give us excessive confidence, take us out of our physical realities, and make us blind.

Sometimes, we have to see.