Happy Easter, my friends. I’m going to begin with the Orthodox Paschal greeting today because I think the most important thing that I have come to learn these past few years, is how seriously and dangerously cut off from our traditions we are. So – Christ is risen.
Now, down to business.
I’m currently serving as Marine Warranty Surveyor on a cable lay vessel, at Dogger Bank, in the centre of the North Sea. It has been an absolute dream of a job so far. The owner of the vessel is German, and the builder & previous owner was Norwegian. So the ship is simply amazing. A DP3 cable layer beats 99% of anything afloat, when it comes to robust, high-tech engineering and technical redundancy. And the accommodation is great. TV, darts, gym, sauna, blistering WiFi speeds, outstanding catering, basketball court, ping pong table, badminton, and football. I’ve never seen anything so well-equipped. They have an outstanding safety management culture, and they even have women on board, which makes everything just that little bit more civilised.
After a last-minute rush to get me to join the vessel last Friday (I had a wedding on Saturday, and travelled on Sunday), the first hours on board comprised the usual rush of safety inductions, vessel familiarisation and introductions to the crew. The amount of reading before joining was as immense as always. I’ve learned to efficiently skim the many hundreds of pages of technical information dumped so that I can pick out the key points on the flight over. Accident reports, repair reports, NDT reports, mitigations, MOC documents, and weather limits for the upcoming operation take priority. Those are the key points.
After a twenty-hour steam to the field and an inspection of the repairs following a recent incident, the initial rush was over. After three days and a couple of cables laid on the seabed, we could relax a little, knowing that the repairs had been effective. I had planned to settle in and use my downtime to re-read Romans (I have new questions regarding the definitions of the law, the Torah, and authority), when news of a little disruption in Baltimore came my way.
I checked my phone after our early morning toolbox talk and the sped-up timelapse video of the MV Dali striking the Francis Scott Key Bridge was already circulating. We’re five hours ahead, so it must have been almost immediately after the incident.
As I saw that crappy bridge tumbling down, I thought ‘Oooh. Someone’s having a bad day at the office’, and then went about my business.
It didn’t surprise me. Marine casualties involving steering gear failure are common. See Allianz Stats and EMSA stats. It’s rare to have such good footage, but in Merchant shipping a ship is ‘totally lost’ or destroyed once every ten to 12 days. Bridges have been taken down by ships on average once every 16 months, for the past 70 years or so. This exact ship was detained for steering gear problems in Chile last year (according to Equasis.org), and this exact bridge was hit by a ship shortly after it was built. 18 US bridges have collapsed after allision by a ship since 1950. A few days earlier, a Yang Ming containership brought down all the cranes at a container terminal in Turkey. A few days before that, one took out a Manganese terminal in Australia.
These things happen. With grim frequency and regularity.
The first man in America to wake up and share the news was, of course, my father-in-law. (Whenever someone messages me at 4 am Eastern time, I know Papa is up early. ‘You’ll understand when you get older’ he says).
‘Viral’ is definitely the appropriate term for the way content is promulgated online. The video of the MV Dali striking the pontoon, and the continuous truss bridge collapsing into the river, has been on a continuous loop on maritime social channels ever since.
The sped-up time-lapse video, while useful, gives a misleading sense of how maritime incidents occur. Think of the man being steam-rolled to death in the Austin Powers movie, for a better approximation of how the agonising, painstakingly slow inevitability of a marine casualty occurring feels. The whole event took place within a 4 to 5 minute window. Although I can assure you, on board, it would have felt like a slow motion nightmare.
In the video we can see:
· The Dali let go of her tugs when clear of the turn, out of Seagirt Marine Terminal West Channel.
· The Dali steadied up on a heading that should bring her out through the main channel.
· The deck lights on MV Dali go out (indicating power failure).
· Vessel continues more or less straight.
· Power (deck lights) come back on, one minute later. Black smoke from the funnel.
· Second loss of power (indicated by deck lights going off)
· Vessels veers slightly to starboard (Video perspective makes her course alteration look exaggerated, but its only a few degrees off course).
· Later videos show the anchor was out when she struck the bridge pontoon (pier).
Now, that’s all you can tell from the video.
That’s it!
From the video, it looks like a very straightforward and typical maritime incident, that happened to hit a particularly poorly built and vulnerable bridge. Sadly, this resulted in at least six fatalities, all of whom are reported to have been construction workers doing the night shift on the bridge.
What you would hope to happen in a blackout would be for:
· Emergency batteries to keep electronics and lighting available on the navigational bridge uninterrupted.
· Emergency power to be available within 45 seconds, and to be available for at least 30 minutes, while main power is recovered or the ship is brought to a safe position.
It looks like there was an underlying electrical issue that was not resolved. It doesn’t seem like the emergency generator did its job at all. My instinct tells me there has been a long-term planned maintenance failure with the electrical systems on this vessel, and/or electrician error during the emergency.
She was a 95,000 GT ship, so the rudder is probably as big as the average European house. That’s why you need electro-mechanical power to move it.
You would have hoped that that’s all that would have happened. Blackout, get emergency power, put ‘Not Under Command’ signals on, steer clear of hazards (like the bridge) until all momentum is lost, and then drop the hook.
At the moment, it is not clear if they lost propulsion as well as steering. Some reports say that the VDR has recordings of the pilot and Master issuing helm orders. However, that means nothing. We do not know if the helm responded to any of those orders. We also do not know if she was able to operate astern propulsion.
Let’s make something clear. Containerships are not my area of expertise. I have only been on a handful of them, and two of them were so sh*t, I never wanted to go back. One of them had broken their radar screen (somehow). Instead of a SOLAS-approved square display, they’d replaced it with a piece of plywood, and a tv screen from one of the cabins. “Don’t worry mister pilot. We replace very soon. It just happened”. (Uhu). The problem was, TVs are all widescreen now, so every bearing looked wrong, and every target was all stretched out. The other one had broken hand rails on the bridge wing. Their solution was to put sandbags up, to about just the right height to be a trip hazard, and then put some caution tape where the handrail used to be, just at the height where you might reach to grab onto something before falling 30 metres to the steel deck below. The sandbags had moss growing on them, so I think that was their idea of an ‘engineering solution’.
The engines on containerships are also massive. The crankcase is so big, that people have to walk around inside it to clean it out from time to time. So, the big question is, what type of propulsion did they have? Some of them take 8 to 10 minutes to go astern if you give the telegraph an order to ‘reverse’ from full ahead to full astern. That’s twice the duration of this incident.
If they weren’t that kind of engine. If they did have the ability to go astern, then that is different. Then, IN THAT CASE (ONLY), what it looks like to me is there was a bit of a muddled panic on the bridge. Normally, it is advisable to do one thing at a time. Altering course, changing speed, operating astern propulsion, and dropping the anchor should not be done all at once, because the effects can be unpredictable and counter-intuitive. In shiphandling we like to change a single variable at a time, to observe its effect. But that’s hard to do in an emergency.
If they had propulsion, (which I’m not sure they did), then operating astern propulsion can cause its own problems. Going from 8 knots ahead to full astern, particularly in a narrow shallow-water channel like Baltimore, can cause hydrodynamic effects, including interaction with the bank, and transverse thrust.
Transverse thrust is the voodoo magic of naval architecture. Essentially – and you’ll just have to take my word for this – it means that on most ships with a ‘Right-Hand’ propeller (which means it turns clockwise when viewed from astern), there is a tendency for the stern to creep over to starboard, as the propeller rotates to starboard. WHEN OPERATED IN REVERSE, this means the stern of a vessel will creep to port. Therefore, the bow will swing to starboard, as the ship rotates around it’s centre of rotation (called the pivot point, in ship-handling).
Now, ALL CAVEATS AND DISCLAIMERS, I wasn’t on board, I don’t have complete information, and this isn’t apportionment of blame. I’m simply stating that from my point of view as an external observer and professional skipper, that the movement of the vessel appears consistent with:
1. Loss of power, loss of steering.
2. When emergency power was regained, the vessel gave an order to operate propulsion full astern, AND
3. At the same time tried to steer to port, AND
4. Tried to drop the anchor at the same time.
I’m guessing they tried to come astern, because of the black smoke coming from the funnel. This often occurs due to improper fuel-to-air ratio, which happens when the fuel is very cold, or when large demands are suddenly made on the engines.
I reckon they went full astern in an attempt to reduce the forward momentum.
Now the confusing part. When the propulsion is full astern, but the overall momentum of the vessel is still moving ahead, your brain still thinks you’re going ahead. That’s why the reports of people shouting orders to steer ‘hard to port’, would make sense. But such helm orders, if astern propulsion was being operated, would exacerbate the transverse thrust, and cause the bow to swing to starboard, thereby hitting the bridge support.
This is a fairly classic error in ship handling.
We could see something similar in the Costa Concordia incident as well. The initial damage to the side of the Costa Concordia was midships, and then a large gash was opened in the hull, as she did almost a handbrake turn onto the rock, before moving ahead. That is because she altered course to starboard, AND reduced speed at the same time. This resulted in drifting beam-on to the rock. If she had kept speed and simply steered to starboard, she may have cleared it. At least, that’s what I was taught. Doing one thing at a time takes nerve, though.
I have nothing but sympathy for the crew. I’ve been in that position a few times myself, and it’s easy to criticise a decision when you weren’t there. I had a near miss the last time I was sailing out of Eemshaven myself, and I had to totally shut down everything on the bridge and restart it all, while my vessel was drifting directly into a passenger ship. I narrowly avoided a crash that day, and I can tell you, it is an unbelievably unpleasant feeling when actions you perform every day are not having the effect you expect they should. And the clock is ticking.
When things go wrong on ships, they go wrong very quickly, and quite unpredictably.
Now, that covers the video. The cause of the initial power failure is a totally different question. The best answers I’ve heard:
· The particular type of engine on the MV Dali is known to have a valve on the main fuel intake that shuts off fuel to the main engines when pressure drops in the lubrication oil.
· The ship had dodgy fuel (a massive problem in the industry since the IMO mandated very low sulphur fuels, which has caused other incidents), resulting in main engine shut down.
· A short circuit somewhere. There have been (unsubstantiated) reports that the vessel was having multiple switchboard failures/blackouts and alarms the entire time she was in port. This would make sense as to why the emergency generator either came on late, or didn’t come on at all.
The worst explanations I have heard so far:
· Cyber attack (not even sailors are stupid enough to connect their steering gear to the internet).
· Sabotage (the idea that you could do this deliberately just by shutting down power at the right time is so preposterous, and fails to account for how many uncontrollable variables there might be in response to the blackout).
· The shadowy satanic elite ‘somehow’ orchestrating this ‘attack’, do either devastate the economy, distract from x, y, z, political thing, affect election year, etc.
Within minutes, Alex Jones and Andrew Tate – both well known experts in the maritime sector – had pronounced that this was ‘definitely’ a cyber attack, and that WW3 has begun.
The internet is a garbage place. It really is.
The fact that Alex Jones is an obvious agent of the state, and Andrew Tate is a piece of human debris (who just so happens to have been friends with Tommy Robinson when they both lived in Luton), doesn’t disqualify their limbic brain programming from being eaten up by people who should know better.
South Park got it right. The CIA et al want you to believe they control everything, so it makes them seem competent and omnipotent. You idiots out there spreading unfounded paranoia at every chance you get, are feeding the bloated statism you claim to hate so much.
Let me tell you why I have not even for one second considered the MV Dali incident to be an ‘attack’. The answer is very simple. If this was meant to be an attack, it’s a pathetic attempt at one.
Baltimore is not a very significant port for anyone not immediately affected by it. It is not a chokepoint or bottle neck for global trade. While it is classed as a ‘major port’ in the US, it is pretty small, and ranks number 11 in the USA.
Now here’s where we get really spicy.
America isn’t as important as it thinks it is. Not in shipping.
https://www.statista.com/chart/23766/biggest-container-ports-by-shipping-volume/
An American port has not been in the list of the top 10 or maybe even 20 ports, for almost two decades now. The only port in the top ten outside of the far east this year is Rotterdam, because that is the only port in Europe where the really big containerships can go. Ultra-large containerships are roughly 2.5 times larger than the Dali, carrying 24,000 TEUs, with draught over 21 m, and length around 400 m.
America is in decline.
If I wanted to ‘attack’ the economy of the USA, I would hit a bridge on the Mississippi, and close the port of Southern Louisiana. Now that is an important waterway for the US. Better yet, take out the Saint Lawrence Seaway at the same time. Closing the Great Lakes and the Mississippi to the world would leave the USA with about 40% of its GDP un-exportable.
Not Baltimore.
Take out Houston, LA or New York. Baltimore has some coal. That’s about it. All of its other main exports are on wheels or in containers. In other words, easily redirected.
Let’s say I wanted to affect world trade. Or murder lots of people for a giant ritual sacrifice. Or start WW3. Where and what would I attack? Nothing maritime in the US.
I’d probably drive a fully laden LNG carrier over the top of the SS Richard Montogmery, to see what happens to Londonshire. You couldn’t take out the bridges at either end of the Panama canal, because they built those ones properly. But you could take out the Chagres dam, and break the entire system, rendering it useless. Combine that with a couple of ships scuttled in the 1 mile wide Strait of Magellan, and you’d have a full 1.2% of global shipping delayed. 23% of global shipping goes through Suez, but the Ever Given incident didn’t bring us to our knees exactly.
There is a part of the Straits of Singapore that is particularly vulnerable, at One Fathom Bank. A scuttled tanker could really mess things up, and that would block the world’s second busiest port, and force 36% of global shipping to be redirected through the Straits of Lombok and Sunda in Indonesia. The Bosphorus accounts for almost 7% of shipping, and we were informed that the war in Ukraine would cause mass starvation if that trade ceased. It has limped on valiantly despite the war. The Strait of Gibraltar would be a lot more difficult to block, at 4 miles wide. My weapon of choice for that would have to be a collision between two nuclear waste carriers, to ensure that passing traffic would be too scared to pass through at the edges, for fear of being irradiated and having their cargo declared a contaminated liability. That would potentially halt 27% of global shipping. Two or three ships sunk in the Torres Strait would effectively redirect all coal and mineral exports from Australia too. Just Rotterdam. Blocking the entrance to that port would disrupt the entire European Union. (But probably only for a week, because the Dutch actually know how to do marine salvage, unlike the US).
But Baltimore?
If the deep state has a maritime saboteur department, they need to be a little more creative, I think. Maybe hire someone with some navigational experience that extends beyond the Intracoastal Waterway.
What is so disappointing about the conspiracy theorist epithet is that conspiracy is how all things are done. But we all know what it really means.
A conspiracy theorist in the negative sense, is the kind of person for whom all things are possible – EXCEPT an accident!
If you only have one explanation to fit all things, then you’re as bad as the enemy.
The ‘awake’ crowd can be the same as the ‘woke’ in this regard. They feed the fantasy of totalitarians from the other side. The belief that all negative things are orchestrated, intentional, and malicious is just as narcissistic on the left wing as it is on the right wing.
One of the names of the enemy is the ‘accuser’. That is what spirit social media channels when things like this happen. And that is what American exceptionalism has been reduced to in this day and age. A kind of nagging, narcissistic accusatory whine.
The real miracle is that any trade happens at all.
Technology is a gift from God that will protect us until the end of time. It is the garments of skin given to Adam and Eve when they were cast down the mountain from Eden. But it is also the dark artifice of Tubal Cain.
As our technological capacity increases, so does complexity, and with it, our vulnerability. This a core truth in biblical tradition, and something that we are seeing accelerate with the internet. Our nation-states are an example of this complexity and insecurity. Watch the USA, as its lumbering bureaucracy takes an age to clear the entrance to Baltimore. Watch the months ahead as the posturing and politics take precedence over action or work. Watch how the people in the US who love freedom, cry out for their special interest group to be aided and subsidised by central government. Watch every axe come out for grinding.
The fear and panic people see when they watch an accident like this on the news speaks to the knowledge that lives deep in our hearts. The feeling that we’ve lost something important, and we don’t even know what it is. The fact that our lives have become entirely dependent on debt, and deficits, and lies, and uncontrolled, unaccountable globalism, that nobody really understands.
We know we’re vulnerable. And it’s easier to say we’re under attack than it is to face the reality that the inheritance of the mighty freedom once enjoyed by the US has already been squandered. That when the dollar collapses as world reserve currency, people are actually going to have to work for a living again. Shipping really will be disrupted then. You’ll have a lot more to worry about than tractor exports being delayed, or your amazon package coming ashore at Savannah instead of Baltimore.
Only spoiled children think that bad things can’t happen in this life. Only narcissists ask, ‘how can this be happening to me’, or ‘do they expect me to believe this’.
Don’t get sucked into doom cults on the internet. Yes, our civilisation is crumbling, and we’re all going to suffer and die. But truth and love and goodness always win, by definition. There is no question of that. So pray for the families who’ve lost their breadwinners this week. And help them if you can. But don’t let the fight or flight programming from YouTubers and legacy media harvest your precious attention and turn you into a little outrage-algorithm. You’re better than that.
The obvious points to take away from this incident are as follows:
· Ships are more than 10 times larger than they were in the 1970s.
· Our infrastructure (in the UK and US) has not been risk assessed or upgraded accordingly.
· There are no guarantees in life.
· It is entirely possible that mandatory low-sulphur fuel regulations are a root cause of this engine failure, since engines were designed to run on a certain sulphur percentage, and grade of fuel that is no longer legally available, and fuel suppliers have been monkeying around with bunkers since 2020.
· Mandatory tug escorts might not have been a bad idea in this channel.
The less obvious point from this incident:
· The opportunity cost of two decades of the war on terror is that the US Navy has no salvage assets, the infrastructure of the countries’ roads, bridges and harbours have not been upgraded in line with modern standards, and the nation is so focused on stupid culture war wins that reality no longer matters. Only politics.
· There is no trust left in authority of any kind in our society. All a YouTube troll has to do is edit some explosions onto some newsreel, and half the internet take that as ‘gospel’ over the preponderance of other footage, evidence, and expert testimony. When Alex Jones and Andrew Tate have more credibility than the NTSB or USCG, your nation state is done. You’ve used and abused every shred of credibility during covid, lost it, and it’s never coming back. Not in the 2024 election cycle at least.