on this the March 29th 2024 edition of what's going on with shipping we look at the timeline of the motor vessel Dolly striking the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore I'm your host salmer cogo welcome to today's episode so the NTSB has recovered The Vessel data recorder and they provided a press conference yesterday where they did a Tik Tok basically broke down the time we're going to take a look at that and some new information that came out and also reference you over to some good sources if you want to understand some aspects about ship operation if you're new you don't have any idea about how ships operate I'm going to give you the links to go to that I think will provide you the best information out there if you're new to the channel hey take a moment subscribe to the channel and hit the Bell so be alerted about new videos as they come out so one of the videos I recommend you go take a look at is NTSB on YouTube they are posting what they call b-roll footage but it is Drone footage it is people on board the ship taking a look at the vessel you'll see right here these are inspectors up on the bow of the vessel of the dolly inspecting it notice you see the Hazmat uh Barrel right there see the bridge across it this ship has the entire Bridge structure sitting on it including one of the concrete pilings the ship is actually on the bottom right now because of the weight on the bridge is pushing the bow down and so Salvage of this is going to be a very complex environment so we're going to do a whole separate thing when it comes to salvage of the vessel and talk about it in some detail but I just want you to be able to reference this go take a look at the full video they'll take you through the entire bow you'll see Dam damage on the vessel uh it's pretty pronounced you'll also notice that up on the bow of all Container ships is where the hazardous material is stowed you'll see some placards here 1993 that's a flammable liquid uh we don't know exactly what the hazardous material is This Is Not Unusual all Container ships have hazardous material up forward this is what you don't want to deepen the ship so if there's a problem you could lose the ship want it up front so that there is a problem it can be isolated and unfortunately in this case when you have a Collision like this uh the hazardous material is the most at risk so they're going to have to really deal with this first it is going to take a long process to free the vessel from the bridge structure you just can't pull it out it's been sustained heavy damage and it's going to take an assessment to do it resolve Marine is on scene they're doing uh their surveys but this is going to be a process but the NTSB videos are extremely good so this is marine traffic and this is the run through of and I kind of did this the other day but I want to show something here because something came up and I want to be clear about this so there was a ship that left just before the Del did it was the MC Toronto and you'll notice that two tugs sailed out with it and some people are saying why was msse Toronto escorted under the bridge but not the dolly and let me be clear the tugs that went with the MSC Toronto were not escorting them they were heading to their basically their their their home base which is located at Sparrow's Point it's on the other side of the bridge so that Transit was just to relocate the Tugs they were not escorting the MSC Toronto out so before I do the Tik Tock here I want to run through a couple of sites here that I think are really important for you this is Chief McCoy Chief McCoy has a YouTube site he is a chief engineer on board vessels he's a Filipino operat ships has a fantastic YouTube presence this is a video he did on how to start the main engine on a vessel and I really recommend if you want to understand what happens with this uh with the dolly you need to watch this video because he goes through the entire process what it takes to start the main engine on a commercial vessel it is not as easy as getting in pushing the button and you're off and running there is a long laborious process to do this marine diesel engines are much different than what you have in a Ford F-150 for example these are big massive engines and one of the things I'm going to do in this video is really highlight some some key sites for you to go to okay what Chief McCoy is down in the engine room Brian Bole is up on the bridge Brian is an American he's a second mate he uh sails actively I just talked to Brian the other day uh he walks you through how you steer and cond of vessels specifically he's looking at the mechanics of it but he has a whole series of videos of what operations are like on a container ship again I'll have all these links you'll see the link above here where you can go over to these specific videos but you can dig down into their channels and I strongly recommend you follow them again a lot of information is floating out there about the ship and how it's operates and why people you know people asking questions if you want to go and get great answers you go to the source Chief McCoy Brian Bole so if you got questions about why tugboats for example were not with the dolly then head on over to Tim BC so Tim is a tugboat operator he is out there captaining a tugboat now he does a lot of tugs and Toes not so much taking vessels on and off births but he did that for 10 years and so he's got two videos out there that give you really uh expert perspective on this and and one of the things and we've been talking about this among myself and a lot of colleagues and John Conrad my buddy over gcap just posted a long thread on X about this you know the question is not just if you had tugs escorting The Vessel out but if you had tugs how to properly use the tugs in this situation if you had a large 5,000 horsepower tractor tug on a line a stern of the vessel then maybe you could have helped slow down the vessel but understanding turning a vessel under speed is really difficult so this is a video I did back in June of 2022 this is a vessel called The Spar Lyra uh it lost its propulsion plant when it was maneuvering around a ship on fire in norick Harbor this is a spirit of noric fire uh two Moran tugs were on location there and were a able to divert and push away The Spar Lyra that that perimeter fence you're seeing there that is the barrier gate to Naval base norfol and sparra was on a collision course to hit the USS Mason and the oiler usns Leroy Grumman and it was two Moran tugs that responded very quickly to the scene they were able to get lines onto The Spar Lyra and help divert the course of the ship you will see these two Moran tug is doing absolute yman work here I I mean they are hooked on and pushing for all their might to get Spar Lyra around matter of fact you're going to see a green buoy where they almost run it down come by but something to note here real quick Spar Lyra is about 50,000 tons at 500 feet the Lyra uh excuse me the the the dolly is almost 1,000 feet and over a 100,000 tons and so there there's a lot of of issues associated with this plus uh you needed this happened with a little bit more time out in a little more Open Water what you're going to see happen here when we go through the Tik Tock is that the dolly did not have much time now a big tractor tug big 5,000 horsepower tractor tug hooked to the stern is an option that a lot of people are talking about and a lot of ports right now are relooking at this and debating this fact about whether or not they need tugs on it but let me be clear too one of the reasons you don't have tugs escorting them is they're not required they are expensive and as you'll see here these two Moran tugs put themselves In Harm's Way to save this situation they nearly capsized the forward tug taking water over the gunnel and you know one of the things that has happened in the past with tugs tied to vessels at speeds over you know dead slow two three knots is that tugs have been pulled under Crews have been killed lines have been snapped people have been hurt so there is a give and take on this I'm not saying it should be one way or the other but it does raise a discussion to me the bigger issue is how do you fix the infrastructure this is an image of the Tampa Skyline Bridge this is the bridge that got hit in 1980 and collaps if you look at the lower image here this is the Skyline Bridge this the second bridge here the one to the right is the one that got hit and you'll notice that there's no barriers around the the the bottom of the vessel here where the pilings are and what happened is a vessel struck the piling and it hit the bridge at such force that it knocked down the center span and this is them dismantling the bridge but notice this is the new bridge that replaced it notice around the main shipping channel uh there are these artificial Islands there are these dolphins that are stationed all around the area this is a lot more protection a vessel can still hit but you don't physically hit the bridge what happened with dolly is it physically hit the bridge this island would stop that you would still have a massive shock damage and it's not saying you would not cause damage damage if not even a potential collapse but the issue here is updating the infrastructure and if you watch Tim B at C's video he'll he goes through places all the time and highlights the fact that many bridges have no protections whatsoever so what I want to do at this point is walk you through kind of the Tik Tock of the time that we got from The Vessel data recorder and understand vessel data recorders are not black boxes on planes they don't record all the data this a fundamental flaw the international Maritime organization needs to mandate a new type of vessel data recorder that captures more information for example the bridge audio there are recorders that capture the bridge audio but unlike airplane cockpits where the pilots are seated strapped in and don't move this bridge is 150 ft across I I I mean there's mics but you won't hear it they're alarm sounding uh it is a big problem so you don't catch all the audio and more importantly not all the data is recorded so this is what they got from The Vessel data recorder uh you'll notice a time difference on the stamps the image on the left is from Marine Traffic that's on UTC time that is 4 hours ahead of Maryland time and on the right is the video from the the that we've all seen and it is in local time so at 107 eastern daylight time the ship entered the Fort McHenry Channel at that point the two mallister tugs were released and they did not return back to their home base they went into the harbor of of of Baltimore more more for other jobs we're synced up here at 0124 at 0124 the ship was underway on a true heading of approximately 144 141 degrees in the Fort McHenry channel uh at an indicated speed overround of approximately 8 knots 9 miles per hour and you'll see right here we see the dolly at that indicated speed right here about 8.5 knots at this time here it is this is a minute before that it recorded speed of 8 5 knots on a course of 140° so that matches up perfectly okay our next piece of information is at 0124 and 33 seconds and this comes in the video not the vdr the ship loses power and again we can see that very clearly here where we see the ship kind of without its power at that point uh it is coming in basically on the same course and heading uh8 and a half uh knots heading down the channel and based on what we have from AIS it still seems to be pretty much on track here this is a minute ahead it's on a course of 141 at 8.7 knots so per the NTSB at 0124 and 59 numerous audible alarms were recorded on the ship's brid Bridge audio around the same time the vdr ship system data ceased recording however the vdr audio continued to be recorded during the vdrs Redundant power source now we're not clear here whether or not the vdr lost the ability to record instrumentation or it's the because the instrument ation went offline because of the power outage but we're seeing the ship progressing down its track so at 01262 the vdr resume recording ship uh system data during this time there were steering commands and Rudder orders on the vdr audio okay that is the key piece of information for me the fact that they were still issuing Rudder commands and that was on the audio that means that tells me that they still had Helm control at this time understand and this ship is underway at over 8 knots you have the rudder you should be able to navigate The Vessel and Coast underneath the bridge to the other side now the question becomes is when the emergency diesel generator kicks online does the ship have power going to the rudder okay I have brought you back 32 seconds in time back to 0125 and 31 seconds this is when the ship's power comes back on now the ship lost power at 0124 and 33 seconds power comes back on now 58 seconds later emergency diesel generators are supposed to come on within 45 30 to 5 45 seconds so there's a big question I have right now did the emergency diesel generator come back online because that's supposed to be automatic so this pretty face is chief engineer Eric Barton uh he is the steam guy he has a YouTube channel and in this YouTube channel Channel he takes a look at emergency ship gener excuse me emergency ship generators and he breaks down the entire process with it and one of the key things that he talks about in here is that emergency service diesel generators first of all they're about the size of a truck engine they're not huge they are not designed to run the ship most importantly they have two independent systems to start up once the power goes up they're supposed to come on within 45 seconds they can start either by electrical pneumatic hydraulic of various different ways to do it but they're supposed to kick on automatically and most importantly they have a separate distribution board an electrical distribution switchboard and their switches should be set the breakers should be set to run some key things so when the power came back on 58 seconds later one of the things you notice on the ship is that the flood lights are on well why would you run flood lights that's something you would need and it may raises the question about whether or not the emergency generator came up online and one of the things you'll see here are breakers for the whistle for the battery charger but more importantly this breaker listed right here is helps you to start the main engine the other key breaker that's on here and I apologize for the clarity of this but you can't really you can zoom it in individually and see it but this breaker right here is for the steering gear so the ship if the emergency diesel generator came on with the forward motion the ship had it should have had Rudder commands and let's be clear again on this other issue that if they are issuing Rudder commands the vdr recorded again I I say again at 01262 vdr resumed recording there were steering commands and Rudder orders the question is going to be this all right we're back at 126 and 02 if the pilot the master is issuing Rudder orders the Helmsman who's on the wheel would be sitting there repeating the order so for example if you're given a Helm order of left 15° the Helmsman would say left 15° and when the rudder got there they would say my hel my Rudder is left 16 15° that's the Audio I want to hear does the Helmsman say he has Rudder Comm or he or she has Rudder command if they don't have Rudder command there's a big problem here because if this is not the emergency diesel generator that's up and running providing power then this means it's maybe the ship's uh main diesel gen generators are on and is there a Helm problem at this problem does is is there a problem in the main distribution board that is tripping out uh there's a lot of other questions here about using the bow thruster of the vessel the bow thruster consumes massive amounts of power if you are limited power especially on an emergency generator you're not running the Thruster plus a Thruster is really only sufficient to move a vessel when you're below three knots it's not going to do a lot whe the V the speed this vessel is going which is 8.7 knots right here so the next input by the vdr is at 0126 639 the ship pilot made a general VHF call for tugs in the vicinity of Dolly 2 seconds before that the ship lost power the second time uh ship went dark at this point it's a clear indication that they have problems when he lost power the second time obviously when power came back up for him uh he thought that maybe he had or he or she may may have had control I I don't know who the pilot is at the time the lead pilot thought they had control back but now it appears that they don't have control and it appears they don't have Helm control that's the reason that they would be calling the tugs at this moment so our next piece of information is at 01274 the pilot commanded Dali to drop the port anchor and issued additional steering commands now again the vessel is dark at this point I'm not exactly sure that they have any Helm controls at this point but dropping the port anchor is another key moment in this Evolution so another YouTube video I'll recommend to you is hope it's see this is how to drop an anchor now an anchor has three kind of safety features on it to prevent you from dropping it it has a way to lock the chain you can see that right there you lock the chain in so you prevent it from running there's a break on the windless that's that big wheel there to the right and then you have a clutch that's engaged in there to release the The Vessel now you don't need any power at all to drop an anchor but you do need Personnel up on the bow and they need to disengage that clutch and what you you saw right there is they had the riding pole disengage you have that big huge clamp it's wide open and then you saw just a second ago them spinning the wheel releasing the brake that big huge band that's around that drum and you can see the anchor being go and you can start letting that anchor go the issue with the anchor is this this ship is going at eight knots this anchor is not going to stop you I know we talk about this all the time and what you see in movies but an anchor is not designed to stop a vessel it's designed to hold a vessel in place when it stopped this will provide some drag on the bottom and hopefully pull the vessel to the left it's the reason you're dropping the port anchor and not the starbit anchor at 0127 and 11 seconds we have uh power restored for the second time on the vessel we see Power come back up on the vessel uh you're noticing the vessel having a huge plume of black smoke coming out of it now there's almost no uh wind at this time and so the black smoke is hanging low and basically what you see is that black smoke in the path of the vessel it's just kind of hanging there and that black smoke is not coming from the Emer diesel generator that emergency diesel generator is the size of a truck uh a truck engine it's not going to emit that much black smoke if you watch Chief McCoy's video he talks about the fact that before you start the main engine of the ship you have to blow out vapor and any gas that's or any fuel that's in there excuse me any fuel that's in there and get it out if the engine stall stops running it will have fuel oil in it and when you re when you pump air into it you use compressed air to start a marine diesel engine you're going to have a rich environment you're going to have too much fuel in it that's going to create incomplete combustion that's what you get with the black smoke so that's an indication that they're trying to get the main engine up and running but if you haven't figured out what the issue is that creates a problem because what you're going to do is get the engine back up but you may not be able to maintain it and keep it up so I have questions right now about is the emergency diesel generator running does it have a load on it uh and does the is is this an initiation of the main engine coming online once again also understand that this ship has a very slows speeed Diesel and on many ships and I can't tell yet I haven't been able to ascertain this a lot of ships that the engine is directly connected to the propeller and if the engine is directly connected to the propeller you actually have to spin the engine the opposite way and maybe they've turned the engine over and now they're trying to start it in the opposite direction we don't know but the engine was probably still spinning with the propeller going through the water so you were probably still getting movement in the Pistons to an effect and that means also by the way that you're probably not backing down some people are comparing this to well when I back down my boat the bow goes this way this vessel probably never got into reverse and I've talked to Marine surveyors and engine Engineers who agree with that it takes a while to stop spinning a slow speed diesel propeller and to get it to go back it will take roughly more time than this to go from there was a test done on a very similar Siz vessel but this was done at full speed it took over 9 minutes to get that uh propeller to go from Full Ahead to stop now this is all taking place in 4 minutes at about half speed so it's unlikely that this is happening the other perspective you have here is the ship is is seems to be turning if you're looking at this on the video a lot of people are sitting sitting there saying why is this ship turning remember the ship was coming in at about 141° was the the reading so here is the reading at 0127 again we're right synced up here it's heading at 7 7.6 knots so it's slowed down just a little about half a knot and it has come off course about 11° and and people are sitting there saying well the ship seems to be turning in the video well it is turning a bit but it's a perspective error but the other issue is why does this ship have a turn there's almost no wind and current at this time I've I've looked at at at all the issues uh there is a little bit of a tide coming out at this time and that may be the explanation that solves this problem for us why this ship starts kicking out I'm going to change marine traffic over to the nordal Chart setting here so you'll see the main Channel this big huge white channel right here and you can see the red obstructions right here notice how close the bridge is to the main Channel there's not a lot of room there between it but the key thing is this white Channel going off here to the left this is the channel the Curtis Bay if you have water coming out at this time if the tide is going down remember it was a full moon if Tide's going out and you're having a tide uh movement here and this is really close to uh when uh you're coming to a slack tide but even if not when you hit an area where water is coming in off your starboard side it may push the dolly just enough to nudge her and then you have effects called uh bow Su Bank suction where you may see the ship start pulling and the bow will will will kind of nudge to the right and the stern will want to suck in toward the bank and if you give it just enough a nudge and this ship was just hugging by the way the left side of the bank there just a bit that may be enough to cause the dolly if they don't have Rudder control to kind of go off skew and I think that's one of the issues that's leading Dolly now to do this if you had Rudder control again a little bit of left Rudder and you Coast under the bridge at this speed you still have you still have enough we on for the rudder to have control but if power is not going to the rudder and the rudder is locked in place then this could be the main problem at 0127 and 25 seconds the pilot issued a radio video call over the VHF and reported Dolly had lost all power approaching the Key Bridge according to this uh time the mdta data shows the following occurred the uh Maryland Transportation Authority duty officer radios two units already one on each side of the bridge to close the bridge all lanes are shut down by the mdta I got to say this is the really amazing thing I mean you had the general call go out on VHF at 02639 reports are that the pilot or the secondary pilot there was a junior pilot on board phoned into the pilot office to let them know they were having issues to warn the bridge So within the span of of maybe two minutes you're able to do it now according to mdta they have police on each end of the bridge because they have work Crews there so they have a speed zone set up on the bridge to enforce it that's why there were police on each side and why they were able to shut down the bridge so quickly I'm going to run the video here for just just a second because one of the things that you start to notice when you look at this is the ship begins a slight swing to the left uh I'm not exactly sure if that's an indication that they get Rudder control back on the vessel this is about 128 and 30 seconds we start seeing an Ever gradual swing to the left now that could be for a variety of different reasons but we definitely begin to see it by this point the ship is nearly half a ship length away from coming in on top of the bridge and there's almost no point this is Titanic hitting the iceberg at this point and then you see that big splash at 028 45 seconds that is the water splashing up against uh the pylons the forward bow of the vessel the starbit side impales itself on that concrete pillar and at 0128 and 50 seconds you get the collapse of the bridge at that point and according to the vdr at 0129 Z hours the ship speed overg ground was recorded just under uh 7 knots From This Moment until 0129 and 33 seconds vdr audio recorded sounds consistent with the collision with the keybridge that is 0129 and 33 seconds where we have the vessel at uh and then a few seconds after this at 01 2939 the pilot reported the Key Bridge down over VHF radio to the US Coast Guard so that's the Tik tock taking you through so again the questions I have for NTSB is is obviously this number one uh what's the root cause of the power outage uh is it fuel that can be tested almost immediately we can find out very quickly if there's contaminated fuel uh is it mechanical electrical computer uh all those are issues you saw the engine room uh by Chief McCoy uh this is not a thing that is UPL to satellite that you can hack into however there are computer systems on board that swing but it's a swing nevertheless that allows the ship to turn in so all these issues need to be addressed as we go forward and the only way we can get that information is through the investigation last two videos I'll recommend to you this one is by the minorcan mullet uh this is Captain Andy down in Brunswick uh Georgia uh Captain Andy documented and filmed his YouTube channel caught the entire episode that was the golden ray and so he knows a lot from observ about Marine Salvage and he has a great video talking about what comes next in terms of Marine Salvage he goes through a lot of the equipment a lot of what happened down there with golden ray I think it's a really good video to take a look at he has a unique perspective by having watched this take place over a span of four years and documenting it on his YouTube channel exactly what we can expect to see happening in Baltimore over the next few months finally I recommend a video over at casual navigation they're a fantastic resource I don't know how they do it as quick CU they did but they came out with this uh uh graphic animated feature that talks about the Collision uh it's really good uh it's a quick 4minute kind of recap of what happened uh they did a really good job with it but again it's very quick and it's just coming out now but they have a great series that I strongly recommend you go take a look at if you want to understand facets of ship operations they do an extremely good job so this is a bit longer video than what I've done but I want wanted to take the time to really kind of break down key elements here so that you understand what we know so far and what we don't know which is a lot right now obviously the NTSB is interviewing all the Personnel involved uh that information is not going to be released you're not going to hear the vdr recording they will hold that forever because that's what the NTSB does when it comes to Maritime uh NTSB is is is you know when they deal with Maritime this tends to be a little bit outside the norm for them of this is outside the norm of everybody right now so they're going to have to deal with this I think the next thing we're watching here is the Salvage operation uh the Salvage of the ship the movement of the bridge out of the channel and then the remov removal of the rest of the bridge is all going to be done uh check out my video I just did on who's in charge because I think they still have an issue about who's in charge for this operation uh nominally I'm hearing now it's going to be the captain of the port the problem is I don't think the captain of the port has enough clout to deal with the political issues that come in their way when deep water Horizon had accident they pulled a former commant of the Coast Guard out to go do it and I think that's something they need to think about they need either a former military guy who knows something about this or a civilian who is not beholden especially to political interests because this is going to be a political hot cake with a election coming down the road in November I hope you enjoyed today's episode if you did hey take a moment subscribe to the channel and hit the Bell so we be alerted about new videos as they come out leave a comment share it across social media give it a thumbs up and if you can support the page how do you do that you hit the super thanks down below or head on over to patreon and become a monthly yearly subscriber until our next video s sign off
