There’s a moral here for all of us.
The Coast Guard just issued its report about the grounding of the 1,095-foot-long Ever Forward in the Chesapeake last March, and it’s devastating.
Its conclusion: The grounding was caused by the “failure to maintain situational awareness and attention while navigating, and inadequate bridge resource management.”
The problem: The pilot was on his cell phone.
But he was hardly alone. The ship’s master had left the bridge half an hour before the grounding to get dinner, but still on the bridge, along with the pilot, were the Third Officer, a Deck Cadet, and an Able Bodied Seaman who was at the helm.
The ship’s paper and electronics charts were up to date, but the pilot was not using them. Instead, he relied on his Portable Pilot Unit to navigate. The report said the pilot “was not aware that there were paper charts available and in use by the bridge team at the time.” A few minutes before the grounding, the pilot exited the active navigation screen on his PPU to pull up a screen from a previous voyage.
The Coast Guard report says the pilot made five calls over the hour before the grounding, sent two text messages, and had started drafting an email about line handlers immediately before the grounding.
The Ever Forward left Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore, en route to Norfolk, Virginia, on the evening of March 13. The 117,340-ton vessel had 4,964 containers on board.
At 2017, it passed a charted waypoint where it should have made a turn to 180 degrees True, according to the report. At that time, the report says, “the Third Officer announced on the bridge that the vessel’s heading was 161 degrees and the speed was approximately 13 knots. The Pilot verbally acknowledged the Third Officer and took no action. The Third Officer stated that the Pilot was still looking at his cell phone at this time.”
“At 2018, the Pilot recognized the vessel was past its turn and ordered 15 degrees rudder to starboard,” the report says. “The vessel grounded outside the Craighill Channel, east of Lighted Buoy 16.”
The Ever Forward draws 42.5 feet. It was refloated during a full moon on April 17, more than a month after it had run aground, with the help of two anchor barges and five tugboats. More than 200,000 cubic yards had been dredged from the bottom around the ship, and 505 containers had been offloaded.
The Coast Guard report said that ship operators need to develop policies about the use of cell phones on board, and that owners and operators need to promote policies about the duties of officers on watch for the safety of the ship, even when a pilot is on board.
Meanwhile, the Maryland Board of Pilots voted unanimously to suspend the license of the pilot, who had 15 years of experience on the Chesapeake.
Read the Coast Guard report here: https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/CG-5PC/INV/docs/documents/EverForwardGrounding_ROI_Redacted.pdf?ver=odDgOSiBdmfRW2gXWrdnEQ%3d%3d
