A fishing boat hit a containership in the middle of the night and sank in the Atlantic about 55 miles southeast of Chincoteague, Virginia, in October, 2022, because the mate did not keep a lookout while he was trying to fix the boat’s malfunctioning gyrocompass, according to a just-issued report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
All 13 people on board the fishing boat were saved by two good Samaritan vessels and a Coast Guard helicopter a few hours later. No one was injured.
The NTSB report gives the following account of the collision: The Rita, a 1,066-foot-long containership, was on its way from New York to Charleston with 22 officers and crew on board. The Tremont, a 115-foot-long fishing boat with 12 crew and one passenger (the captain’s and mate’s 2-year-old child) on board, had left New Bedford, Massachusetts, on Oct. 7 to fish for squid along the coasts of New Jersey and Virginia.
At 7 p.m. on the night of October 27, the crew on the Tremont retrieved the fishing gear and the boat headed north at 7 knots. The report says that at the time of the collision, just after midnight, visibility was 8 miles, the wind was 20 knots, and seas were 5 feet.
The Tremont had been having trouble with its gyrocompass for the past four days. The captain said it was “kind of sporadic,” but the error was less than 10 degrees and she and the first mate told the NTSB investigators “it was something we could live with.”
About 30 minutes after midnight, the Tremont passed 2.3 miles ahead of the Rita, but five minutes later, it turned back toward the containership, then just 1.3 miles away. The lookout on the Rita told the NTSB that he first saw a green light, then both sidelights, and then just a red light from the Tremont. He sounded the ship’s whistle, but the Tremont just kept coming.
At the time, the Tremont mate was concentrating on fixing the gyrocompass while the autopilot was engaged. The autopilot relied on feedback from the gyrocompass and required input from the user to maintain the desired course. As the mate adjusted the gyrocompass, the autopilot processed the feedback, resulting in the boat heading for the Rita.
At 36 minutes after midnight the Tremont hit the Rita on its starboard side, about 200 feet off the bow. The Tremont’s mate said he had seen the containership just seconds before the collision as “a dark, shadowy figure” of a ship. The Tremont’s radar was set at a 6-mile scale, but the mate did not see the Rita on the radar because he said he “was trying to adjust the gyrocompass.”
After the collision, the Tremont drifted along the Rita’s starboard side as the Rita kept on its course. Ten minutes later the mate on the Tremont called the Rita and said the bow was “all stove in” on the port side but “I don’t need any help at this time.” The Rita maintained its course.
But the Tremont was indeed taking on water. At 1:48 the captain made a distress call over VHF Channel 16. The nearest Coast Guard station only heard the words “Mayday” and the ship’s name; the Tremont was too far away and the VHF signal was weak. (The VHF was not DSC-enabled, so it did not automatically transmit its location.)
Two nearby ships heard the call, however, and headed for the scene as good Samaritans. So did the Rita. The Tremont’s captain later used a satellite phone to call 911, which in turn alerted the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard then dispatched a C-130 plane, a Jayhawk helicopter, a 47-foot lifeboat and a 154-foot cutter. At 3:10, the C-130 arrived at the scene and saw the Tremont down by the bow.
At 4:10, the crew, having put on immersion suits, launched one of the Tremont’s two liferafts. But the raft’s sea painter got tangled in the Tremont’s Jacob’s ladder, so the mate decided to stay on board to release the painter. A rescue boat from one of the good Samaritan ships picked up the crew on the liferaft.
The bow of the Tremont then submerged, and the mate was washed overboard. The Jayhawk deployed its rescue swimmer and hoisted the mate on board the helicopter.
The Tremont sank at 4:20. In a final indignity, the ship’s float-free EPIRB did not go off when the boat sank.
Read the entire NTSB report here: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/MIR2327.pdf
