| "Orange! International orange!" Kelly yelled back. The shrill whistle to
abandon ship blew. Kelly found himself with a walkie-talkie in his hand, standing at the
top of an interior set of stairs leading down to the lifeboat deck. The radio crackled.
Engineer Michael Price was still at his post, deep within the ship. Did the officers want
the engine- room pumps tied down?
"Mike!" Kelly yelled into the walkie-talkie. "Get the hell out of there!
We are going down!"
Then he jumped from the stairs, the walkie-talkie tumbling in front of him. It
shattered to pieces on the lower deck. He crashed on top of them and lay there for a
moment thinking: I've got to get out of here before we go down.
Outside he rushed, to this scene: Above him, Corl was climbing the rail of the deck,
trying to get free of the ship. Below him, chief mate Robert Cusick was launching a
lifeboat.
The lifeboat lines were paying out, paying out, paying out. Seaman Paul Dewey was on
the deck reaching out, reaching out, reaching out for a line.
The ship jerked. Dewey tumbled over the rail and into the water. The vessel righted and
then, with a sucking noise "like the sound of the water going out of a bathtub
amplified one billion times," the old ship turned onto its right side.
The water seemed to just come up and meet Kelly.
Dewey felt the steel of the ship pressing him down wherever he tried to swim up. The
ship had capsized on top of him.
Cusick, the old chief mate, was swimming underwater as if in a dream, past the lighted
porthole of the cabin where he had stood just a moment before. He looked in. The room
looked normal. He clawed against the steel and swam some more.
Kelly just slipped easily into the water, only to see the huge stack of the ship poised
like a hammer above him. Now it was coming down, directly on top of him, and he could only
look up at it.
Freeze the scene at that moment in time. It is 4:16 a.m. Feb. 12, 30 miles off the
Virginia Coast, and the men of the Marine Electric have begun the final chapter of the
story of their ship.
It is a gripping story that could stand by itself, worth the telling for what it has to
say about courage, survival, tragedy and luck among human beings at sea.
Yet the prologue to that story - of how the Marine Electric came to sail years past the
age at which most ships are scrapped - is as compelling in its way, with moments as
crucial, as the scene above.
An Inquirer investigation into the loss of the Marine Electric, based on interviews
with survivors and relatives of lost crewmen, an inspection of Coast Guard records and
testimony before the formal Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation show that the wreck
of the Marine Electric should never have occurred. The ship's violations of Coast Guard
safety standards should have kept her in port.
Members of the Marine Electric crew knew she was unsafe, and they were afraid. Many
would not cross the Atlantic on the ship. On occasions when the ship changed from its
normal coastal trade route to transatlantic grain trips, these men would take their
vacations rather than make the trips.
Seamen said they looked to the Coast Guard to rescue them if the Marine Electric went
down on one of her normal coastal trips. For some, it was not a question of if the Marine
Electric would sink, but when.
The ship was riddled with deficiencies - a hole in its hull and holes in its hatch
covers. Yet she sailed, in part because some inspections by the Coast Guard and the
American Bureau of Shipping were bogus.
Checks of some crucial areas of the ship never took place, despite records that
indicated they had.
Other claimed inspections were reported as having been made on days when they could not
have been done. A supposed hatch-cover inspection occurred when the ship had no
hatchcovers.
The result was that the Marine Electric, sailing out of Norfolk to its end and the
death of 31 of its 34 crewmen, had holes in its hatches, deck and
hull, all in violation of U.S. safety requirements. Some of the holes and many of the
temporary repairs went unreported by the ship's owners - also a violation of U.S. safety
codes.
Despite the ship's many flaws, the Marine Electric was certified by the Coast Guard as
seaworthy and given a Maltese Cross A1 by the American Bureau of Shipping - the highest
rating for insurance and safety purposes.
It was the poor condition of the hatch covers that most worried Cusick before he
sailed. Cusick was second-in-command of the vessel. He had frequently complained about the
covers to his superiors and had avoided transatlantic trips on the old ship whenever he
could.
All this was far from his mind as he clawed along the steel of the capsized ship, his
lungs straining. Past the lighted porthole, he found a railing and turned past it. His
life jacket and air-filled polyester underwear popped him to the surface. He sucked in
air.
Dewey was still underwater, his oxygen all but spent, still swimming up, still hitting
steel. Then, on the edge of panic, it struck him. Up was the wrong way. The ship was
slanted above him. He turned and swam down. He dove down against instinct and the buoyancy
of his life jacket. He reached a rail and turned past it. Freed from the underwater trap,
he shot up.
He broke surface like a cork and spit up water, coughed and caught his breath. He swam
on his back away from the capsized ship. He was surrounded by shipmates in the water.
"Help me, help me, " they cried out.
He would try to help them. He would do nothing but try to help them in the next hour.
Kelly was looking at the huge stack, still falling toward him through the air in a lazy
arc. He stared at it, frozen; he felt unable to escape.
A hand grabbed his life jacket at the scruff of his neck and dragged him through the
water. The stack hit the water where he had been.
When Kelly looked up, he could see nothing. There was nothing to see except the strobes
of the life preservers blinking eerily. No rescuers. No stars. No clouds. Nothing. The
water was the same. Black. "Unbelievably black."
It terrified him. But there would be worse moments. When there was enough light to see,
he would watch his men, his colleagues, his friends, just drift away on the water, into
the interminable night. Only a half-hitch held him to a life preserver; he clutched a
tankerman's red light in his hand.
Cusick, other officers and crewmen knew what they had in the old ship. Still they
sailed. They liked the Marine Electric for one reason and one reason only: It was in the
coastal trades.
The coastal trades meant steaming from Norfolk with coal for Somerset, Mass., and back.
Thirty six hours up the coast; 36 hours back.
Dewey in fact felt lucky to have been hired 10 days earlier. The schedule meant only a
few days at sea, compared with months in the transatlantic, deep- sea crossings. Family
men could stay close to home. And the work was steady.
It was, as third mate Eugene Kelly said, a "milk-toast run." The old salts
could have the transatlantic runs, two weeks each way, with just the ocean to stare at.
Most of the men on the Marine Electric could park their cars at the Somerset power plant;
when they came in, they could zip home, ''like we were shore workers and get a night at
home," Cusick said.
The bad news was that cargo carried between two U.S. points must be moved on U.S. flag
vessels - built in the States and crewed by Americans. And many of those vessels are old
rustbuckets. "Almost 80 percent," Capt. H.A. Downing of the Marine Transport
Lines (MTL), owner of the Marine Electric, would say.
It didn't take experts to tell that the ships were rustbuckets.
A month before the Marine Electric left on her last voyage, Sheree Browning visited the
ship. Her husband, Steve, a ship's engineer, was working late. He said that she might as
well come down to the dock and hang around the ship watching television until he got
through at midnight.
On the way, they drove by a sleek, new ship, and Sharee asked her husband: ''Is that
your ship?"
No, it wasn't, he said.
"Then we drove down to this little rust boat in the back and I said: 'Don't tell
me this is it?' And he said: 'Yes.' And I said: 'My God' and thought to myself: 'This
thing is terrible-looking. I'd be scared to go across the harbor in this thing.' "
The men who worked on the ship weren't afraid to go across the harbor. The ship's
second mate, Clayton Babineau, for one, took last summer off and worked on the roof of his
house while the Marine Electric delivered grain to Israel
because he didn't think the ship safe enough to make the trips.
Cusick, who had been a merchant mariner for nearly 40 years, had in fact declined the
command of another old vessel for that very reason. He would have earned more on the other
vessel - would in fact have been skipper, not just chief mate.
Cusick mightily feared the condition of the hatches of the Marine Electric and the
other aging members of the U.S. bulk fleet.
"Bill, you know what you got here, these old ships," he said at dockside to
his old friend, William H.C. Long, a fellow officer of the Marine Electric. ''You know
these old ships, these hatchcovers on these old ships. . . . "
The Coast Guard makes few rescues in the middle of the Atlantic, but the sea lanes
sailed by the Marine Electric in the coastal trade were only about 30 miles out.
If the Marine Electric sank, Cusick knew the Coast Guard would be near. "I always
figured the Coast Guard would come out and get me," said. He rejoined the Marine
Electric in November when the ship resumed its coastal route.
There was no time for talk of safety matters on the docks Thursday, Feb. 10, for the
crew members were busy getting ready to sail, and a long mechanical arm attached to
Norfolk and Western Pier 6 was filling the Marine Electric's five cargo holds with 24,800
tons of granulated coal.
A fierce winter storm that was to bury the East Coast under a record accumulation of
snow, was closing in. Sherree Browning's husband bid no lingering farewell to his wife.
She dropped him at the dock. He turned and said, "Put your foot to the floor of the
truck and don't look back until you get home."
Still, she thought about turning back. She almost did - to see him leave. She felt
something was wrong, but the thought passed, and she went home.
Captain Phillip Corl, who was substituting for the ship's permanent master for this
run, had a last-minute thought too. He acted on it. His wife, Alice, was to have
accompanied him on this trip. But the weather gave Corl pause. At the last minute, he sent
her ashore.
By 11 p.m. the loading was done. It was, Cusick noted, a good job. The bow was drawing
34.04 feet. The stern drew 34.04 feet. Marine Transport Lines, Cusick said, was good about
that. The company never tried to overload. Never even hinted that it would like to. There
was no percentage in it.
The ship cast off almost immediately upon loading, and Cusick set his men about the
business of dogging down the hatches - fastening clamps as the ship approached the mouth
of the Chesapeake Bay and headed for the ocean.
The pilot was dropped to a launch at 2 a.m. Friday as the Marine Electric neared the
tunnel-bridge system that spans the mouth of the bay. A good-size sea was running. A gale
was blowing from the northeast. None of this concerned Cusick particularly. "We had
gone out many times in this type of weather."
When he turned in about 3 a.m. any apprehension he had about the ship coming through
the storm was put to rest by this recurring thought: If we go down, the Coast Guard will
come out and get us.
He trusted the Coast Guard capacity for sea rescues, but he had seen enough not to
trust the Coast Guard ship-safety-inspection procedures.
The ship heading out into the storm was riddled with holes. None was big enough to sink
the ship by itself. And none was big enough to make the owners retire the old ship. But
added up, they were enough to keep it at dock for not meeting Coast Guard regulations.
More than enough, in fact.
Richard Roberts, another third mate, told Kelly it was his last trip on the old ship.
The officers had long complained about the condition of the ship. Clayton Babineau used to
kid Kelly about the ship's condition:
"Think they'll be chopping her up for razor blades?" he would joke, once they
had made it home safely from another trip. It was a reference to the universal seamen's
metaphor - "Cut her into razor blades" - for scrapping a ship.
Kelly would answer him: "Can't make razor blades out of rust."
Once over dinner, Kelly said, chief engineer Richard Powers, who was in charge of
maintenance on board, had told him the company was reluctant to put a lot of money into
the Marine Electric because it planned either to scrap the ship within two years or place
it under a foreign flag of convenience.
"It was a calculated gamble," Kelly concluded. "If it paid off, they
made a lot of money. If it didn't . . .. "
Kelly himself would not walk over the hatches, as some crew members did when they were
closing them up. "I always expected to look down in the hold one day and see him
lying flat on his back," he said of one crew member who did.
One day, Kelly beamed a flashlight on the deck and was horrified when the light passed
through a hole and shone on the bottom of the hold.
Cusick drew dozens of sketches of the wasted areas of the hatches, which had been
patched with common duct tape and epoxy glue - Red Hand, they called the glue. He gave the
sketches to the company, expecting that repairs would be made. They were not.
Kelly and Cusick were concerned about a discovery they made at the dock in Somerset
before embarking on the trip immediately preceding the last voyage.
"Mate, come quick," Kelly said to Cusick. "There is a hole in the
hull."
There was indeed. The number-one wing tank on the port side was being filled with water
to steady the vessel. But water was pouring out from this tank through a jagged hole in
the hull three inches in diameter and about five feet down from the deck, well above the
water in calm weather, but a hole in the hull nevertheless.
They figured the hole had been made by a bulldozer while the ship was being unloaded at
Somerset.
The law states that such a breach of the hull must be reported to the American Bureau
of Shipping and the U.S. Coast Guard. Regulations also state that repairs made to a hull
must be inspected and approved.
Cusick reported the hole to Captain James K. Farnham, the permanent master, and then
patched it crudely. He put the bottom of a three-pound coffee can over the hole, backed it
with a cement-filled box and braced it with a timber. Farnham in turn reported it to
Joseph Thelgie, the superintendent of maintenance for MTL. But nothing was done to replace
it.
Did Thelgie report it? Cusick wondered. Thelgie had not."This was an oversight on
my part," he was to say later.
Marine Transport Lines, owner of the Marine Electric, had a reputation as one of the
best bulk-ship operators in the U.S. "A first-rate company in all ways," said a
ship surveyor active for 30 years. MTL, as it was known in the trade, was in turn owned by
a large international, transportation-oriented company, the Chicago-based GATX Corp.
Unlike some operators with their one-ship corporations, MTL had money for maintenance.
It traced its ancestry to 1816. In 1982, its revenues were $112.9 million with a net
income of $2.4 million.
It did not have just two or three ships. It owned, chartered or operated a fleet of 34
vessels under U.S., British, Liberian and Panamanian flags.
There were, in fact, three fleets managed by MTL. The Military Sealift Command wing,
with nine tankers, had a $185 million contract that made it the 79th largest defense
contractor.
MTL had not cheated the Navy - as was the habit of some U.S. shipowners - by offering
to carry Navy cargoes in good ships but then charging outrageous rates while using
decrepit old ships.
The MTL fleet used to carry Navy cargoes was built in the mid-1970s and financed by the
Irving Trust Co. These modern ships, like the Sealift Pacific, which rescued 186
Vietnamese boat people in July 1980, enhanced the reputation of the American merchant
fleet.
In its second fleet, MTL had some of the largest and most commercial tankers in the
world. The B.T. Alaska and the B.T. San Diego brought oil from Alaska under a U.S. flag.
MTL also had foreign flag ships. There was the new $13 million ship the Oswego Prima,
which it operated for the Oswego Chemical Corp., and just recently, MTL bought a new
tanker for about $28 million from a Spanish shipyard.
Finally, MTL had a fleet of six World War II-era ships like the Marine Electric called
T-2s - all of them more than 35 years old, hardly to be expected in a first-class fleet.
In fact, the 22-year-old Oswego Peace, a foreign-flag ship operated by MTL, was scrapped
in Taiwan in 1982, while the 38-year-old Marine Electric sailed on.
Only if they flew a U.S. flag would MTL ships live past 30.
Yet the T-2s served a specific and profitable purpose. They were, after all, built in
this country. They were patched and kept afloat to participate in the protected trades
reserved for U.S. vessels.
For instance, occasionally some of the old ships would sail in the cargo- preference
trades under which U.S. Food for Peace grain was carried abroad. (Those cross-ocean trips
to Haifa, Israel, with loads of grain were the ones Cusick and Roberts feared most.)
New American ships that could participate in the preference trades cost too much to
build in U.S. yards - sometimes three to four times the cost of similar construction in
foreign yards. So old U.S. merchant ships were saved.
The T-2s operated by MTL included the Marine Chemical Transporter, owned by Union
Carbide Co., and the Marine Eagle, owned by the Du Pont Co. The fleet also included the
Marine Floridian, a chemical carrier owned by an MTL subsidiary, as well as the Marine
Texan and the Marine Duval, two MTL sulphur carriers.
All were well over 30 years old. Each had been jumboized - enlarged to carry more
cargo. And all but one had a record of accidents and breakdowns typical of old ships
operated so long past their prime. Age-related equipment-failures had left some drifting
helplessly at sea, vulnerable to disaster.
For example, the Marine Chemical Transporter's main propulsion system failed in the
Straits of Florida in January 1978. A Coast Guard report noted the cause was the failure
of a part "due to deterioration" that allowed acid to enter the steam system.
(Another Coast Guard inspection on Feb. 19, 1981, found that a pin on a lifeboat on that
ship had simply sheared off "due to fatigue." The lifeboat therefore could not
be launched properly.)
There had been many other T-2 problems for MTL, including the loss of 39 men on the
Marine Sulphur Queen in 1963.
Then, there was the Marine Electric.
According to MTL officials, the 38-year-old converted T-2 was lost because she turned
at a crucial moment on her last voyage to aid a fishing vessel named the Theodora.
The Marine Electric and the Theodora first crossed paths on Friday, after the coal
carrier had reached the stormy North Atlantic. All that night and for most of Friday the
big ship had battled 25-foot waves and blizzard conditions with winds gusting at Force 10,
more than 55 miles per hour.
Kelly, Cusick and Dewey watched as the Marine Electric passed well to the east of the
Theodora about 3:30 p.m. The fishing boat was struggling slowly but successfully on a
westbound course toward shore and shelter.
However, a short time later, as the storm intensified, the Theodora began taking on
water. Her pumps could not keep up with the flooding, and the Coast Guard asked the Marine
Electric to turn back to help the Theodora.
Corl, the captain, agreed. But he warned the Coast Guard that the Marine Electric was
also struggling in the seas. In fact, the ship was "hove to" at the time - going
as slowly as she could, maintaining just enough forward motion to avoid falling into the
wave troughs and wallowing helplessly.
Under the circumstances, Corl executed the full 180 degree turn without much trouble,
avoiding being swamped in the troughs, a hazard of such maneuvers. The Marine Electric was
only in the trough briefly - for maybe two or three rolls.
Kelly, outside the deckhouse at the stern, felt no discomfort as the Marine Electric
swung about at 4:10 p.m. Friday. Once the ship was turned, the wind came from astern, and
Kelly, now exposed to the elements, hurried back inside.
Later during supper someone commented on how well the "old man" had handled
the turn.
"Can you see us on radar?" the Theodora asked the Marine Electric by radio at
4:36 p.m.
"Yes," came the reply. "You are 1.2 miles due south of us." The
Marine Electric continued to shadow the Theodora as the fishing vessel, then well off the
Winter Quarter Shoals of Virignia, moved toward shelter.
An hour passed, and the Coast Guard asked the Marine Electric at 4:38 p.m.: ''Can you
stand by until midnight?"
"Well if you want me to stand by . . . ," came the reply from the Marine
Electric. It is believed Corl was speaking: "I'm having problems out here myself in
this . . . weather."
"Marine Electric, if you can, we would like you to stand by as long as
possible," the Coast Guard answered.
It was 6:22 p.m. The lights on the bridge would have been lowered then to enhance
visibility and the reading of instruments.
"I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep this course," came the answer
from the Marine Electric. "I'm taking an awful beating out here. I'm going to be in
trouble myself pretty soon."
Two minutes later the Coast Guard gave the Marine Electric's officers permission to
resume their northward course. A rescue boat was nearing the Theodora. A chopper had
arrived and had lowered a pump to the fishing boat. The captain of the Theodora reported
that his boat was proceeding without any problems and no longer needed the Marine
Electric's assistance.
Sometime during this errand of mercy, MTL executives now theorize, the ship sealed its
own fate.
The ship was in an area spotted with shoals. The water was as shallow as 40 feet and
the vessel, which drew 34, easily could have struck one, the company executives have
testified. Such a grounding would have been virtually unnoticeable as the ship pitched and
bucked in 35-foot waves, said executive vice president H.A. Downing.
A little hole opened and then widened into a long crack that eventually grew into a gap
36 feet long and 7 feet wide, a tear from port to starboard across the hull of the ship,
40 feet back from the bow, company executives theorize.
There is no doubt that the rip is there: Divers have documented it. But did it result
from hitting a sandbar?
Cusick was on the bridge during the turn and the escort of the Theodora. He recalled
nothing that would indicate a grounding. No thumps. No bumps. Nothing. Kelly and Dewey
felt nothing either.
"This is no reflection on the crew or officers," said MTL's Downing, who is a
sea captain himself. "But they are wrong. With waves running 30 to 35 feet, you come
down hard in the water. You could hit sand bottom and never know it."
Cusick, however, has said he would never be convinced of that. He was on the bridge. He
had kept an eye on the charts and depth-readings, he said. And, he noted, the Marine
Electric never came close to the old coal route that ships he had served on used to
follow; a route that was well west of the Theodora's position and close to the shoals.
At no time did the ship enter water shallower than 16 fathoms - 96 feet - according to
Cusick. Moroever, the fishing boat captain, with a fish-finder that recorded depths, said
the Marine Electric never went into water shallower than 110 feet. The Coast Guard's
estimate indicates that at the Marine Electric's closest approach to charted shoals she
was 3 miles from the nearest shoal in water more than 12 fathoms.
It was at that point - 38 degrees 50.2 minutes north; 74 degrees 57.3 minutes west -
that the Coast Guard released the Marine Electric from escort duty.
Theodora captain Jennings Hayward radioed the Marine Electric: "I thank you very
much, old dog, and I really appreciate what you did. . . . Thank you very much and good
luck to you."
The Marine Electric turned back north, with no luck in sight.
Dewey, Cusick and Kelly all thought at the time that the worst of a bad storm had
ended. Kelly was the officer on the bridge until midnight. All seemed routine. Dewey
rested, awaiting the start of his shift at midnight. Cusick was bushed. He turned in.
None had a hint that the turn they made from the Theodora put them on their final
course.
Yet the last two years of the Marine Electric's existence could be seen as a succession
of crucial moments leading squarely to that end. Each voyage the old ship made might well
have ended in disaster that lay just ahead.
An episode two years earlier may have been the last best chance the Coast Guard had to
avert disaster. The worn hatch covers of the old ship were to have been repaired as part
of work scheduled for the Marine Electric at the drydock at the Jacksonville Shipyards
Inc. in January 1981. The hatch- cover work was included on 86 legal-size pages of repair
orders.
Some work on the hatch covers was done. Thirty-one metal patches were welded on to
renew them and reinforce their strength.
But other work on the covers was not done properly.
New gaskets were to have been installed to improve the cover seal against water. But
almost the reverse happened, according to Cusick. The original 59mm gaskets were replaced
by shorter gaskets, he said. The result was an ''ineffective" seal between gasket and
hatch lid.
The hatch covers had been taken off during the drydock inspection for work and were
brought back only the day before the Marine Electric set sail again. When the hatch covers
were placed back on the ship, they were warped, still contained holes and would not open
or close properly.
"The hatches were put on at the last moment, at the last day," Cusick
explained. "We spent the whole night trying to get them to open and close. They were
in much worse condition as far as opening and closing the hatch covers than they were when
we took them off. None of the sealing bars would work, because this particular gasket,
this short gasket, wasn't even reaching in many cases to the sealing bar. Instead of the
gasket itself coming down in the middle of the knife-edge of the gutter, it was missing it
entirely.
"It was very, very fouled up. It was so bad that they got the MacGregor company
down to work on it."
Maxwell S. Graham represented MacGregor Land and Sea, the manufacturer of the hatch
covers. He worked on them beginning March 8 - 12 days after the vessel was cleared and
approved by the U.S. Coast Guard and American Bureau of Shipping inspectors in
Jacksonville. His assessment: "Covers will not open or close correctly. . . . Once
again it is emphasized that the panels are not considered watertight and much work is
required to make them so."
However, on June 8, 1981, the Marine Electric was "certificated" - it
officially received a Coast Guard certificate that stated all was well with the ship. The
hatch covers still had not been repaired or tested for strength or weathertightness by the
Coast Guard or the ABS. In fact, inspectors for both agencies never even looked closely at
the hatch covers. Their inspections were done while the covers were open and stacked like
dominoes so only the surface of the first and last panel in each stack was visible.
More than a year later, Graham was still being called to work on the hatch covers. In
November 1982, he noted that he had found the panels of number 3 hatch in poor condition
during a March 1981 post-drydock visit to the ship. Said Graham in an invoice and
analysis:
"They have deteriorated badly in the interim. At present the coamings (raised
edges of the hatch) have holes in the wheel tracks and are so wasted that there is no
strength left to support the weight of the panels without further distortion. The coaming
compression bar is badly scaled and wasted such that it should be renewed . . .. The top
plates are weak, wasted, buckled and holed in many places . . .. The rubber gasket
channels are of an incorrect size and do not fit correctly to the adjacent panels.
"To compound this problem the side skirts bend inboard and foul the compression
bar. . . . The panels on the remaining hatches appear to be in a similar condition. A
judgment as to the seaworthiness and cargo protection capabilities of these panels must be
examined" according to the ship's classification to fully determine their exact state
"with an eye to the duration of further use (of the covers), if any."
The position of Marine Transport Lines was and is that the ship was in good shape with
sea-tight hatches. "The cargo never got wet," said Thelgie, the fleet
superintendent. He said Graham was simply trying to hawk his wares - not seriously assess
the condition of the ship.
Captain James D. Farnham, the permanent master of the ship, said he felt the hatch
covers were worn but seaworthy. He said he had sailed the ship in seas similar to those
the Marine Electric faced on its final trip, and that they had held up fine.
And Basil Andriopolous, MTL's land-based port engineer, agreed: The ship was in good
shape. The hatch covers were sound. If there were problems with the ship, they were there
only because Richard Powers, the chief engineer, did not report them. And Powers? He could
not answer these questions. He died when the Marine Electric went down.
The MacGregor representative had a slightly different analysis.
"My understanding is that Mr. Thelgie was caught between two positions,"
Graham was to say later. "One was operating within a budget and the other was
operating the vessel."
How could the old ship sail in violation of the regulations that required hatch covers
to be weathertight and able to sustain 210 pounds of pressure per square foot?
The Coast Guard inspector, Lt. James Guidish in Jacksonville, said he never looked at
the hatches. He said he didn't even know how to go about testing the seaworthiness of a
hatch cover and never attempted a test because the owner's representative assured him that
the crew would carry out the tests after the ship left Jacksonville.
The tests were never conducted.
The ABS inspector, Serge V. Simeonidis, said he inspected the hatch covers on the ship
carefully. The problem with that assurance is that he said he inspected the covers on the
ship when the ship had no hatch covers; they were not there during his inspection.
Cusick, who was on the vessel at the time, said no ABS inspector looked at them. The
ABS man said he looked at them last on Feb. 22, 1981, and had looked at them several times
during the week prior to that. In fact, Cusick said, the hatch covers were not returned
until Feb. 23.
Not until November 1982 did the company replace any of the cover panels - and then only
one. The month before the Marine Electric sank, Farnham asked Cusick to sketch the hatch
covers for possible future repair. The sketches detailed many badly worn areas - some up
to 16 feet long by 2 feet wide. There were so many pinholes in the covers that the
daylight came through when they were closed.
The hatch covers were so bad that the deck crews no longer tried to control the rust
with scrubbing and many coats of lead paint. When rust ate through the covers, the crew
just slopped flat black paint over them to cover it.
By the time the Marine Electric went to sea on what would be its last voyage, the hatch
covers had deteriorated even further. They still did not close tightly. Cusick said the
hatch covers were in awful shape.
The deck, too, had some holes in the area between the hatches. Those holes would also
be plugged by the crew with the Red Hand, an expoxy glue. Cusick asked that
"doublers" - big iron patches - be welded on the deck in some places.
Kelly noticed a hole in the deck that had been circled with white chalk. It was only
three inches long and a little less than an inch wide. But it had penetrated the full
depth of the metal deck. The hold below was visible. That hole worried him more than the
one he had found in the hull, he said later.
Those were some of the deficiencies of the Marine Electric. Any inspector aboard would
have to notice them. There were plenty of occasions when inspectors were on board:
In 1981: May 5, 10, 24; June 8, 11; July 1, and Dec. 19 and 31.
In 1982: Jan. 18; Feb. 8; March 21, and Nov. 3.
And the last on Jan. 15, 1983. A notation in the Coast Guard computer says:
''Mid-period inspection. Okay."
The vessel was never stopped.
If there were any consolation in sailing on such a ship during the winter of 1983, it
was that the required bienniel drydock for repairs was not far off. It was scheduled for
February.
But then on Dec. 27, 1982, there was a letter from Thelgie to the Coast Guard
requesting a delay in the drydocking until April 1. He said that New England Power
Company, which was receiving the coal being carried by the ship, had asked that it remain
in service until then.
The power company was to say later that it made no such request in
December, and in fact had a barge lined up to replace the Marine Electric. It also had a
35-day reserve of coal on Feb. 10, the day the Marine Electric left on its final voyage.
But the Coast Guard agreed to the MTL request. The drydock could wait.
Now, all the chances to avert disaster were gone as the Marine Electric left the
Theodora to resume course 040 north about 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11.
The helmsman constantly had to swing hard right rudder to hard left rudder just to keep
the ship on course for what would be the ship's last eight hours.
Kelly was on the 8 p.m.-to-midnight watch - in charge of the bridge as a third mate. He
could hear the Coast Guard cutter and the Theodora exchange radio messages as the fishing
boat headed toward the safety of Chincoteague Passage.
Then he settled in to the peaceful rhythyms of a ship's bridge. All the electronic
equipment was working well. The winds had subsided some - from Force 10 to Force 5 -
though it still was a rotten night at sea. Captain Corl had been up all night. Now, he was
napping in the chartroom behind the bridge on a settee.
The ship was making little progress. Sometimes its speed was a little over a knot. But
at times it was less than 0.3 knots. By midnight, when Kelly's watch ended, the ship had
traveled only 1 1/2 to 2 miles, rolling with the 20-foot waves.
But there was no list or harbinger of disaster. Waves broke across the deck, washing
over the hatch covers - but not breaking on them.
It was almost back to routine now. The Marine Electric had seen worse weather. Other
ships were untroubled. Richard Roberts, the other third mate, relieved Kelly at midnight.
He looked at the chart, and Kelly told him that Corl wanted to be kept posted every
half-hour.
Kelly, exhausted from a day and night of bad weather during which he could not sleep,
turned in and finally slept. Dewey, an able-bodied seaman, took the lookout outside on the
starboard wing, the exposed area projecting to the right of the bridge. Cusick had turned
in an hour before.
Calmly in the mess room, Dewey read a novel after he was relieved, waiting until 2 a.m.
when he was scheduled to take the wheel.
But then, at 1:15 a.m., the handling of the vessel changed.
The bow was sluggish; it was not coming up from the water as much as it had, Roberts
would tell Kelly. It seemed as if the ship was down at the head. Roberts shook the captain
awake.
Dewey took the wheel at 2 a.m. Captain Corl and Roberts puzzled over the bow. They were
certain something was wrong. They tried to call the engine room to start pumping
operations. But the telephones had failed. About 2:45 a.m., a seamen was sent to round up
the other officers and send messages to the engine room. Clearly, something was wrong.
Cusick had been awakened by Corl. "Come up on the bridge, mate," Corl said.
"I believe that we are in trouble. I think she's settling by the head. This may be my
imagination," Corl continued. "With the way the sea is running, I can't really
tell."
Cusick raced to the bridge. He took one look. He ran to get Powers, the chief engineer.
It was apparent: The seas were breaking over the bow.
The seaman who had stirred Kelly told him there were problems. The captain wanted the
officers to report to the bridge, wearing their life jackets.
The third mate washed his face and brushed his teeth. He dressed calmly and
went to the bridge. He stood in the rear, away from the large forward window, to let his
eyes adjust. Then he stepped forward to the window and stared into the storm.
It was his first glimpse of the Marine Electric's fate. The waves that had broken over
the bow earlier now covered the front portion of the vessel. Green water covered hatch
number one and almost all of number two. The waves were breaking on hatch number three and
against the base of the ship's house from which those on the bridge looked out.
The Marine Electric was going down. It was nearly 3 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 12, and the
38-year-old converted World War II-tanker and most of its crew had only hours to live.
Powers, Cusick and Corl decided to call the Coast Guard. At 2:51 a.m., Corl asked for
assistance:
"I am approximately 30 miles from Delaware Bay entrance and I'm going down by the
head. I seem to be taking on water forward. I'm going to try to head for Delaware Bay. . .
. We are positively in bad shape. Positively in bad shape, we need someone to come out and
give us some assistance."
Corl told them that he did not really know what was wrong.
Trying to discover what was happening, the crew shined flashlights from the bridge. But
the beams died in the spray of the waves. Powers ran below to get his big red light with
two handles on it.
He gave it to Kelly and told him to shine it toward the bow. The beam pierced the
storm. Kelly could see the small white doghouse on the bow. It would appear and disappear.
He thought the entire bow was under 6 to 7 feet of water. He could not see the hatches.
Powers came inside and told Kelly he thought the number-one hatch had been stove in.
Kelly still could not see for sure. There was too much water and 400 feet of distance
between the bridge and hatch covers.
Pumping continued. There was a good head of pressure from the starboard wing tanks,
which meant they probably were flooded.
At about 3:30 a.m., Corl told Cusick to ready the lifeboats. The chief mate mustered
his crew on the starboard boat deck. It was as if a routine drill were being held. It went
like clockwork. Farnham had drilled the crew well. They took the covers off the lifeboat,
carefully folding and stowing them.
Cusick believed the covers would be replaced soon, that the crew would be rescued
before they had to use the lifeboats. If we get into trouble, the Coast Guard will come
and get us.
"It was the farthest thing from our mind that what was about to happen would
happen," Cusick said.
On the way to check the lifeboat operation, Kelly stopped where the life rings were
stored and piled them up on the deck. "I don't know why I did it," he would said
later. "I was never trained to do it. Nobody told me to do it. I just did."
Kelly functioned with an automatic sense that amazed him. He freed the EPIRB, the
emergency radio transmitter that sends a continuous SOS. He headed back to the bridge.
There, Dewey, still at the helm, had some steerage, but not much. Corl had ordered a
course change from a northeasterly 040 to 000 - due north. The vessel was traveling at 1.3
knots. Dewey could see and feel the front of the ship continuing to sink slowly.
Did the ship have survior suits? the Coast Guard asked by radio.
No, just life jackets.
Cusick said the lifeboats were swung out over the water but not lowered. He feared they
would be damaged in the heavy seas if lowered as the ship rolled. The inflatable life
rafts had been hauled down to the boat deck in their canisters. They were ready.
About 3:40 a.m. Dewey noticed the Marine Electric was no longer sinking only at the
bow.
It was listing to starboard. By 3:55 a.m. there was a five-degree list. It would
increase to 14 degrees when the ship rolled in the waves. That left the lifeboats only
about five feet above the sea.
They asked the Coast Guard if there were any vessels in the area. Minutes later, Albion
Lane, the radioman, was told there were two merchant ships in the vicinity: The closest
one would reach the Marine Electric at 6 a.m.
There was a sigh of despair from the officers. Everyone knew, Kelly said, that the
Marine Electric would not last until then. They hated the thought of going into the water
in lifeboats.
At 4:07 a.m., the ship shifted more to starboard. A little later, there was a further
shift to 10 degrees.
It was enough for Corl. He radioed the Coast Guard: "I think I'm going to lose my
ship here . . .. We are taking a real bad list to starboard." Then he called the
engine room on the walkie-talkie: "Secure the engine. Stop the engine. Evacuate the
engine room."
Corl told Dewey there was no sense trying to steer. Dewey left the rudder hard to port
and began to leave by the outside passage. Kelly yelled to him. Go down the inside
passage. There was too much list for the outside ladder.
On the radio, Corl told the Coast Guard he was going to abandon ship. Now.
At 4:14 a.m., the Marine Electric broadcast its final radio transmission: ''We are
abandoning ship right now. We are abandoning ship right now."
He put down the radio and reached for a life jacket - the last man to do so.
The whistle blew. The men rushed through their duties, Cusick and Dewey at the
lifeboats, Kelly on the bridge. He paused on one deck and heaved life rings into the black
void.
Then the boat turned.
"It just went like this, it just went like this," Cusick said, moving his
hand in the arc of an inverted "U."
''Shhhhhhweeerrrrrrppppppp." At one instant he was at the forward end of the
lifeboat. A second later he was in the water, clawing and swimming below it.
Cusick passed the porthole of the room where he had been standing. The
lights were still on. He looked in as if in a dream. He swam by it, clawing, swiming,
swimming.
Then he broke the surface and began swimming from the ship, turning onto his back to
catch his breath and rest. Then he would swim again.
He swam for half an hour. Then he found an oar. He hung onto it. The seas would raise
him from the water. He would look back. There were all the strobe
lights of the life jackets winking away. He could hear cries. There were groans from the
darkness.
He thought he saw Powers flashing his light - the tankerman's light. As he came up on
the crest of a wave in the pitch dark, he saw the shape of a lifeboat. Not the one they
had tried to launch, but the other, which had been torn lose from the ship. It was
swamped. Cusick swam for it. It took him half an hour.
Dewey, trapped under the ship, had reversed direction by now and popped to the surface.
He swam on his back away from the ship. He was surrounded by people in the water.
"Help me, help me, " they cried.
Dewey, reaching as he swam, felt a line in the darkness. He turned to look.
On the end of the 10-foot line was a life raft in its canister. He placed his feet
against it. He pulled hard on the rope. The canister popped open and the raft inflated -
and in the process it blew Dewey from the raft.
He swam back. Three other seamen were there. Dewey struggled for 15 to 20 minutes. The
raft had a canopy with the front and back sides open. The sides were high. Finally, Dewey
clambered in.
Another seaman - Dewey, who had been on the ship only 10 days, could not remember his
name - tried to get in. Dewey tried to pull him in. Heavy seas washed over them.
Dewey could not pull him in. The seaman was nearly motionless, frozen by the sea.
Dewey yelled to the other two seamen: Hang onto the life line around the raft.
The second mate, Clayton Babineau, swam over. Dewey could not get him in the raft
either, even with Babineau trying to help. The second mate was in control, though. He was
doing what officers are there for. He commanded.
Put the ladder down, he told Dewey. If Dewey would help him get in, he would help Dewey
get everyone else in.
There was no ladder. Dewey found a cargo net draped over the other side. The seamen
were pleading for help, unable to help themselves.
Follow the line! Dewey told them. Work your way around! A cargo net was draped over the
other side. He yelled and yelled.
And the men worked their way around.
Babineau tried the cargo net.
Even with Dewey's help, he could not get in.
His hands just did not work. He could not grab on top of the raft. The net was flush
there, providing no handhold.
Dewey placed Babineau's numbed hand in the net. He gathered the net so Babineau could
grab it. It didn't work.
Get a foothold in the net! Dewey yelled.
I can't! Babineau cried.
Then Babineau put his feet on the edge of the raft. Dewey pulled the second mate's
knees up over the edge.
But that way, the mate's head was underwater.
Dewey was losing him that way, so they stopped. They had struggled in the cold for half
an hour. Now, Babineau could only try to hang on. He was going to sleep. The cold water
was stealing his energy.
Dewey looked in the raft for something else, anything to help. Was there another
ladder? There were canisters. One was marked "one small oar." Another said
"hot catch rain water." Another said "fishing line."
Then Dewey looked back. Babineau had drifted away.
One of the other seamen struggled to get into the raft. The other two were in shock and
made no effort to get in. They could only cry: "Help me. Help me. Help me."
Then one by one, they all drifted away.
Dewey was alone in the raft.
He shivered convulsively as he sat in the darkness. When he heard helicopters, he
shined his flashlight toward the sound. The chopper did not stop. Dewey was not worried.
He was going to make it.
The chopper circled and came back.
A basket was lowered. He saw a picture showing him how to huddle inside. He just fell
in. Then he was in the helicopter, door open, freezing, shouting above the noise:
"There's no one else in the raft!"
But when Dewey looked down, he could see a man swimming in the water. It was a Navy
diver, James D. McCann.
McCann, in wet suit, snorkel and fins, was finding a lot of dead seamen. But among
them, he was finding men alive.
From the first, Kelly had not been a likely candidate for the rank of survivor. He had
narrowly escaped the fall of the ship's huge stack, thanks to an unknown shipmate's tug on
his collar. He never saw who it was.
In his words:
When I turned around there was nobody there. I think we got separated by the seas. And
it was about a half an hour, maybe a little bit less, that I swam away from the ship. . .
.
Finally, after some time in the water, I came across a life ring, and there were five
other people hanging on. . . .
It was the chief engineer (Richard Powers); the third mate, Richard Roberts; one of the
ordinary seamen, his first name is Harold - I don't know his last name; the day man, Joe,
I don't know his last name; and it was the radio operator, (Sparks Lane), and myself.
We were on the life ring.
Everybody was pretty well stunned. We sounded off so we could find out who was there.
We sounded off by number and came out with six.
And then it was just talking, giving each other encouragement, that we thought daylight
was coming pretty quick. Several times the chief thought we saw a ship in the distance, or
saw lights in the distance when we got to the top of a wave.
The only lights I could see around me were the strobe lights of the life rings, the
water lights, and I could hear people calling all the time, but I couldn't see anybody
else . . ..
And I don't know when I started to notice that people weren't on the life ring.
I noticed that Harold wasn't there at one time.
And then I turned around and the day man wasn't there.
Right after that, I called out to Rich Roberts and I asked him how he was doing. He
responded that he was okay, that he was cold, he was okay.
I don't know how long it was on the life ring before I noticed that the only ones there
were the chief engineer and the radio operator.
He was stiffening up. He kept saying, "I'm cold. I'm cold. Help me."
At that point, I noticed that the chief - the chief - when we went into the water, had
his spotlight and he had been shining it up into the air all this time.
I noticed that he wasn't shining it any more. I thought he might have lost it. So I
whacked him on the back of his life jacket, and there was no response
from the chief. And as I hit him, his flashlight floated away from him, and I was able to
grab that, and use that as my signal.
I never looked at my watch in the water because I was afraid that I would lose my grip
on the ring. So I wasn't concerned with the time element. I kept talking to Sparks. Sparks
was the last one on the ring with me.
The helicopters arrived, and it seemed like I could see them passing over me two or
three times before they spotted us.
When they lowered the basket, I turned to tell Sparks that the basket was here, and
Sparks wasn't on the life ring anymore.
It was just myself.
Kelly had tried to flash the tankerman's red light at boats and ships earlier. But he
could not aim it. He did not have fingers and toes. That is how it felt. He would shiver
for a minute, be still for 10 seconds and then shiver again, repeating the cycle over and
over like convulsions.
When he heard the chopper he tried to point the light straight up. He did not even know
the Coast Guard diver was near him, helping. The chopper looked so close, almost floating
on the crest of the waves. He could reach out and touch it.
Then he was in the basket, heading toward the chopper and he thought:
I should have taken the light. I should have saved Power's light.
On board the chopper, Dewey and Kelly were freezing. Kelly's pants were down around his
knees. He was sobbing uncontrollably, throwing up water and oil. There were three dead men
with them in the helicopter as the crew searched and picked below like a pelican scooping
fish.
One corpse had its eyes open. Kelly took a blanket and pulled it over his own eyes to
keep from looking at the dead man.
Then the copter crew found a lifeboat. They brought a body up. Kelly yelled to Dewey.
"Was that the chief mate?" Dewey could not hear him. Kelly yelled again.
"Was that the chief mate?" Finally, Dewey read his lips.
He wasn't sure. The body was covered with oil. Finally, they could see it was Cusick.
But was he alive, or dead? They could not tell.
When he had reached the swamped lifeboat, Cusick put his hand on the gunwale. Only then
did he let go of the oar and grab hold with his other hand. He paused, then kicked off his
heavy, water-filled rubber boots. His stocking feet found a rail that ran along the
underside of the boat.
He did not struggle. He waited, poised for the right moment. Then it came: A wave
carried the boat and Cusick up together. Then, when the boat started down - Cusick was
still going up - he heaved, shifted his weight and allowed the momentum of the wave to
topple him in.
Cusick sat on a thwart of the swamped boat as it floated only inches above the sea. The
air was freezing cold.
A wave nearly washed him back overboard, so he lowered himself into the water within
the boat and thrashed about to stay warm.
He began to yell: "Lifeboat here! Lifeboat here!"
But no one answered.
So the old chief mate sat in the water and prayed for daylight.
When it came, a Norwegian tanker had also arrived. It was a big one, the Barranger. It
pulled alongside the small lifeboat.
Norwegian seamen dropped a Jacob's ladder down the side and valiantly clambered down to
help. They reached for the American. But the waves were too big.
The captain of the Barranger saw the danger clearly: The waves threatened to smash both
the tiny lifeboat and Cusick against the steel hull of the ship. So the ship pulled back.
Cusick, realizing why, was relieved. Better this way, he thought. There was a better
chance this way.
So the old mate sat in his boat, hanging on now, hanging on, hanging on, . .
Suddenly, the copter whirred overhead. A basket dropped from the sky.
He tumbled in and, as he was being hoisted up, he looked below: The small orange
lifeboat grew smaller and smaller.
Then hands were working on him, pressing on him. Dewey and Kelly watched, still
wondering: Was he alive? Or dead? The Coast Guardsman asked: What month was it? What month
was it?
"February," Cusick finally coughed. Kelly and Dewey knew there was a third
survivor.
A short time later, rescue ships, including the Tropic Sun out of Philadelphia,
approached. Crew members spotted men in life jackets, bobbing about on the sea, and
messmen exuberantly prepared coffee and soup for them.
But as the ships drew closer, it became clear - the men who were left were dead. Their
bodies drifted by the ships in packs, rising and falling with the waves.
Jim Walsh of the Tropic Sun said the dead floated eerily, in relaxed positions. They
reclined, their eyes staring, as if they were in their living rooms watching television.
The Marine Electric stayed afloat belly up for several hours. Then, at 37 degrees 51
minutes north, 74 degrees 51 minutes west, it turned and sank.
NAMES OF SOME OF THE DEAD CREW
John Abrams
Utility
Eric Bodden
Chief cook
Celestino Gomes
Utility
Peter Delatolla
Bosun
Jose Fernandez
Desk utility
Malcolm Graf
Engineman
Robert Harrell
Ordinary seaman
Robert Hern
Ordinary seaman
Charlie Johnson
Able-bodied seaman
Edward Matthews
Able-bodied seaman
Richard Morgan
Wiper
William Mulberry
Engineman
John O'Connell
Ordinary seaman
Jose Quinones
Steward/Baker
Anthony Quirk
Engineman
Thomas Reyes
Utility
Raul Ruiz
Wiper
Norman Sevigny
Able-bodied seaman
David Sheperd
Utility
Ricardo Torres
Able-bodied seaman
Jon B. Wood
Able-bodied seaman |