Published in the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, April 29, 1979
BY WILLIAM C. REMPEL, Times Staff Writer
ABOARD THE SS ARCO JUNEAU -- Three days out of Valdez, bound for Long Beach with nearly 35 million gallons of black Alaskan crude oil, when the storm’s fury struck. The massive oil tanker, suddenly small and vulnerable, was swallowed up by 60-foot white-capped waves and muscled by gale force winds gusting to 83 m.p.h. It was a time to repress memories of all those tanker horror stories, the true sea tales exchanged the night before like campfire ghost stories over coffee in the ship 39’s lounge. Like the one about the Panamanian tanker Grand Zenith that disappeared in a storm off the coast of New England two years ago.
The ship and a crew of 38 vanished without leaving so much as an oil slick. Or the Andros Patria a Greek tanker pounded by heavy seas off the coast of Spain until its hull cracked last New Year 39’s Eve, chasing 34 crewmen and passengers into a lifeboat that capsized with all aboard lost. And more ghost stories: In the Pacific two years ago, the Hawaiian Patriot cracked open during a storm, then exploded and sank. The Chevron Mississippi lost its captain, chief mate and a third crewman, swept overboard into the stormy 34-degree water of the Alaska Gulf five years ago.
Storms are common in the Gulf of Alaska, particularly during the winter when many tanker, crewmen prefer to take their vacations, hoping to miss some of the roughest weather. Some ships captains call the Alaskan route the most rigorous in the world because of the combination of stormy weather, fog and demanding antipollution regulations. This was the Arco Juneau’s 39th Valdez transit, 21 of those trips under Capt. Emery McGowen of Huntington Beach, who now studied the white-capped horizon and shook his head.
“This is about the worst I’ve seen in these waters,” said the 61-year-old veteran of innumerable storms.
We were off the coast of southern Washington at the time, having already crossed the notorious gulf without seeing a single whitecap. The storm had caught both the captain and the National Weather Service by surprise.
Reporter Rempel on deck — before encounter with hurricane-force storm and near-miss with a Seattle-bound freighter.
“Nothing to worry about, though,” drawled McGowen, whose 40-plus years at sea have not rubbed out his Texarkana accent.
“We’ve got a good sea boat here.” He gestured out the bridge windows toward the deck six floors below. As he spoke, a great gray swell rolled up under the bow, pointed it skyward, then lifted all 150,000 tons of ship and cargo as effortlessly as a plastic bathtub toy.
Near the crest the bow plunged into the wave and the deck disappeared under tons of green water and white foam. We dropped with the speed of a roller coaster. A spotlight 50 feet above the water level was washed overboard. Railings snapped and sagged. The heavy gangway, safely stowed mid-deck, was getting mangled beyond use. I searched the faces around me on the bridge for reassurance or any signs of anxiety. One officer stifled a yawn. The captain poured himself another cup of tea without spilling a drop.
The Arco Juneau was slowed to 4 knots (at full speed it does 17 knots) and McGowen ordered a series of course changes to keep the fast-running swells from breaking across the ship’s side, course changes that by late afternoon had us heading for Japan, at least until the waves shifted. “No use fighting Mother Nature,” explained a calm McGowen. “We’ll go slow, follow the seas and wait till she blows over.”
He looked at the reporter and asked: “You weren’t in any hurry, were you?” In 12 hours, time enough to advance south about 200 miles the day before, the Arco Juneau made only 45 miles -- and most of that was in the wrong direction. Eventually, as the wind shifted direction, the ship was brought back around and onto its course for Long Beach.
Then, with the swells running up harmlessly from behind, we rode out the rest of the storm like a big, slow surfboard. At no time during the storm was the 883-foot tanker with its crew of 29 and 115,000 tons of cargo in any danger. In fact, the greatest peril probably arose when the frizzy-haired cabin boy decided to go out with a camera for a snapshot of the mountainous waves from deck level.
He timed his exit out the watertight steel door to be between wave cycles, darting out into the wind blast for a quick shot and then bolting back in ahead of a thundering wave. “Whew! That’s enough to straighten your hair,” he cried above the howling storm.
I was gold that the Arco Juneau did lose a man overboard once in a storm of lesser ferocity. The man was recovered, but one of the lifeboats had to be abandoned when it couldn’t be hoisted out of the water. The lifeboats are, in fact, extremely unpopular with the crew. Most said they would never abandon the tanker for one of the two open lifeboats unless the seas were calm.
“You’ve got a better chance here (in the tanker) than out in that little open tub in the Gulf of Alaska,” said one. “I’ll stay right here and drink coffee till the waters up to my neck,” echoed another.
The Arco Juneau was the first tanker to carry North Slope Alaskan crude from the Valdez oil terminal after it opened in August 1977. Since then neither rain, nor snow, nor hurricane winds have kept the 120,000-deadweight ton (dwt) tanker from transporting more than 1.3 billion gallons of oil to refineries in Washington and California. In that span 60 different tankers have called, some more frequently than others, at the Valdez terminal – some of them as large as 265,000 dwt. Most range in size from 50,000 to 90,000 dwt. (Deadweight tonnage is a tanker’s cargo capacity.)
The Arco Juneau is a regular at Valdez and McGowen shrugged off assertions that the Alaskan tanker run is one of the world’s most demanding. He was bringing tankers into Alaska’s Cook Inlet long before the Valdez terminal opened.
“When the weather’s right, this is the easiest route you can imagine, “ he insisted.
“There’s so little traffic up here. Why, the only cross traffic is around Seattle, the Columbia River and San Francisco. Otherwise, it’s a freeway, an empty freeway most of the time,” the captain said.
The “empty freeway” got a little congested about 300 miles outside of Seattle. A fast freighter bound for Puget Sound out of the Far East was picked up on radar overtaking our tanker on a collision course. It appeared the American freighter intended to use its superior speed to overtake Arco Juneau and pass in front of us from right to left. Attempts to raise the freighter via radiophone to verify its course were, however, unsuccessful until the two ships finally closed to within 3.8 miles. The connection was a relief to the captain.
On a clear day off the coast of California
“Our Digiplot (a collision avoidance radar unit) shows we are on a collision course,” he advised a voice from the other ship before asking: “What is your intention?” The voice from the freighter answered that he would change course to pass behind us.
McGowen and 2nd Mate John Burns watched the Digiplot as it reflected a slightly altered course for the freighter. But it was not enough to avoid coming dangerously close. Big tankers are not sports cars. They do not turn or stop quickly. The Arco Juneau would require more than a mile to stop from full speed ahead. Even while making a turn the supertanker would continue going forward for at least a half mile forward before starting to change direction. The radar unit projected: Four minutes to impact.
“Damn!” boomed the captain as he immediately sounded two long, loud blasts of the ship’s whistle and ordered “hard left rudder!” The emergency maneuver would give the freighter maximum options. The Digiplot showed it approached to within 1.4 miles – close enough to count the container boxes on its deck. The shirt-sleeved McGowen stormed out onto the bridge wing to shake a fist at the passing freighter.
“All the water in the ocean and some idiot is going to run over us in broad daylight,” he raged. When voice from the freighter came over the bridge loudspeaker asking:”What are you doing?”
The tanker was still vibrating from the effects of its sharp rudder angle. McGowen took the phone and listened impatiently as the freighter officer defended the other ship’s action. Capt. McGowan finally cut him off: “I’m not going to argue the rules of the road. All I can say is someone on that vessel is very stupid” He hung up and again stomped out onto the bridge wing, hands on his hips, shirtsleeves flapping in a brisk breeze, to scowl down the freighter now passing harmlessly ahead of him.
Collision avoidance radar such as the Arco Juneau’s is still relatively rare in the world tanker fleet despite the fact that collisions are a leading cause of maritime deaths. One of the most spectacular was the fiery collision of the Venoil and Venpet 17 months ago off the coast of South Africa. The 330,000-dwt sister ships, chartered to Gulf Oil, met in morning fog. Two crewmen died.
More disastrous was the Oswego Guardian and Texanita collision in 1972, also off the coast of South Africa, in which 34 died. The empty Texanita exploded with such force it rocked buildings on shore more than 25 miles away. In a two-month period later that same year 60 people died in four separate tanker-involved collisions.
Valdez must be among the most beautiful sites in the world for an oil terminal, built against a dramatic backdrop of 15,000-foot mountain peaks that ring the fjord-like bay called Valdez Arm. The Arco Juneau had eased away from its Alyeska Terminal berth escorted by two tugboats and a sea otter. The opening into Valdez Narrows was not visible, giving the appearance that the slow-moving tanker was trapped in a land-locked lake. Prince William Sound, through the Narrows, is a wide, gray sea dotted with islands and surrounded by snow-covered mountains and glaciers. Glacial icebergs can be found at times in the tanker traffic lanes, some as large as 50 feet square. As we departed, there were scientists camped on nearby Columbia Glacier studying its threats to future shipping in and out of Valdez. The biggest obstacle we encountered our departure and passage through the Sound was a small whale. The Gulf of Alaska was just a gentle, green pond. The Arco Juneau steamed through it at 16.5 knots, consuming fuel at the rate of 90 gallons per mile at a cost of about $10,000 a day.
The ship’s cargo this trip will produce, among many other petroleum products, about 15 million gallons of gasoline. Most crew members on the supertanker scoffed at talk about fuel shortages. Of course, they are sitting on crude oil enough to refine 15 million gallons of gasoline. But like everyone else, they complained about gas prices. “The oil companies are going to make a killing. They’d better be ready to share those profits with their employes,” said one deckhand to nods of approval from other crewmen.
Tanker crewmen are, by shoreside standards, well paid. An ordinary seaman with limited experience can earn more than $20,000 a year along with at least four months of paid vacation. Experienced officers and licensed engineers can earn $40,000 and much more, with five to six months off. There are aspects of a sailor’s life, however, that can diminish the attractiveness of that pay. There is the problem of isolation and loneliness that can give rise to depression and sometimes suicide. A typical sailor suicide is an evening stroll into the sea. Prolonged isolation can also contribute to other forms of emotional distress and to alcoholism.
On another American tanker a crewman awoke one night believing he heard his wife calling from an imaginary boat alongside. Fellow crewmen couldn’t restrain him, and the man plunged over the side, leaving his wife a widow. Liquor is not allowed on the Arco Juneau, unlike many foreign tankers where wine is routinely served with meals. That doesn’t mean I didn’t hear stories about drunken sailors on the Arco Juneau, too. Like the one about the crewman dashing back to the ship minutes before sailing time after a big night on the town in Valdez. He wound up boarding the wrong tanker and delaying the departure of his ship.
Since entering the Alaska oil trade, the Arco Juneau has not been required to take extended voyages of several months. The ship’s crew is seldom at sea more than a week between ports. In good weather, the run between Long Beach and Alaska takes only five days. But handling hazardous cargo keeps safety concerns part of on-the-job stress.Fires and explosions are the leading cause of tanker casualties. “It’s something that’s never far from your mind,” conceded a sailor alone one night on the bridge wing. “I saw the remains of one once back East. I’ll never forget it.”
A fully loaded tanker is less likely to explode than an empty ship. The oil itself is not explosive, but the hydrocarbon vapors it emits can be ignited by a heat source as insignificant as an exposed flashlight bulb. Oil residue in an empty tank gives off enough explosive vapors to destroy a supertanker. That’s why so many tankers are being equipped with inert gas systems. On the Arco Juneau that system pipes boiler exhaust into the tanks, thereby keeping the oxygen level below combustible limits. Such a system could have prevented the disastrous Sansinena explosion in Los Angeles Harbor in 1976, or the spectacular eruption of the Betelgeuse last January in Bantry Bay, Ireland, that killed 50. And there are many who believe inert gas also would make loaded tankers safer.
The Santa Barbara Channel is full of small boats on Easter Sunday, our seventh and last day at sea. The storm and our extended diversion toward Japan had added more than 24 hours to the voyage. Now the boat traffic was keeping officers of the bridge on edge. A light fog also hampered visibility. An officer at one radar unit announced the location of vessel traffic ahead and on either side of the tanker. Capt. McGowen, binoculars at his eyes, scanned the horizon. “Sometimes you come through here and the traffic just about scares you to death,” he said without putting down the glasses.”Especially when you get some of these little sailboats that radar can’t find,” he added, pointing ahead a few miles. He wants all boats to have radar deflectors.
Outside the bridge, preparations for docking are all but complete -- ropes ready, fire equipment set, maneuvering systems tested and checked. Below decks, it’s a time to wait. The mood on the ship has changed as we neared home port. A certain zaniness is evident among the crew.
The sailors have a name for it: “channel fever.”
“Everyone gets a little crazy about this time,” explained one crew member. “Instead of sleeping they walk the deck. Everyone wants to get home.”
“That’s right,” added another. “When I roll over tonight, I don’t want to bump into a cold bulkhead.”
There will be three nights on shore for the crew before the Arco Juneau sets out on its 40th voyage to Valdez. That’s just time enough to repair the weather damage to the ship, and to cure the crew’s channel fever.
