Big ships, little room for error in channel
Narrow waterway routinely puts vessels on collision course
The warning crackled across radio channel 13. Relief Capt. Tony Marie pulled his foot off the towboat console and tossed aside his cellphone. “Come in there, Voyager,” pilot Jason Charpentier said. “It’s that ship looking at ya.”
Ahead on the Houston Ship Channel, Marie could see the 754-foot vessel Charpentier piloted. Charpentier struggled to control it, steering the boat right as it instead began to point left. The ship traveled quickly, faster than it was supposed to be going.
“Just keep an eye on me,” Charpentier said.
Charpentier navigates ships on the channel for a living. He’d started at sea as a third mate on a chemical tanker. Now he’s one of the 80-some Houston Pilots licensed by the U.S. Coast Guard and required by state law to take over foreign vessels on the complex waterway. He could draw its 52 miles from memory within a pencil-width of accuracy.
Sometimes, Charpentier boarded a ship around the channel’s entrance, matching its speed in a small boat lined with airplane tires and then reaching for a rope ladder. Around 11:45 a.m. that day, Charpentier and a colleague boarded the
Genesis River, a Panama-flagged ship, around Galena Park near the channel’s other end.
Their task May 10, 2019, was to bring the ship back toward the Gulf of Mexico from one of the roughly 200 terminals on the channel’s upper half. These make up the Houston port, where the weight of cargo, chemicals and other products coming in and out make it the busiest port in America.
With any transit, pilots must stay alert. It’s a hard channel for big ships to navigate, and the stakes are high. A significant crash can harm or kill crew members and damage the environment, prompting outside investigations and lawsuits.
The ships have gotten so big that some require two pilots to take turns so they don’t lose focus. Charpentier asked the Genesis River crew to silence the alarms, since they would repeatedly pass other boats closely. He had his own navigation system. The crew put their radar and electronic chart systems on standby.
The other pilot, Craig Holland, steered the Genesis River down the upper channel in Buffalo Bayou. Ships go slower there as they negotiate the docks and traffic. The Genesis River handled poorly and was loaded evenly with liquid butane and propane, potentially making it harder to handle than if it were loaded so the front sat higher.
It reminded Holland of another infamous ship with unpredictable behavior.
Charpentier took over around 2:45 p.m. as they entered the bay. He called for sea speed, typically a top speed and a setting that makes it hard to change speeds quickly. He’d been a pilot for nearly 13 years. He approached an intersection where a turn led from the channel to Bayport and gave directions for a typical maneuver, the “Texas Chicken.”
Pilots use the move because the muddy channel is narrow. They direct the ships straight for each other, then turn when they’re less than a mile apart. This helps them handle hydraulic forces acting between the two vessels and between the vessels and the banks that make it too hard to pass in opposing lanes as cars would do.
The pilots passed smoothly, adjusting slightly because they were passing near the Bayport turn. They chatted about a house fire in Friendswood. But as the Genesis River continued, the channel was shallower than the expected 45 feet. Dredges routinely clean out silt because it can change the hydraulic forces acting on a boat. The Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic Service might otherwise warn a ship about it.
With Charpentier’s warning, Marie knew something might be wrong
Charpentier called to the Genesis River crew for more speed to try to get control. They didn’t activate an emergency override to give it.
The Houston Ship Channel wasn’t built for the Genesis River. It opened in 1914, a boon to Houston after the 1900 hurricane pummeled Galveston. The port became intertwined with the city’s identity. It was periodically made bigger and now is being widened to make room for the 1,200-foot boats that pass through the Panama Canal.
Officials say a bigger channel will be safer. But the events that followed highlight the day-to-day dangers. The 58 ships that the pilots steer on average daily might carry hazardous products. Same with the several hundred tow boats. Twenty-nine collisions have occurred since 2018, some considered “bump and go’s,” when one boat gets sucked alongside another, some much worse.
Marie knew he faced trouble if the Genesis River hit him. His tow, the Voyager, pushed two 300-foot barges side by side. They carried around 50,000 barrels of reformate, a gas blending stock that can catch fire. Marie didn’t want the ship to hit that or the Voyager. He was married. He had three kids. The crew of four could die.
Seconds passed as Marie considered how to avoid a crash. He trained for moments such as these, starting as a deckhand and climbing the ranks for nearly 21 years at Kirby Inland Marine to become a relief captain. He preferred the Voyager, which stretched 70 feet long and had several levels stacked high like a wedding cake. They’d left Texas City that morning for a routine trip to Channelview.
Marie couldn’t stop where he was because another tow was coming behind him. He couldn’t turn right out of the channel because he would hit shallow ground with the barges and the tow would swing toward the ship. He couldn’t keep going because the Genesis River might hit him. But he thought maybe he could cross the channel and get safely to the ship’s other side.
Charpentier reached the same conclusion.
“What do you need me to do?” Marie asked.
“Go to the greens,” Charpentier said, directing him across to the side meant for outbound traffic, lined by green markers.
Marie was moving much slower than Charpentier. He pushed the 1,750 horsepower Voyager into full throttle and turned hard to the left. He rang the alarm to notify crew members, who worked shifts around the clock and slept, rested or exercised during fiveand seven-hour breaks. They put on life jackets. A crew member alerted Capt. John Wheat downstairs on the treadmill.
The two boats were less than a mile apart.
Charpentier issued more orders to the Genesis River crew, cursing. The person who had been steering was in training. He called for someone to get the other pilot, Holland, who was reading a book. Holland grabbed his socks and shoes and ran to his junior colleague.
The master of the ship, Kevin Barnes, was getting up from a nap one deck below when someone knocked on his door. He drank a few Coronas at a pub the night before and got stuck at a Jack-in-the-Box when a storm flooded the roads. He’d returned around 4 a.m. to the ship, for which he had final responsibility.
To Charpentier, it felt like forever before the Voyager started to swing. And, though he was trying to hold the Genesis River steady, he worried the ship would ricochet again.
Marie stood up and drove the Voyager as fast as he could.
Charpentier didn’t think it was fast enough.
“Goddamn, man,” Charpentier radioed over. “Go, Voyager, go, go, go, go.”
They were going to collide. Charpentier ordered a hard right turn into the barge. He didn’t want to hit the Voyager and all those men aboard. A Voyager deckhand ran down to close the door that the captain had opened in the hot engine room when he ran there on the treadmill. The deckhand shut it as water covered the floor by a few inches.
At 3:16 p.m., the ship carved a wedge in the barge’s double hull, nearly cutting the barge in half, spilling the toxic material. Wires that fastened the barges pulled at the boat and then snapped. Marie tried to keep his boat from getting sucked under the ship. The second barge flipped under the water.
Charpentier radioed, “Shut down the channel.”
Epilogue: About 11,276 barrels of reformate spilled into the bay. No one reported injuries. Residents reported petrochemical smells. Fish, shrimp and crabs died. Two-way traffic on the channel didn’t resume for five days.
The National Transportation Safety Board warned that large vessels passing too fast at the Bayport turn have a greater risk of losing control. It also found that moving in the narrow channel at top speed provides little room for error.
It recommended that the Houston Pilots change how Genesis River-type ships are loaded, avoid passing in the ends of the Bayport Flare and avoid passing in large ships at sea speed in the lower ship channel.
The pilots passed new rules to adjust how those ships are loaded and required ships to be able to immediately change speeds but did not implement speed limits.
The Pilot Board Investigation and Recommendation Committee recommended a letter of reprimand for Charpentier and two training courses.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in July found the Genesis River completely at fault.
The pilots and captains are all still employed.