7 sailors found dead in warship
YOKOSUKA, JAPAN— The US Navy on Sunday ended its search for seven sailors missing after their destroyer collided with a container ship off Japan after bodies were found in the ship’s flooded compartments. Most of the 300 crew members were asleep when the collision happened at 2:20 a.m. on Saturday. A machinery room and two berthing areas were severely damaged.
YOKOSUKA, JAPAN— The search for seven US Navy sailors missing after their destroyer collided with a container ship off Japan was called off on Sunday after several bodies were found in the ship’s flooded compartments, including sleeping quarters.
Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, described the damage and flooding as extensive, including a big puncture under the waterline.
According to Aucoin, the crew had to fight to keep the ship afloat, and the ship’s captain was fortunate to have survived.
“The damage was significant, this was not a small collision,” he said.
Navy divers found a number of bodies in the ship on Sunday, a day after it returned to the 7th Fleet’s home base in Yokosuka, with the help of tug boats.
Aucoin, speaking at a news conference at the base, wouldn’t say how many bodies were recovered, pending notification of next of kin.
He said most of the 300 crew members were asleep when the collision happened at 2:20 a.m. on Saturday, and that one machinery room and two berthing areas for 116 crew members were severely damaged.
“You can’t see most of the damage, the damage is mostly underneath the waterline, and it’s a large gash near the keel of the ship,” Aucoin said.
“So the water flow was tremendous, and so there wasn’t a lot of time in those spaces that were open to the sea. And as you can see now the ship is still listing, so they had to fight the ship to keep it above the surface. It was traumatic,” he added.
‘Lucky to be alive’
The Fitzgerald’s captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, was airlifted from the ship’s deck after daybreak on Saturday to the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka with a head injury. Two other crew members suffered cuts and bruises and were also flown out by helicopter.
“His cabin was destroyed, he is lucky to be alive,” Aucoin said of Benson.
The container ship ACX Crystal measures 222 meters (730 feet) long, 61 meters longer than the Fitzgerald’s. The container ship weighs 29,060 tons and with its load of shipping containers, would weigh several times as much as the 8,315-ton destroyer.
The container ship’s left bow was dented and scraped, but it did not appear to have sustained any major structural damage.
All of the ACX Crystal’s 20member Filipino crew were safe, according to Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen K.K., which operates the Philippine-flagged ship.
Case of possible negligence
The Japanese Coast Guard, who questioned crew members of the ACX Crystal, is treating the incident as a case of possible professional negligence.
Conditions were clear at the time of the collision, although the shipping lane where the collision occurred is a congested one, with about 400 vessels passing through each day.
Aucoin wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the collision, which occurred about 96 kilometers (60 miles) off the coast. He said he would order a full and thorough investigation.
Crystal had right of way
The Crystal rammed nose first into the Fitzgerald’s starboard, or right side, on a clear night. Photographs showed the side of the Fitzgerald caved in about a third of the way back.
Under international maritime rules, a vessel is supposed to give way to another one on its starboard side, and the damage indicates that the Crystal was to the Fitzgerald’s starboard, and therefore had the right of way.
But maritime experts cautioned that many other factors could have led to the crash. Marine traffic records show the Crystal made a series of sharp turns about 25 minutes before the collision, which in crowded seas could cause a cascade of maneuvers by other vessels.
“Those are very high-traffic density areas near coastal waters,” said Bill Doherty, a ship safety investigator and auditor with a long career of service on naval warships. “When a big ship like that makes a drastic change in a high-traffic area, that has to be explained.”
Fitzgerald may be at fault
Sean P. Tortora, a veteran merchant marine captain and consultant who said he had sailed through the area of the collision many times, said that evidence suggested the Fitzgerald was at fault.
Tortora described the collision as a “T-bone” in which the bow of the Crystal hit the starboard side of the Fitzgerald. “From what I’ve seen, the Fitzgerald should have given way and passed to the stern of the container ship,” he said.
A former director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s office of marine safety, Marjorie Murtagh Cooke said it could take a year or more to determine what happened.
“Was all of their equipment working? Was one vessel at anchor and the other moving? There are just so many facts that we don’t have yet,” Cooke said.
The Fitzgerald, an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer, recently participated in military exercises with two American aircraft carriers and ships from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.
The Crystal was heading toward Tokyo at the time of the collision, after making a stop on Friday at Nagoya.