Mother: Son tried to save shipmates
Container ship struck destroyer while most of crew was asleep
YOKOSUKA, Japan — The mother of a U.S. Navy sailor who survived a direct hit to his sleeping berth during a collision at sea said her son kept diving, trying to save his shipmates until the flooded berth began running out of air pockets, while others — believing the ship was under attack — hurried to man the guns.
Mia Sykes of Raleigh, N.C., said Sunday that her son, Brayden Harden, 19, was knocked out of his bunk by the impact, and water immediately began filling the berth, after their destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship four times its size off the Japanese coast.
The ships collided about 2:20 a.m. Saturday, when the Navy said most of the 300 sailors on board were sleeping, and authorities have declined to speculate on a cause while the crash remains under investigation.
Sykes says her son said that the men sleeping on bunks above and below him died, while three died in the berth above his.
Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet, also described a harrowing scene as other sailors fought to keep the ship from sinking. Most of the damage is below the waterline, including a large gash near the keel, Aucoin said.
The Navy called off the search for seven missing sailors Sunday after divers found a number of bodies in the ship’s flooded compartments, including sleeping quarters, Aucoin said at a news conference at the 7th Fleet’s home base in Yokosuka, Japan. He wouldn’t say how many bodies were recovered, pending notification of next of kin.
He said one machinery room and two berthing areas for 116 crew members were severely damaged from what he called a significant impact to its side. The destroyer returned to Yokosuka on Saturday evening with the help of tug boats.
The victims might have been killed by the impact of the collision or drowned in the flooding, said Navy spokesman Lt. Paul Newell. “The damage was significant,” he said. “This was not a small collision.”
The Fitzgerald’s captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, was airlifted from the ship’s deck after daybreak Saturday to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka with a head injury. Two other crew members suffered cuts and bruises and were also flown out by helicopter.
Aucoin wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the collision. Conditions were clear at the time of the collision, though the area is particularly busy with sea traffic.
The damage to the destroyer suggests that the container ship, the ACX Crystal, might have slammed into it at high speed, raising questions about communication between the two vessels in an area that as many as 400 ships pass through every day, according to Japan’s coast guard. Most congestion occurs in the early hours of the day, and fast currents make it a tricky area that requires experience and skill to navigate.
The ACX Crystal weighs 29,060 tons and is 730 feet long, much larger than 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 when it was docked in the Tokyo bay late Saturday.
But on Sunday, a group of accident investigators from the Japanese transport ministry found damage to the container ship that had been hidden under the waterline when it arrived in Tokyo the previous night. Footage from Japanese broadcaster NHK showed a sharp horizontal cut across the bow area.