Florida Disasters by E. Lynne Wright

Author:E. Lynne Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493028757
Publisher: Globe Pequot

CHAPTER 16 COMMUTE TURNS DEADLY Sunshine Skyway Bridge Is Hit

1980

It was May 9, 1980, just four months after the tragic accident in which the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn sank and twenty-three lives were lost in Tampa Bay. After the salvage operations were completed, normal commerce resumed in the busy port.

Early in the morning, Captain John Lerro left one of the cottages maintained by the Tampa Bay Pilots Association on Egmont Key, and with a pilot trainee, Bruce Atkins, was taken into the bay in a small cruiser to board the vessel, Summit Venture. The freighter, with its Chinese crew, was coming to Tampa to take on 28,000 tons of phosphate rock to haul to Korea. In the light drizzle the two men succeeded in grabbing the slippery rope ladder hanging from the side of the ship and clambered aboard.

They were greeted by the captain of the ship, Captain Liu Hsiung Chu and his helmsman, Wong Sau Ngok, who did not speak English but who would steer the ship, following the directions of Atkins.

Captain John Lerro, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, had piloted 788 ships in or out of Tampa Bay. Atkins had been a licensed ship’s master for Gulf Oil for almost four years before he made the switch to piloting. May 9 would be the last day of the month-long observation period required before becoming a member of the Tampa Bay Pilots Association. Piloting vessels over the 43 miles from the Gulf to the Port of Tampa involves navigating through one of the longest and most hazardous shipping channels in the world, partly because of the shallow water and unpredictable weather, but also because the Sunshine Skyway Bridge was built to connect the shortest distance between two points, which positioned the ship channel diagonally beneath it, providing a much more difficult challenge for pilots. One of the Tampa Bay pilots claimed he and his fellow pilots were the “neurosurgeons of shipping.”

Experience is highly prized by the Tampa Bay Pilots Association, the average man having had almost twenty years on the job. Candidates for the programs are carefully chosen, then endure rugged training and are closely monitored in at least a two-year apprenticeship before they are permitted to maneuver the huge freighters through the bay. For their exacting, difficult, dangerous, and at times nerve-wracking work, pilots earn about $244,000 a year.

At 6:30 that morning, the 580-foot freighter was on course, moving through narrow Mullet Key Channel. With no cargo and nearly empty ballast tanks, the Summit Venture rode high, almost on top of the water. Unexpectedly, the weather began to deteriorate rapidly, until at 7:30 the ship was being pushed around by the sudden squall that struck with explosive high winds. Sheets of rain reduced visibility to zero and rendered the radar almost worthless. It was the worst possible spot to be in when bad weather hit and the bow was no longer visible from the wheelhouse.

They had nearly reached the point where it would be necessary

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