BALTIMORE — As the Dali slid out of its berth at the Port of Baltimore in the early hours of March 26, it wasn’t alone.

A pair of 5,000-horsepower tugboats guided the massive container ship into the deep channel in the Patapsco River, pointing it toward the Chesapeake Bay as it began its voyage to Sri Lanka. Then, off they went, according to maritime tracking data.

If they’d still been with the ship or close by, the tugs may have averted the ensuing disaster, as the Dali apparently lost power and drifted into a bridge support, toppling the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six road workers, two of whom have yet to be found.

There is no policy requiring tugboats to escort ships like the Dali beneath the Key Bridge, the largest obstacle for a ship navigating the Patapsco outbound into the bay, a bit more than 2 nautical miles from the terminal.

The typical practice for tugboat escorts at the Port of Baltimore, as at many other U.S. ports, is governed by agreements between key stakeholders, rather than formal policy. According to the Maryland Port Administration, decisions are made by ship’s captains and the Maryland pilots who board cargo vessels to guide them into and out of port.

Still, the fact that the Dali didn’t have a tugboat escort until it passed the bridge came as a surprise to some maritime experts.

“It makes no sense that that tug escort would be abandoned before she exited the critical area of the port, which is the bridge,” said maritime attorney Hugh “Skip” Lambert, of New Orleans.

But industry representatives said preventing crashes like the Dali’s cannot be solved simply by throwing extra tugboats at ships moving through ports across the nation, a solution that would be onerous, unnecessary and could drive container traffic away from more restrictive ports.

“It’s not like: ‘Oh, man, maybe we need two more tugs, three more tugs, four more tugs. Well, now nobody’s going to come to your port,” said Jennifer Carpenter, president and CEO of the American Waterways Operators, a trade organization representing the tugboat, towboat and barge industry.

The cost of tug escorts is part of the calculus, said Jeffrey Slesinger, a longtime tug captain who now trains mariners through his company Delphi Maritime, based in Edmonds, Washington.

...continued

©2024 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.