U.S. News: Dirty Fuel Eyed in Ship's Loss of Control

"A safety probe into a Baltimore bridge collapse will include whether contaminated fuel played a role in a giant cargo ship losing power and crashing into the span, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Safety investigators hadn't boarded the ship, called the Dali, late Tuesday afternoon while it remained stuck at a pillar of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.

The lights on the Dali began to flicker about an hour after the ship began its voyage early Tuesday. A harbor pilot and assistant reported power issues and a loss of propulsion before the crash, according to a Coast Guard briefing report viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

"The vessel went dead, no steering power and no electronics," said an officer aboard the ship Tuesday. "One of the engines coughed and then stopped. The smell of burned fuel was everywhere in the engine room and it was pitch black." The ship didn't have time to drop anchors to stop drifting, the officer said. Crew members issued a mayday call before the accident.

Blackouts at sea, although uncommon, have long been considered a major accident risk for ships.

One cause is contaminated fuel that can create problems with the ship's main power generators, said Fotis Pagoulatos, a naval architect in Athens. A complete blackout could result in a ship losing propulsion, he said. Smaller generators can kick in but they can't carry all the functions of the main ones and take time to fire up.

The investigation will include reviews of the vessel's operations and safety record as well as those of its owner and operator, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, during a press conference. Crews will look at securing recorders, similar to a plane's black box, from the vessel to better understand what happened.

The agency didn't comment on what issues investigators have uncovered so far in connection with the incident.

"This is a team effort," said Homendy. "There are a lot of entities right now in the command post."

The Dali was built in 2015 by South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries. The ship, which can carry up to 10,000 containers, is an industry workhorse and one of thousands that regularly transit the Panama and Suez Canals. While dwarfed by the biggest containerships, a vessel the Dali's size is typical for U.S. ports on the East Coast. A few days before entering Baltimore's harbor, the ship had stopped in Norfolk, Va.

The ship has had more than 20 port state control inspections -- reviews of foreign ships in national ports -- since it was built, according to data from Equasis, an international shipping database. None of the listed inspections resulted in a detention, which could occur when a ship is deemed unfit to travel.

Deficiencies were noted in two such reviews: one done in Belgium in July 2016 that noted hull damage and another in Chile in June 2023 that reported an issue with the ship's propulsion and auxiliary machinery, Equasis data show. The U.S. Coast Guard completed an examination of the vessel in September 2023 and didn't identify any issues.

On the voyage Tuesday, Singapore-based Synergy Marine Group operated the vessel and it was hauling cargo for Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk. The nearly 1,000-foot-long ship departed from a terminal at the Port of Baltimore and was heading to Sri Lanka. A Singaporean company, Grace Ocean Pte., owns the ship." [1]

All those ideas about the Internet of Things and virtual twins are just beautiful fairy tales. The engine stalled due to bad fuel, the ship went out of control without any warning from the fuel tanks and people died.

1. U.S. News: Dirty Fuel Eyed in Ship's Loss of Control. Paris, Costas.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 27 Mar 2024: A.2.