Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Port ten!” said Duane from the captain's chair. He looked like a nicer, nerdier Captain
Kirk.
“Port ten!” came the response. Nothing happened. The deck continued to vibrate with
the power of the engine. Then, six hundred feet in front of us, the nose of the tanker began
creeping to the left.
Hardly any major harbor or channel lets ships enter without a local pilot aboard. The
stakes are simply too high—and the navigation too tricky—to leave it to some guy who
doesn't know the route's every curve and shoal. The pilots meet their charges in open wa-
ter, before the ships enter the channel, and clamber aboard—pirates by invitation. Tanker
captains are more than happy to hand over the controls, as they must.
“We consider ourselves as the buffer, as protection to the environment,” said Tweedel,
staying on message. “The government expects us to act to protect the waterway and the
populace from some radical conflagration or pollution.”
“And the accident in January?” I asked.
“I don't want to talk about that much,” he said. “It's still under investigation.” He told
me there was no single factor the accident could be hung on.
We slid forward through the cold, misty morning, passing from the outer harbor into the
green mouth of the channel. Idle oil platforms lingered against the bank to our left, waiting
for contracts or to be torn apart for scrap. On the navigation table, I had seen a map of the
coast, marked with dozen upon dozen of offshore oil wells, punctuating the Gulf with sur-
prising density. “They're like fleas,” Tweedel had remarked.
Port Arthur's ship channel is not only so narrow that two large tankers going in opposite
directions would have no room to pass each other, but also so shallow that Tweedel de-
scribed it as a “muddy ditch.” He told me that, at the moment, we were drawing thirty-nine
feet. That meant the bottom of the hull was riding thirty-nine feet below the surface of the
channel.
“What's the maximum draft you can have in the channel?” I asked.
He smiled. “Forty.”
“Midship!” shouted Duane.
“Midship!”
The task of piloting a tanker requires continuous attention. “As a pilot, you'd really be
taking a risk to leave the helm for more than a minute or two,” Tweedel said. He pointed at
an oncoming barge. “If he ran aground, I'd have to immediately take action. And I've seen
those guys run aground lots of times.”
“We're compensated for the risk,” said Duane. Piloting paid well.
