Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Tweedel peered out at the low, misty sky. It was also up to the pilots, he told me, to stop
tanker traffic in the channel if visibility was too poor. Today's conditions were just good
enough.
“It gets foggy for three or four days, and people start screaming for their crude oil,”
he said. If the supply of oil didn't keep up, the refineries might have to lower their pro-
duction—and that would cost them money. There was huge pressure on the pilots to keep
traffic moving.
“We want to support the industry guys,” Tweedel said, “but we don't answer to Motiva
or Total.”
We slid forward, an impossibly great momentum, a floating machine literally as long as
a skyscraper is tall. I looked over at the helmsman. He was holding a semicircular wheel not
unlike the steering wheel of a go-cart. It seemed like it would be very easy, had I wanted,
to shove him aside and twirl that wheel, and create a new round of honest work for nearly
everyone I had met in Port Arthur.
“Starboard twenty,” said Duane.
“Starboard twenty,” said the helmsman.
Starboard? Earth to Duane!
Starboard?
I would have said we needed some port rudder,
if anything.
“Midship,” said Duane.
“Midship,” said the helmsman.
And with that, subtly, our leviathan shifted its attitude and slid true, perfectly congruent
to the grassy shores of the channel.
Duane handed the command off to Tweedel and walked over to the window. I told him
I had been playing a game called Drive a Supertanker, and losing.
“It's more art than science,” he said. “You have to know the science, but there's a feel
you get. If you can't feel the vessel, you won't be good as a pilot.”
He took my notebook and started drawing diagrams, explaining the hydrodynamics of
a large ship moving through a narrow channel. The size of a ship affects how it handles in
such a limited space. As the ship comes closer to the side of the channel, the water being
displaced by the vessel creates pressures and suctions that interact with the narrowing space
between the ship and the bank. The ship begins to handle differently, steering itself, resist-
ing in ways it wouldn't in open water. These effects not only constrain how the vessel can
be piloted, and how quickly, but also allow the person in control to sense the ship's position
in relation to the channel, based on how it's handling.
“A ship is a totally different animal in these channels,” Tweedel offered.
