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Posted on Sun, Jul. 11, 2010

Sharing lanes, and risks, on the water

By David O'Reilly and Linda Loyd

Inquirer Staff Writers

A commanding male voice broke through the static hiss on marine radio channel 13.

"Slow it down, Spring Falcon," the Coast Guard ordered a 29,000-ton cargo ship creeping north on the Delaware River's shipping lanes at Penn's Landing.

It was Friday morning, and this stretch of America's fourth-busiest port was virtually shut down. Hours earlier, a victim of last week's fatal accident involving a stalled duck-tour vehicle and a barge had been pulled from the water. Divers were still looking for the second.

A floating crane was poised over the accident site, and all vessels needed permission or a police escort to pass, at minimum speed, between the Walt Whitman and Benjamin Franklin Bridges.

A hint of irritation in his voice, the Spring Falcon's pilot replied to the Coast Guard, "I'm going as slow as possible."

A vessel stalled in the middle of that teeming shipping channel is the stuff of maritime nightmares. It is also a scenario envisioned by a former Coast Guard commandant a decade ago when he barred duck-craft tours from the port.

"I didn't allow it on my watch, because I was concerned about an incident like this possibly happening," said Capt. Gregory F. Adams, superintendent of the Port of Philadelphia from 1998 to 2002.

He had ridden the amphibious sightseeing vehicles in Baltimore, he said. "It's an entirely different operation there. They are in more protected waters outside of commercial navigation areas. Each port is different."

At Penn's Landing, he said, "the whole main channel of the Delaware runs right along the Pennsylvania side of the river. It just didn't seem like a good idea."

Crystal Kneen, a Coast Guard spokeswoman in Philadelphia, said she did not know why Adams' successor, Capt. Jonathan Sarubbi, approved the Ride the Ducks operation in 2003.

"That was seven years ago," she said.

Crashes involving commercial and recreational craft are rare, even though an estimated 2,300 oceangoing vessels on the order of the Spring Falcon enter the Delaware River every year. Only the Ports of New York, Los Angeles-Long Beach, and Houston receive more big-ship calls.

The 104.5-mile stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to Philadelphia is dotted by 41 ship terminals, piers, and port facilities, including three oil refineries. Camden Iron & Metal Inc. exports about a million tons of scrap iron annually on barges on the Delaware.

Dennis Rochford, president of the Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay, shares Adams' concern about duck tours and suggests they find someplace else to cruise.

"I don't think you put a boat like that out there with 30 or 40 people in the navigational channel between Camden and Philadelphia," said Rochford, whose organization serves as a kind of chamber of commerce for the dozens of businesses that use the port.

Mayor Nutter declined to say last week whether Philadelphia would revoke the license of Ride the Ducks Inc. if an inquiry concluded the operation was not safe.

However, he said, in light of the accident, the city was examining general recreational boating off Penn's Landing.

"We're looking not only at this particular incident," the mayor said, "but also at procedures and standards of any company that provides this kind of service."

Lt. Dennis Tully of the New Jersey State Police marine division passed no judgment on the place of duck tours as he patrolled the river Friday. But he pointed out Philadelphia's quirkiness. "It's a linear port," he said as he and two troopers headed under the Walt Whitman Bridge in their 44-foot patrol-and-rescue vessel, the Bertram Zimmerman.

Thirty-five miles north of its mouth at Cape May, Tully explained, the Delaware Bay narrows from about 10 miles to a ribbon just a few thousand yards wide. This is the waterway that flows past Wilmington and Philadelphia to its head of navigation at Trenton.

Zigzagging within that ribbon, past the refineries and bustling docks, flows a far narrower ribbon: the shipping channel, just 400 feet wide at Penn's Landing. It is shared by steel behemoths like the 600-foot Spring Falcon, personal watercraft, tugs, supertankers, powerboats, sailboats, and duck rides.

In the channel just south of the Ben Franklin Bridge, the 250-foot, city-owned barge Resource, driven by the tug Caribbean Sea, hit the immobilized Duck 34 on Wednesday afternoon. Two young passengers - Hungarian tourists ages 16 and 20 - were killed, and 35 others were dumped into the turbid water.

The 31-foot craft was raised from the river bottom about 5:30 p.m. Friday. The second victim was pulled from the water that afternoon.

Adams' decision to bar duck tours came soon after a fatal tour accident on an Arkansas lake in 1999.

"Most of the people couldn't get out of the boat because the overhead canopy blocked their egress," he recalled. "They were confused and disoriented. Thirteen people drowned."

For all the mingling of commercial and recreational craft along the Delaware, however, accidents between them are few, say the New Jersey troopers who patrol it. "We see more accidents at the Shore," said Trooper First Class Tom Muehleisen, on board the Zimmerman.

Most recreational craft on the river are in transit as they pass Center City, and most can steer safely out of the channel.

Collisions between pleasure craft are by far the most common cause of injuries, according to the Coast Guard.

In 2008, the latest year for which statistics are available, 1,237 recreational collisions nationwide led to 60 deaths and 856 injuries.

Floodings and sinkings led to 89 deaths and 179 injuries that year. Collisions with objects left 53 dead and 328 injured, and falls overboard led to 188 deaths and 257 injuries.

From 1999 to 2008, there were 15 fatalities on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey portion of the Delaware, with six of them local. The latest was last month when a woman drowned while swimming off No Name Island near the mouth of the Schuylkill.

"People don't realize how fast the current is," said Trooper Chris Jones, Muehleisen's colleague.

Sharing the river with tugs and tankers takes a watchful eye, said Lori Dillard Rech, past president of the Independence Seaport Museum and past commodore of the nonprofit Liberty Sailing Club.

On most weekdays, the club sails or races 27-foot sailboats just north of the Ben Franklin Bridge on courses that sometimes traverse the shipping channel.

"We're always looking up and down the river, surveying to make sure there aren't any big ships," Rech said. "It's just part of our normal pattern."

Tugs traveling by themselves can and usually do steer away, said Rech, but big ships and tugs pushing barges are far less maneuverable and may need thousands of feet to stop.

"We respect them," she said, "and get out of the way."

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Inquirer staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.

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