Tanker Crewmen Were Helpless Against Spill

Eric Bush is only 19, but as a deckhand on the American Trader he has helped set the tanker’s 12-ton anchor dozens of times.

There was nothing special about the mooring last Wednesday, he thought.

As the ship’s port anchor plunged into the water just before sunset, Bush said the crew talked about the sea lions barking from the white mooring barrels.

Then came a jolt, “like nothing I had ever felt before,” Bush said. “It was weird.”

The three men working on the bow felt it, but some of the ship’s 30 or so other crew members, who were reading magazines or resting in their bunks, said they never noticed a thing.

Maybe the tanker had struck a mud bank, one deckhand said to another as they continued with the mooring procedures.

About three minutes later, Bush said, they felt another jolt and an unsettling call was made to the bridge. Peering over the ship’s side, Bush saw a film of oil on the water’s surface. Even then, it looked as if it could be hydraulic fluid from some of the ship’s machinery, he said.

Moments later, Bush said, the ocean turned into a bubbling fury, with crude oil blasting from the impaled hull so fast that it looked “like boiling black tar.”

Bush said his first thought was, “Valdez.”

The scene on board the American Trader at the moment its anchor apparently punched two holes in the hull was described by some of the crew members for the first time Tuesday as they stepped ashore at Arco Berth No. 78 in Long Beach.

Bush said it took about four hours for about 400,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil to bleed from the ship’s forward hold.

The scene was not one of calamity or panic, the crew said. It was more like a troubling thud followed by crew members’ sinking realization of the accident and their helplessness.

The common theme in the recollections was disbelief. The tanker had an expert crew and the conditions--with only a slight ocean swell--were normal. Even in re-creating the incident in their minds over and over again during the five days since the spill, they said, they could not pinpoint what went wrong.

Bush, who operated the anchors under orders from an officer, said the tanker’s port anchor had reached bottom and was only about 13 feet below the ship’s hull.

He said crew members were preparing to set a second bow anchor from the starboard side when they heard a sickening thud. It is likely, the crew and experts agreed, that the ship floated over top of the port anchor, and that as the tanker dipped over an ocean swell, the steel hull dropped onto the anchor.

However, an official representing the ship’s owner said, “We honestly don’t know for sure what happened.”

Bush, who lives in Seattle, said, “We did everything right, just the same thing we always do. People are mad about it and sad about it, but it was just an accident. You think it can’t happen to you. But it was just like a freak accident.”

Fred Williams, a food steward who was called from his cabin by the commotion, said, “I ran to the side and I saw the water bubbling. This guy said, ‘Oh, oh, we’ve got an oil spill; we hit something down there.’ ”

Another sailor, who, like others, requested anonymity, recalled, “I was in my bunk, and then I heard that the Coast Guard was on its way. That’s automatically trouble--a spill,” he said. “ . . . It was a long night from there on, a long night.”

The crew said the Coast Guard responded within about half an hour after the spill began, adding, “They did a good job.”

The crew also said the first arrival at the stricken vessel was a KNBC news helicopter.

Some of the crew said they grew to hate the helicopters as their ship became a national spectacle, as if they were fish in a bowl. And some said they were struggling, personally, with the image they saw when they ran to television screens on the ship and saw their tanker blamed for horrific destruction.

To spoil a scenic coastline was just as painful for them, if not more so, because it was their love of the ocean that drew them into their careers, one crewman said.

“One misconception that’s been brought out by the Exxon Valdez” is that tanker crews are indifferent to the environment, the crewman said. “It’s our livelihood, it’s the reason a lot of people go into this business--because of the love of the water.”

“It’s been pretty tough on everyone,” said another crewman. “Everybody’s had to deal with it.”

Williams, a crewman from Portland, Ore., who has been aboard the American Trader for three months, said he was reading a magazine in his bunk and drinking a can of Orange Crush soda while the ship was being moored off Huntington Beach.

He said that he is superstitious and that he knew something was about to go wrong when, after he had set the magazine and can of soda down, the ship tipped and the magazine slid under the soda can without knocking it over.

“It was crazy, it could never happen again,” he said. “I know it’s superstition, but I believe it.”

Less than an hour later, Williams said he was called outside to see the spill.

Bush said he joined the shipping business to earn money so he could go to a film school.

After describing the pressure and strained life aboard the American Trader during the last few days, he said, “I think I’m ready to go now. This is not me.”