TaiPing News Conference

Today at 10 AM there was a news conference with four of the crew rescued after the Princess TaiPing was run down by a chemical tanker a day out from the completion of their voyage to the USA and back. The following is an account of what I remember from the conference. I am confident that they reported things as they saw them and I think I can explain some of the baffling inconsistencies that I was reading in the press.

The top photograph is of the four survivors. I know John on the left, Lars third from the left, and Jason on the right.

The TaiPing was making about 2 kt course 240 in a gale in a busy shipping lane about 40 nm from home. She had navigation lights at her port, starboard, and stern – none at the mast. They had “passive” AIS which means that they could see the shipping with AIS but the shipping could not see them. They had a radar reflector which earlier experiments indicated was effective at about 8 nm out.

The ship was spotted over an hour before the collision. She was off the TaiPing's port bow and her lighting and AIS indicated that she would pass about 1.5 nm to the stern of the TaiPing. The ship must have made a subtle turn because the crew on watch became concerned enough to wake Capt. Nelson who communicated with the ship via VHF radio. Nelson told them that they were on a collision course. Lars said that the ship did not seem to believe them and in a confusing reply instructed the TaiPing to say on their starboard side – except that the TaiPing was on their port side. The crew had a spotlight on the sails and someone at the bow was shining a spotlight on the tanker. A few minutes later the tanker struck the TaiPing.

Everybody was at the stern except the one crewman who was at the bow. This is credible because in rough weather everybody tended to crowd at the stern where the shelter, warmth, and food was. Jason told me afterward that he was down below sleeping just before the impact. He got out of his bunk, stood up to go out of the hatch, and the ship struck. I told him that he represented the real miracle of the affair. I've seen that cramped crew area and it was a natural trap. (Hugh got actually locked in there once and somebody had to lift the hatch for him.)

One crewman was hurled against the side of the tanker, wound up in the water, and somehow survived the suction of the tanker's screws. (His life jacket probably saved him.) He is the one who was seriously hurt: concussion and a cracked vertebra in his neck. The crew remained with the remnants of the stern which had lost its cabin and was steadily falling apart. Only the crew on watch were wearing life jackets. John, the oldest member of the crew, spotted the person who had been slammed against the hull brought him to what was left of the TaiPing, and held him for over 1.5 hours. He is also credited with having the presence of mind of finding a rope and tying it around the hulk, which from photographs looks like a wooden life raft with no bottom. This rope was to be of great assistance in helping the crew to cling to the wreckage.

As the wreckage broke up things started to float up. Enough life jackets popped up out of the water to accommodate the remaining crew. The crew mate in the bow had been separated and everyone feared the worst for him. Then they got lucky: the EPIRB floated up. That is what saved their lives. The signal was picked up in Hawaii who immediately notified Taiwan.

They saw the chopper coming after dawn and of course went wild with joy. John got as high as he could wearing something bright and waved something colorful. Just then part of the clothing of the sea god that had sailed with the ship floated up and he put that on his head. This is considered a good omen and this afternoon all with go to the Chinese temple to give their thanks. But the chopper stopped moving toward them and started to hover. Then they saw a body being winched up and they could only hope that their mate was alive. (He was. He actually tried to hoist what remained of the sail to sail the bow into port!) It took a while but they were eventually winched up by two choppers while a Taiwanese coast guard boat stood by.

The company and crew of the tanker have given contradictory stories which will be easily refuted by hard evidence (e.g. recordings of communications and radar). One of the TaiPing crew says that he made eye contact with someone on the tanker as they were being sliced in half. There will be some litigation. Lars says that they are interested in accountability and enough of a penalty to send a message to other shipping companies that abandoning survivors at sea is to be avoided at all costs. I told him that I didn't like their chances because this sort of thing has happened before and the offenders always seem to escape through the nooks and crannies of legal jurisdiction and high-priced lawyers. I told him that it sounded to me like the people on the bridge were real turkeys – perhaps the 3rd-string trainees too timid to wake up the officers. I told him that I've been more fortunate with my encounters: good and clear communication and negotiated course adjustments. I told him about the ship in the Gulf of St Vincent to executed a 360 degree turn just as we were about to tack to avoid a collision. (We were more than one mile apart.)

The fellow with the broken neck vertebra is not out of the woods. From what I can make out there is a jagged piece threatening one of the two aortas running up his neck. They need to operate but it will be an extremely delicate operation.

The other photograph includes the member of the Coast Guard who picked up the TaiPing's EPIRB signal and immediately with no delay whatsoever notified Taiwan. They were grateful for this because 15 or 30 minutes of dithering could have cost lives. (Lars said that the injured crew mate was purple when they got rescued and would not have lasted one more hour in the water.)

From what I heard today I believe that the tanker really was confused and really did think that the TaiPing was at their starboard. It would be logical that they would then swung to port to give the TaiPing a wider berth and came down on top of them.

The EPIRB, by the way, was on board only because John, who joined the TaiPing here in Honolulu, borrowed one from a friend just before they set off. The junk was equipped with adequate life jackets because of the work that Hugh Morrow did in the background here in Honolulu to have Nelson persuaded to get the new life jackets. The TaiPing had sailed from China to the US mainland and back to Hawaii with no EPIRB and some pretty crappy Chinese-made life jackets. There was a life raft of sorts but it was so far down in one of the holds that it was useless in a fast-developing emergency.