Westkust Stranding

On Saturday morning, February 23rd, just before dawn, the Westkust, a freight ship under charter to Dow Chemical Co., carrying sacks of polyethylene pellets, went aground at Northern Two Cayes, at the northern end of Lighthouse Reef, one of two outer reefs, about 60 miles east of Belize City. At the time, the captain had his sextant in hand, waiting for a squall to stop, hoping to catch a star for his morning sight. He saw a rock move past on his starboard side and by then it was too late. He was hard aground.

This is a graveyard for ships. Six have gone on in the same place since Hurricane Hattie and only two (including this) have come off. There is a very strong northwesterly set that causes several near misses annually; it is somewhat unpredictable. The light on the reef hasn’t worked in months; the government has not notified the Admiralty so that it can issue the standard Advice to Mariners, and therefore ships unfamiliar with the area expect to see a light. The reef itself is shown on charts in an approximate location. I believe I understood the ship’s Master, Captain Thomas Dickson, to say that he was about 20 miles north and 20 miles west of his expected position when he went aground.

 

Mike Williams, the United Brands manager, picked up the ship’s radio call and passed it on to Bucher. At the owners’ request, Bucher sent his tug, El Torito, out to assist in re-floating the vessel. Using tug and ship’s engines they were not able to move her, so arrangements were made to sent a barge out to lighten the ship. At this time, the salvage appeared a simple matter of taking off some 150 tons and easing her off the dead coral.

However, before the barge could reach the reef, the weather worsened. They had managed to discharge some 2,000 sacks when, at about 7:30 at night on Monday (February 25th), the Master ordered the barge away because she was heaving so in the seas that they were in danger of damaging each other. We were listening on the radio and Bucher instructed his tug to take the barge and make for safe anchorage at Dog Flea Caye, some ten miles west at the northwestern-most point of Turneffe Reef.

 

We arranged with the Mike to keep radio watches with the Master, with Mike taking the pre-midnight watch and our doing the rest. We slept with the radio and lights on. At two in the morning the storm was increasing but the ship, well ballasted down, appeared secure. We awoke on Tuesday morning (February 26th) ahead of our 5:00 am radio contact to hear the Master sending a May Day.

A front had moved through at about 4:20; a big wave had literally picked the vessel up, swung her bow 120 degrees to port, and slammed her down broadside to the reef. They were taking “white water” the full length of the ship.

At the same time, the barge broke loose from El Torito, which still had not reached Turneffe, having been hove to through the night because of the heavy seas. Bucher ordered his men to stop trying to find the barge and to make for secure anchorage as quickly as possible.

(And as the Norther come through, some miles to the east, a large container ship en route from Honduras to Miami had two containers washed overboard and they were heavily lashed down.)

We stayed on the radio, of course. Captain Dickson said that he had his entire crew in the deck-house. The water was causing intermittent power failures and he was afraid he would lose communications. He wanted his crew removed (if and when possible) but said he would stay with his ship.

The Caribbean Enterprise, a small container ship, was only a few miles south and proceeded directly to the Westkust. Bucher went out to see what he could do to help and I manned the radio. The weather continued so severe that Captain Dickson had the Enterprise proceed on her way since there was no possibility of her offering any physical assistance at the time. However, they had a good chat, which probably was reassuring.

Captain Dickson endeared himself to us very quickly. He was Scots, very quiet, very slow-speaking, very much in command. Only periodic thickening of his brogue indicated stress.

The Comptroller of Customs sent the army helicopter out to the stranded ship. The Master said later none of them could believe it when the soldier was lowered to the deck, but it was most reassuring for them all. At that time there was no chance of getting a boat close to them or of launching a lifeboat. The wind continued gale force; seas were breaking the full length of the vessel; and the northerly swells were increasing. The helicopter made no attempt to remove anyone (which would not have been practical at the time).

Tuesday night was very bad. Mike and we shared radio watch and talked to the captain every hour. It was poor help, but with a ship grinding on the coral, even a distant voice is reassuring. The barometer dropped; the ship pounded increasingly. However, by daylight it was apparent that there still was no serious holing and the ship was not taking on water. There were no oil slicks visible (which would have indicated holing). The weather began moderating. As the spray and weather cleared, the Master was able to see his situation—virtually no water at all to starboard, coral heads along the side, but reasonable water to port.

 

Around 7:30 Wednesday (February 27th) morning, Bucher checked with his tug and asked them to proceed slowly back to Lighthouse Reef to stand by the Westkust. Around noon they were anchored inside the reef about 100 feet off the stranded ship’s bow. That afternoon two of the tug’s crew walked across the reef towing a light skiff and went aboard the Westkust, leaving the skiff there. I feel sure none of the ship’s crew had a clue that it was possible simply to walk away from their ship, and the combination of that knowledge and the fact that the tug was anchored close to them settled them all down. There no longer was any talk of leaving the ship. The weather was easing though the swells still were heavy. In his meticulous manner Captain Dickson reported, “The danger is past.”

Meanwhile, Ford Young had flown two air searches for our missing barge. He failed to find it on the Tuesday afternoon but got some spectacular color photos of the waves breaking over the Westkust. Wednesday morning he found the barge just inside the north end of Glover’s Reef, another outer reef some 35 miles south. The cargo appeared intact; our tarpaulins were blown aside but still aboard; and the towline was drifting astern.

Two salvage operations began, the ship and the lost barge. The main one, of course, was the ship; that operation took two weeks, involved several boats, barges, divers.

On Thursday (February 28th), the first day it was possible to work, Bucher went out to the ship with David Gegg in David’s dive boat, Carib Gypsy, arriving late that afternoon. Bucher and David dived early Friday (March 1) morning to evaluate damage and, more important, the lie of the ship so that Bucher could figure out how to try to get her off the reef. As he explained, you want to find out how she got there and bring her off the same way, since you know it can be done.

 

Rapid discharge was important from one particular hold, since it was known to have a hole (in the side, not in the ship’s bottom). The stevedores worked inside and divers had to break the coral away from the sides of the ship to examine the hull. They located a 3" by 6" hole.

Bucher gave me the specifications for his patching material by radio at 5:00 one morning…plates and angle iron, drilled to certain specs that weren’t easy to describe over the air to someone who hadn’t a clue how they were supposed to work. I relayed the message to the Lloyd’s agent who also works for the company that was to make the things.

We held the little supply boat while the patches were made; they were delivered before noon the same day and were at the reef late in the afternoon. They were installed the next day and then the hold was pumped. Those patches held, not only into Belize, but until the ship reached dry-dock in Tampa about two weeks later.

Once that main patch had been attended to, it was a matter of finishing the discharge. The ship was discharged to, quite literally, the last polyethylene pellet, swept up by the last stevedore and dumped overboard. Approximately 60% of the cargo was saved and brought into Belize City. It was a slow, frustrating business, fighting weather, delays, inexperienced men. I will quote from part of Bucher’s report:

The tug had to launch a skiff, go to the ship’s side, pick up a heaving line, and take it to the barge. The stevedores then would haul a towline from the ship. The ship would heave the barge in alongside by her towline while El Torito slacked off on her line to ease the barge in through the swells until she was in position. This procedure was necessary due to the fact that our ground tackle (anchors and anchor lines) was so positioned and the ground swells were such (3′ to 5′ during most of the operation) that we were unable to maneuver the barge alongside with the tug. Consequently, the tug had to stay at anchor and tend the barge’s breast-line on her capstan, heaving in or slackening off as necessary to keep the barge about three feet off the vessel’s side and prevent heavy pounding.

The discharge itself was tedious and dangerous. The cargo had to be broken from its pallets and handled by individual sacks, loaded into cargo nets, taken over the side, and safely secured on the heaving barge. When a barge was full, it was taken inside the reef where the cargo was removed and placed in the hold of a small coaster that later took it into Belize City to be stored in the Customs shed. Bucher says that the loss and damage came first from a hole in one hold that wet some bags and second from the excessive handling. The cargo itself was impervious; the bags couldn’t take the repeated movement.

Later Bucher’s report says:

This business of taking the barges through under these conditions was, in itself, quite a feat, and I was very proud of our tugboat crew. As you can appreciate, with a following 3′ to 5′ swell, taking a barge through the reef with no marker lights at night and having barely ten feet to spare on either side, had to be done at full speed. It was jolly good sport until they reached the inner part of the reef. Then they were in a lovely, big basin with plenty of water.

 

The night that they got the last cargo off, the highest tide was around midnight. I listened to them over the radio, heard them pull the bow around as Bucher wanted, and heard him order the tug to pull at a heading of 030 at half speed through the night.

According to Capt. Dickson later, he was up around four in the morning getting coffee when the Westkust slid into deep water so smoothly that he didn’t realize she was going until he saw the lights of the coaster anchored inside the reef swing across his deck-house screen. Through the night she had worked in her coral bed and the strain from El Torito was enough to ease her free. Of course, there was a mad rush then to cut anchor lines, stop the tug, etc., to prevent new damage.

As soon as it was light, they had divers overboard to inspect the propeller and rudder, then they cranked up and started for Belize under their own power. They anchored around 3 that afternoon and Bucher-with-a-full-beard was home after a celebration drink following boarding formalities.

 

Meanwhile, the lost barge. Bucher gave that salvage job to a local man, Lester Reyes. The barge was found to be in one foot of water, undamaged, sitting on soft sand and grass, but unmovable; local fishermen had stolen the tarpaulins, anchor, and towline. She was too far from deep water to be towed free. After several attempts, she was brought out after having been discharged sack-by-sack into outboards, the cargo towed through the shallow water afoot and then stowed on a smaller barge.