SS Marine Electric

1983

Virginia coast, perished hatch covers, three survived Location: Atlantic Ocean, off Chincoteague, Virginia · Coordinates: 38.05°N 74.83°W · Casualties: 31 · Survivors: 3 · Depth: 37 m · Cause: foundered · structural — Foundered off the Virginia coast at 04:15 on 12 February 1983 in a winter storm. Her hatch covers had corroded through in places; the forward holds took on water through the cracks; she rolled and sank in minutes. Of 34 aboard, only three survived in 4-degree Celsius water before Coast Guard helicopter rescue. · Fate: continental shelf · dispersed · Type: collier · coastal bulk carrier · Tonnage: 9,654 tons · Crew: 34 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1944 American coastal collier, returning empty from a delivery to the Brayton Point power station. Foundered off the Virginia coast at 04:15 on 12 February 1983 in a winter storm after her corroded hatch covers failed. 31 of 34 aboard died, mostly from exposure in 4-degree Celsius water. Chief mate Bob Cusick's testimony drove the subsequent overhaul of American merchant marine safety regulations, the creation of exposure suits as mandatory equipment, and the establishment of the Coast Guard's Helicopter Interdiction Squadron. The Vessel The SS Marine Electric was an American coastal collier of the Marine Transport Lines, commissioned at the Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Chester, Pennsylvania, on 1 December 1944 as the T-2 tanker Ore Union. She was 184 metres long, 9,654 gross tons, and had been built to the standard T-2 tanker design that had dominated American World War II merchant marine construction. Her conversion from tanker to collier had occurred in 1961, when Marine Transport Lines acquired the ship (by then renamed Marine Electric) specifically for the coastal coal-carriage trade between the Hampton Roads coal piers in Newport News, Virginia, and the Narragansett Electric Company power station at Brayton Point, Massachusetts. The specific collier role required the carriage of coal from the Virginia mine-to-shore system to the New England electrical utility system, a commercial trade that had operated continuously through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The T-2 tanker class, and the small number of T-2-converted coastal colliers like Marine Electric, had been approaching the end of their commercial service life by the early 1980s. The specific vulnerability of the class was the deterioration of their hatch covers, which had not been designed for the rigours of repeated heavy-weather North Atlantic crossings that the coastal coal trade required in winter. The hatch cover deterioration had been identified by the American Bureau of Shipping inspectors and was the subject of periodic maintenance w The Disaster SS Marine Electric capsized and sank at approximately 04:15 on 11 February 1983 at approximately 38°03′N 74°43′W in approximately 36 metres of water, 35 kilometres off Chincoteague, Virginia. The evacuation from sinking ship to life rafts had been partially successful; approximately 23 of the 34 crew had reached the life rafts. However, the specific conditions in the rafts were catastrophic. The water temperature was approximately 4°C; the air temperature in the raft interiors was approximately -7°C; the life rafts had not been designed for the specific conditions of winter North Atlantic survival. Most of the crew who reached the life rafts died of hypothermia within 1-2 hours. Only 3 of the 34 crew survived. The survivors were Third Mate Eugene Kelly, Assistant Engineer Dennis Hickey, and Third Assistant Engineer Bob Cusick. All three survived because they had managed, with extraordinary effort, to keep their bodies relatively dry within their individual life raft during the night-long wait for rescue. The U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and rescue vessels reached the survivors at approximately 11:00 on 11 February 1983; 31 of the 34 Marine Electric crew had died by that time.