[seadog] River pilots navigate risky duty, tiring hours
- From: James Scalli <mma90@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Seadog <seadog@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 12:38:25 -0800 (PST)
Interesting general article with names we know...
>>>>>>>>
Posted on Mon, Dec. 06, 2004
River pilots navigate risky duty, tiring hours
By Christine Schiavo
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
Each night on the Delaware and rivers all over the
world, ships of various sizes and tonnages are quietly
guided to port by pilots who know every curve of the
bank, every depth in the channel.
Romanticized by Mark Twain, who spent four years of
his young life piloting boats on the Mississippi and
took his pen name from its nomenclature, the
river-pilot profession is as old as navigation and as
modern as the laptops with global positioning systems
that today's pilots carry.
"Any vessel calling in any port must take a pilot on
board," said Richard Buckaloo 3d, 59, a first-class
Delaware River pilot from Lewes, Del. He is one of 70
pilots who navigate ships in the Port of Philadelphia,
the nation's sixth-largest port in volume of ships.
A Delaware River pilot with 30 years of experience
guided the Athos I from Cape Henlopen to Paulsboro on
Nov. 26. The Cyprus-flagged tanker, carrying nearly 14
million gallons of heavy Venezuelan crude, ruptured
and spilled more than 30,000 gallons of its cargo into
the Delaware. Neither the Coast Guard nor Tsakos
Shipping & Trading of Athens, which owns the ship, has
released the names of the river pilot, tugboat pilots,
docking master or captain involved. The cause of the
rupture has yet to be determined, but Coast Guard
investigators do not believe river-pilot error was a
factor.
The spill has coated about 70 miles of shore with
muck, covered hundreds of waterfowl in oil, and closed
a shipping lane for nearly three days in the Delaware
River, where, last year, 2,486 vessels sailed into
port.
"There was nothing to indicate that anything the river
pilot did was wrong," said Michael J. Linton,
president of the Pilots' Association for the Bay and
River Delaware. "As far as we're concerned, it was a
routine trip."
What a Delaware River pilot calls routine, others
would consider downright daring.
With a bit of bravado, pilots transfer from a launch
boat at Cape Henlopen to a big ship by way of a rope
ladder hanging off the ship's deck. They climb 30 feet
of swaying rope in wind and rain, fog and snow -
mostly at night. Always wet and sometimes icy, the
rope is the lifeline to a pilot's livelihood.
Once aboard, the pilot climbs stairs that stretch
several stories to the wheelhouse, where he or she
(four of the association's pilots are women) will
spend the next six to nine hours.
Using the ship's radar, the global positioning system,
and experience, pilots guide the ship's crew in
navigating the narrowing Delaware River on a nearly
100-mile trip to the Philadelphia-area ports.
A Delaware River pilot usually guides two ships on
round trips each week, spending about 50 hours on the
job.
Their commission, paid by the shipping company, goes
to the association. The wages are divided among the
members, similar to salary structures at law firms.
The compensation is good, with the potential to earn
several hundred thousand dollars a year. But the
positions are few.
"Historically, everybody used to compete for the
pilotage jobs," said Craig Dalton, navigation
instructor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
"Once you got the job, you kept it. There were only so
many spots, so they were passed on from father to
son."
Asked how he had gotten the job, J. Troy Selph, 42, a
second-generation Delaware River pilot, said: "I got
lucky."
"I started sailing when I was 19 years old and worked
my way up," he said while waiting at the association's
South Philadelphia offices, where pilots spend the
night as ships unload.
Selph started on a tugboat and worked on an oil tanker
before qualifying for a river-pilot apprenticeship.
While grueling, the apprenticeship led him, Twain and
others to their passion.
"I loved the profession far better than any I have
followed since," Twain wrote of his piloting days,
"and I took a measureless pride in it."
Today's pilots need a four-year college degree or a
third mate's license to qualify for an apprenticeship,
which lasts three to four years and requires 600
trips. Then they can apply for state licenses and work
their way up through six classes of pilots. A
first-class pilot, such as the one who navigated the
Athos I, can guide a ship of any size, carrying any
load.
Carrying oil, steel, fruit, lumber and other cargo
from all over the world, vessels need pilots to
navigate waters unfamiliar to visiting captains. Using
radar and computerized navigational tools, the pilots
bring about one million barrels of oil a day through
the Port of Philadelphia.
"You're moving an awful lot of cargo," said Linton,
63. "Things go wrong. Just as cars have flat tires,
ships have failures. But we have experienced pilots
who have avoided a lot of groundings and collisions."
Dalton, a former tanker captain, said pilots and
captains lived in fear of a submerged obstacle that
could rupture a hull.
"That's one thing you try to avoid all your life," he
said.
Buckaloo said a pilot's first concern was safety -
"the safety of the vessel he's on, other vessels and
docks, and the safety of everything you pass."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact staff writer Christine Schiavo at 215-348-0337
or cschiavo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Inquirer staff writer Troy
Graham contributed to this article.
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