After the efforts of six tugboats failed to free a Canadian ship from the Maumee River's muck, the crew of the motor vessel Nanticoke resorted yesterday to unloading part of its soybean cargo into dredge barges in hopes of refloating the grounded lake freighter.
Exactly how much the Nanticoke's 28,000-ton load would need to be lightened and how long that would take were unknown. The two scows available for the service have capacities of only 300 and 350 tons, respectively.
In the meantime, the Nanticoke remained stuck diagonally across the channel just upstream of the Norfolk Southern railroad bridge near Toledo's riverfront grain elevators. Fast-moving river currents roiled around its bow and stern - the same currents that were blamed for sweeping the vessel off course Wednesday.
That night and early yesterday, the Roger Stahl, a 3,000-horsepower tug that arrived from Detroit, and the Triton, a 4,000-horsepower tug from Cleveland, joined with four 1,200-horsepower tugs that had been unable to shove the 730-foot Nanticoke back into the channel Wednesday afternoon.
Even the extra push from the big tugs was not enough to do the job.
CWO Rick Minnich, spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Toledo, said in the intervening hours the swift river current apparently had swept enough silt against the Nanticoke's stern to effectively ground her, even though the ship had not run hard aground when she first swung off course about 8 a.m. Wednesday.
“That [ship captain] is going to catch it when he gets back - can you imagine what this is costing?” said Kris Daniel, a bystander from Toledo whose father once captained Great Lakes freighters.
Jim Lawrence, a spokesman for the ship's owner, Canada Steamship, Lines, said the cost had not been calculated.
“Everyone's focus is exclusively on freeing the vessel safely,” Mr. Lawrence said.
For Dan Panos of Northwood, the incident brought back memories of a 1957 ship collision that wrecked the Fassett Street bridge, which once stood a short distance upstream from where the Nanticoke was trapped.
In that accident strong winds snapped cables that moored the freighter Champlain to what was then the Baltimore & Ohio coal dock on the river's east bank. Within minutes the drifting ship smashed broadside into the bridge, felling several spans.
“It knocked half of it into the water,” Mr. Panos recalled. The Fassett bridge, which had been hit by ships several times before and was felled once by ice as well, never reopened. Its remains were removed in 1961.
More recently, several grain freighters have clipped the railroad bridge, although none of them seriously enough to cause significant damage.
After a spate of crashes during the early 1990s, Conrail, which then owned the structure, proposed placing sub-surface gravel mounds and additional pilings in the river upstream of the bridge to protect it. Marine interests objected that such measures would make the river flow even faster through the ship channel, making it more dangerous than it already is. No action was taken.
The railroad bridge is just downstream from a sharp bend in the river at which point the Maumee narrows dramatically. The combination of the narrowing and the bend create currents that sweep diagonally across the ship channel.
Heavy rain on Tuesday had swollen the river, increasing the current on Wednesday to an estimated 9 to 111/2 mph.
Complicating matters, the opening in the Norfolk Southern bridge is only 109 feet wide, while ships using the channel have beams of up to 78 feet, making for a very narrow passageway for the largest vessels.
While the wayward Nanticoke came within an estimated 40 feet of hitting the railroad bridge, train traffic continued to use it. Train speeds were restricted as a precaution.
Asked what measures might be taken to improve marine safety in the area, Mr. Minnich offered no ideas except for a joking suggestion that the Maumee be dammed farther upstream.
An investigation will be conducted to determine if the ship's captain was at fault in any way for the incident, Mr. Minnich said.
“The captain of the ship is ultimately responsible for the safety of that ship,” Mr. Minnich said. “It's up to the captain's discretion as to how he's going to maneuver safely down the river.”
The stricken ship effectively created a dam in the river, and the swift current racing around its ends proved hazardous for the tugboats maneuvering around it.
Mr. Minnich said he watched Wednesday night as one of the tugs was swept downstream by the current and banged into one of the railroad bridge's piers, then continued underneath the structure.
An inspection revealed no hull damage to the tug - just a lost radar dome above its pilothouse where it scraped the underside of the railroad bridge's deck. The tug was back in the fray within an hour, Mr. Minnich said.
Bob Densic, a Rossford resident who professed 35 years as a boat-watcher and posted information about the Nanticoke incident to the boat-watchers' web site Boatnerd.com, said all large vessels navigating the river near the grain elevators should be required to have tugboat assistance. But he then said he wasn't sure two tugs would have been enough to keep the Nanticoke straight in the rushing river.
One tug had been assisting the Nanticoke as it left The Andersons dock Wednesday morning shortly before it was swept off course. A second tug was nearby and responded to a request for help. The Nanticoke reportedly was waiting for a train to cross the railroad bridge when its stern was caught by the current.
Mr. Densic predicted that the unloading effort would be of little consequence.
“They're going to have to wait until the wind and the current change,” Mr. Densic said.
First Published October 19, 2001, 11:34 a.m.