1973 — June 2, Sea Witch collides with Esso Brussels, fire, New York Harbor, NY — 16

— 16 Cudahy. Around Manhattan Island and Other Maritime Tales of New York. 1997, p. 110.
— 16 USCG. Marine Casualty Report. SS S.V. Sea Witch – SS Esso Brussels… Dec 17, 1975.
— 3 Sea Witch master and two crewmembers
–13 Esso Brussels
–11 Master and ten crewmembers after abandoning ship
— 1 Crewmember aboard ship
— 1 Missing crewmember

Narrative Information

Cudahy: “…on June 2, 1973, there would be another tragic collision in New York Harbor. American Export Isbrandtsen’s container ship Sea Witch had sailed a midnight; her destination was the island of Aruba in the Caribbean, with a stopover scheduled in Norfolk. Forty-five minutes later, as she was proceeding outbound through the Narrows, she collided with the tanker Esso Brussels, riding at anchor. The tanker’s hold contained two million cubic feet of Nigerian crude oil.

“The two ships became wedged into one T-shaped floating catastrophe. Oil leaking out of Esso Brussels caught fire; ‘the problem was how to control and extinguish a fire with flames, at times, ten stories high, three thousand yards long, and moving freely…influenced only by the tide and the wind.’…. On June 2, 1973, in the City of New York, the Narrows was on fire.

“The first fireboat on the scene was Fire Fighter, which had to use her powerful deck monitors at first not to extinguish any fire, but to move a free-floating inferno of burning oil away from the Esso Brussels so firefighters could see if there were crew members aboard the tanker in need of rescue. What they found as Fire Fighter worked her way through the blazing water was a second ship, the Sea Witch, and a group of men huddled on her fantail as they sought refuge from the flames. Fire Fighter would later be awarded the highest decoration any U.S. merchant ship can receive, for taking thirty men off the Sea Witch in the very midst of a sea of flaming oil and saving them from certain fiery death.

“What was happening aboard the Sea Witch was something that just wasn’t supposed to be able to happen: 285 containers lashed to her deck were in flames, a fire that would continue for many days. Once it was extinguished and the Sea Witch moved to a Staten Island pier for examination, it was discovered that additional containers being hauled below deck had also caught fire and had been destroyed during the conflagration….

“The death toll on both vessels was sixteen.

“The most chilling thing about the incidents involving the Alva Cape and the Sea Witch is that they involved tremendous fires and significant loss of life following collisions in port between precisely the kind of merchant ships that form the backbone of contemporary waterborne commerce in and out of New York Harbor – tankers and containerships.” (Cudahy 1997, 110-11)

USCG abstract: “On 2 June 1973, the SS C.V. Sea Witch lost steering control in New York harbor. The ship moved out of the channel and struck and penetrated the anchored Belgian tankship SS Esso Brussels which was loaded with crude oil. The 31,000 barrels of oil from three ruptured tanks ignited and the resulting fire engulfed both ships.

“The master and two crewmembers died aboard the Sea Witch. The master and ten crewmembers of the Esso Brussels died after abandoning ship, one crewmember died aboard ship, and one crewmembre4 is missing. Some nearby beaches were polluted, and damage to the ship and cargo amounted to about $23 million.

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause was a mechanical failure in the steering system of the Sea Witch and the alack of adequate and timely action by the crew to control their ship after the failure occurred. The cause of the loss of steering was the deficient design of the system which did not provide ‘two separate and independent steering control systems’ as required by 46 CFR 58.25. The cause of the fire, pollution, and deaths after the collision was that the typically designed bow of the Sea Witch penetrated the hull of the Esso Brussels instead of absorbing the crash energy.”

Sources

Cudahy, Brian J. Around Manhattan Island and Other Maritime Tales of New York. Fordham University Press, 1997. Google preview accessed at: http://books.google.com/books?id=4RTxzui1OG4C

United States Coast Guard, Marine Board of Investigation. Marine Casualty Report. SS C.V. Sea Witch – SS Esso Brussels (Belgium); Collision and fire in New York Harbor on 2 June 1973 with Loss of Life. U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Report and Commandant’s Action. Action by National Transportation Safety Board (Report No. USCG/NTSB – Mar-75-6). Washington, DC: Commandant, USCG, March, 1976, 73 pages. Accessed at: http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/docs/boards/seawitch.pdf
Abstract accessed 1-6-2022 at: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA021429