cas reglé, eu email de la personne ce matin
copie des messages si-joint
C’est vraiment très aimable à vous et je ne saurais comment vous remercier, vous m’avez vraiment beaucoup aider et je pense que je vais pouvoir avancer sérieusement dans mes recherches.
Sincères reconnaissances
Christian maille
De :
yves.schoumaker@gmail.com [mailto:yves.schoumaker@gmail.com]
Envoyé : lundi 15 octobre 2012 20:53
À : Christian MAILLE
Objet : Re: Esso Brussels and the Sea Witch and Marine casualty report of Sea Witch - ESSO Brussels
Voici un pdf en français qui pourrais vous aider dans votre recherche
adresse du
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & MENTAL HYGIENE
OFFICE OF CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER
520 First Avenue New York, NY 10016
Charles S. Hirsch M.D., Médecin légiste en chef
No de téléphone : 212-447-2030 Télécopieur : 212-447-2716
bien a vous
yves schoumaker
From: Christian MAILLE
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2012 7:27 PM
To:
yves.schoumaker@gmail.com Subject: RE: Esso Brussels and the Sea Witch and Marine casualty report of Sea Witch - ESSO Brussels
Je vous remercie infiniment pour tous ces détails. Savez-vous ou l’on peut s’adresser pour avoir le rapport d’autopsie de Mme Gisèle Aubertinaz ?
Merci encore
De :
yves.schoumaker@gmail.com [mailto:yves.schoumaker@gmail.com]
Envoyé : lundi 15 octobre 2012 16:23
À :
cmaille10@gmail.comObjet : Esso Brussels and the Sea Witch and Marine casualty report of Sea Witch - ESSO Brussels
HISTORY
Just before midnight on May 30th, 1973, the containership Sea Witch left the Howland Hook terminal on Staten Island and headed to sea, carrying 445 containers below deck and 285 containers above deck. Built by Bath Iron Works in 1968, it was small by today's standards, but at that time was the largest vessel in built in the State of Maine, with a length of 610 feet.
Sandy Hook Pilot John T. (Jack) Cahill, active since 1948, took charge as the ship sailed east toward St. George, Staten Island. In addition to Cahill, Capt. John Paterson and three other members of the vessel's crew occupied the compact bridge. Paterson had also positioned the chief mate and two seamen on the forecastle to help spot other marine traffic and to be ready to lower the anchors should an unlikely emergency arise.
Twenty-nine minutes after midnight, Cahill ordered the speed increased to full harbor speed of 13.4 knots. With the ebb tide traveling at approximately 2 to 3 knots, Sea Witch's actual speed was about 15 knots. As the ship passed the ferry terminal at the tip of St. George, he directed the helmsman to bring the ship to a heading of 167 degrees in order to begin transiting the Narrows separating Staten Island from Brooklyn. Seven minutes later he corrected the course to 156 degrees as the ship passed through the general anchorage.
The second turn never occured. When the ship did not respond as expected, the helmsman told the captain that Sea Witch was no longer steering. Paterson remarked, "That damn steering gear again." He attempted to correct the problem by transferring steering control from the starboard system to the port system. Cahill also took corrective action ordering, "Hard left rudder."
Both the captain's and the pilot's attempts proved futile. The port and starboard units fed into a single mechanism controlled by a faulty "key," a device similar to a cotter pin that had come undone. Without it, all steering control was lost, and Sea Witch was being forced out of the channel toward Staten Island.
Cahill immediately ordered the engines to full astern and the crew on the bow to let go the port anchor. He blew a series of short rapid blasts on the ship's whistle signaling that Sea Witch was in distress and ordered the general alarm bell rung to alert the crew, many of whom were in their quarters. The bow crew on Sea Witch worked feverishly to release the port anchor, but it remained in poisition. The first mate then ordered his men to release the starboard anchor, and despite being freed from the windlass, the chain would not run. Cahill locked the Sea Witch's whistle to sound continuously and Cahill and Paterson ordered the crew off the bow.
As the events on the Sea Witch were playing themselves out, the oil tanker Esso Brussels lay anchored in the southernmost Narrows anchorage just north of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The fully-loaded tanker carried 319,402 barrels of light Nigerian crude destined for Exxon's Bayway Refinery. Built in 1960, the Esso Brussels was a 25,906 gross ton, 698 foot oil tanker, built with classic lines and its bridge and the officer's quarters located amidships, while the engines, crew quarters and aft deckhouse were located toward the stern. Her Captain, Capt. Constant Dert, commanded a mixed European crew of 36 men and one woman, Gisele Rome, the first steward.
A mere two and a half minutes had passed since the Pilot and Captain aboard the Sea Witch realized she was out of control, the ship was a mere 200 feet from the starboard side of the Esso Brussels and unable to stop. Cahill advised Paterson to clear the bridge, and they made their way aft toward the rear superstructure. The mate standing watch on Esso Brussels's bridge heard Sea Witch's whistle and watched as the containership began to head towards his ship. His first thought was that the disabled ship would pass astern of his tanker, but as it continued to veer in his direction he sounded the general alarm. With only about two minutes of warning, many of the crew were still below decks on both the Esso Brussels and the Sea Witch when the night exploded.
Making about 13 knots and her engines in full reverse, Sea Witch rammed its ice-reinforced bow into the starboard side of the Esso Brussels between the midship and aft deckhouses, piercing three cargo tanks. Flaming oil began to spread rapidly from the punctured tanks and in short order both ships were being wreathed in a pool of burning oil. On the Esso Brussels, despite the chaos Capt. Dert supervised the crew as they lowered the motorized aft port lifeboat, only to have trouble releasing it from its lines. Once freed from the ship, a mate tried to turn a hand crank to start the engine but the lifeboat was overloaded with terrified crew, making this impossible. A last-second attempt to row away from the advancing fire was thwarted by the engines of Sea Witch, running full reverse, which were pulling both ships down the Narrows despite the resistance from the anchors of the Esso Brussels. This movement created a suction force which pinned the lifeboat against the tanker's hull and brought the pool of flaming oil around the stern of the Esso Brussels, forcing the crew to jump and swim away in a desperate hope of escaping the flames.
The veteran FNDY fireboat Firefighter arrived minutes after the collision from its berth at Homeport Staten Island. The Firefighters onboard saw only a sea of flames that extended 3,000 yards in front of them as they approached, and began to pour water onto the Esso Brussels from the Starboard bow, keeping their ship upwind and upcurrent from the smoke and flames now heading towards the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
Onboard the Sea Witch the flames were quickly spreading past the forward superstructure and onto her cargo of containers on deck, the contents of which quickly caught fire and began to explode. Aerosol cans of hair spray, shaving cream, spray paint and the like cooked off and exploded, turning into lethal projectiles that tore through the air. Her crew first took shelter at the stern outside the aft deckhouse, but the heat, smoke and blast effects of exploding containers drove them inside. Grouping into a cabin which was outfitted with a half-inch fire hose, the crew sprayed the bulkheads, deck and ceiling around them to stave off being baked to death by the heat. They watched in horror as the water evaporated into steam as it hit the walls being cooked from the outside by the intense fire. They would remain trapped in this room for over an hour and a half before they were rescued, enduring heat, pressure and hundreds of close-quarter explosions from the cargo.
Both ships were now locked together from the force of their collision and were being dragged down the Narrows by the engines of the Sea Witch, still locked in full reverse and unable to be controlled. Flames from the burning oil radiated 200 feet out from both ships as they moved down the channel and rose so high that they scorched the bottom of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, 228 feet above the water's surface, as the ships passed beneath. Fortunately, the anchor chains on the Esso Brussels had parted at this point and both ships passed under the bridge quickly, preventing the steel from suffering heat damage. Propelled by the Sea Witch and the outbound tide, the ships proceeded into outer New York Harbor and ran aground in Gravesend Bay, burning furiously.
After both ships grounded, Firefighters moved into position and fought the oil fire from the port side of Esso Brussels. To their horror, as they extinguished the fire they first saw the bow of Sea Witch was embedded in the starboard side and realized that two vessels were involved in the inferno. Moving quickly along the port side of the container ship they began to pour water on the blazing container stack of the Sea Witch and moved toward its stern, hoping to find some evidence of the ships crew.
Onboard Sea Witch, the fires continued to worsen and move astern as the contents of more and more containers caught fire. The crew, still huddled in the aft deckhouse, were forced to cover their faces with wet towels in order to breathe through the increasing smoke and heat. Once the ships had grounded and knowing that the flames would eventually reach them, Jack Cahill took the initiative to try to signal rescuers. Grabbing a water-soaked blanket and wrapping it around himself, he stepped out onto the stern and saw the Firefighter making its way along the port side. Waving his flashlight toward the fireboat, Cahill was spotted by the FDNY crew. Using the 5-inch bow mounted deck cannon, the Firefighters crew fought through the flaming oil slick around the Sea Witch to reach the stern. Using every monitor onboard the fireboat to keep the flames at bay, the crew of the Firefighter moved onto the deck and rigged two ladders onto the Sea Witch, allowing the 30 trapped men to descend to safety.
By this time, the life and death struggles of the ships' crews had played itself out. Tugs and small craft managed to rescue the Esso Brussels's survivors from the water, but 13 of her crew were lost and never seen again. 2 members of the Sea Witch's crew were lost below decks, unable to escape the fire and heat.
At dawn, the fires from the oil cargo onboard the Esso Brussels were mostly under control, aided by her sound construction which prevented the oil in her undamaged tanks from leaking out or catching fire. Sea Witch was in much worse condition, as almost all the on-deck containers were still burning. The Coast Guard and FDNY agreed to have tugs separate the vessels to avoid the risk of the rest of the oil aboard the Esso Brussels catching fire. Once separated, the four FDNY fireboats easily extinguished what little oil continued to burn and were ordered to use maximum water power to put out the fires still raging on the Sea Witch. However, this caused a list of 25* to develop on the Sea Witch and put the ship at risk of capsizing. Firefighting crews were forced to reduce their efforts to using two monitors from a single fireboat on the fire, and containers burned or smoldered on the Sea Witch for several days before the fire was declared under control.
The hulk of the Esso Brussels was towed to the Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne to have the balance of her oil cargo removed onto barges for delivery, and was eventually purchased by a Greek shipowner who refurbished the vessel and returned her to service. She ended her career in 1985 and was subsequently scrapped.
The Sea Witch proved to be much more diffcult to salvage however, as it took until June 14th before all the fires were confirmed to be out and the water used to combat them was pumped out, returning her to an even keel. Once refloated, the Sea Witch was towed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she remained for eight years as numerous legal battles were fought over the event. Eventually, her hulk was sold to an American shipbuilder who cut her stern and engineroom off and used it for the construction of a new Chemical Tanker, which still sails today. The heavily damaged bow section of the Sea Witch ended up in Baltimore where everything above the waterline was scrapped, and the ballast tanks below the waterline were used for waste oil storage by the Kurt Iron & Metal Company, a ship scrapping firm. The bow section of the Sea Witch was finally scrapped in the summer of 2008.
SS ESSO BRUSSELS :
Constant Robert DERT - Master, Belgium
Laidi Ben Lachmi TAJI - Fourth Engineer, Belgium
Leo BEELAERT - Fifth Engineer, Belgium
Alois Maria Lodewijk PEETERS - Boatswain, Belgium
Francisco OUBINA PORTAS - Pumpman, Spain
Manuel LEIS CANLE - AB - Wiper, Spain
Francisco MARTINEZ RIVAS - AB - Wiper, Spain
Jacob Johannes Pieter WILLEMSEN - AB - Wiper, Belgium
José VlElRA NOVO - AB - Wiper, Portugal
Bertil Alaim Marie OTTO - Steward, Belgium
Gisele AUBERTINAY-ROME - Stewardess, France
Rene Jean Victor ROME - Firsth Steward, Belgium
Francisco VILLAVERDE PEREZ - Steward, Spain
Pictures
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2678408378040.95895.1791204004&type=1 
Accueil 
