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The stuffed swivel chair squeaked as Jim Bacon leaned forward. He snuffed out a filterless cigarette with one tobacco-stained hand and reached for a small VHF-FM radio with the other. Standing in the pilothouse of the towboat Stud, Bacon was preparing to push two light barges from the San Jacinto River terminal into the busy Houston Ship Channel. Channel 13, the standard bridge-to-bridge radiotelephone frequency, would allow him to talk to other tows and ships.
“A Mr. Gus to the westbound tow and empty at ’bout 345.”
‘“Eastbound Loozeeanuh, Mr. Gus, go ahead.” “Mr. Gus back, yea, I’m gonna clear this here tow, then get on down that north bank, come back.” As soon as one conversation ended, another began. The accents were as thick as the smog from the towering petrochemical facilities along the channel’s bank.
“Sandy Coulter to tow goin’ to Hess.”
“San Patricio, goin’ to Hess.”
“Yea, pawdnuh, when ya git in there, will ya pass it on to ’em we re cornin’ in there. We re up here cornin’ by Green’s Bayou. Ask ’em where they want me at, if you don’t mind.”
“After it’s foggy all night, that’s when the traffic builds up. You know when the fog lets up. Man! They look like flies up and down this thing,” he said. “It keeps that traffic situation pretty busy, you know. Everybody trying to tell ’em at once they’re getting under way from such a certain place.”
Bacon steadied the silver handle that controlled the Stud’s rudder. This time, he pushed the radio button marked 12 and picked up the microphone.
“Stud to Houston Traffic.”
"Stud, Houston Traffic, over.”
Jim Bacon's dou n-home patois contrasts with the crisp, formal approach of the Coast Guardsman he speaks with in the Houston/Galveston vessel traffic service. Their aim, however is the same: accident-free traffic in the winding ship channel.
of
lit
the bottom. Fortunately, we have a mud bur
on
“We’re fixin’ to come outah the river with these two Arco barges doubled up. Be bound for Harrisburg Machines right up above Brady Island. We’re 305 by 108 and 9 draft on the boat.”
“Stud, Houston Traffic. Roger, Sir, display shows one tow inbound between you and Baytown. No reported outbound traffic between you and Green’s Bayou. A tow, the T. J. Sheridan will be coming out of Green’s Bayou shortly headed outbound with a large offshore barge she’s pushing, sir, over.”
“Roger, I have you okay. Stud clear.”
Jim Bacon, who went to work on the Houston ship channel with his “daddy” in 1939 when he was only 14, had just met the technology of the 1980s. He had checked into the Coast Guard’s Houston/ Galveston vessel traffic service.
Operated 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by a staff of 39 Coast Guardsmen, the Houston VTS uses radio, radar, closed-circuit television, and a computer to provide up-to-the-minute vessel movement information to channel users such as Bacon. The goal is to improve safety by providing participating vessels with advance information of other vessel movements and any additional information that might affect them.
The importance of safety cannot be emphasized enough. Houston/Galvcston may well be the most volatile port complex in the United States. Heavy traffic—mostly tankers and barges carrying petroleum distillates and additives as well as many “exotic” chemical products—moves in the 75 miles of navigable waterway which connects the ports of Houston, Galveston, and Texas City with the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The channel is narrow, and it’s dangerous.
As Commander Kenneth W. Thompson, commanding officer of the VTS, explains:
“It’s a combination of the geography of the waterway—it’s very narrow and winding with a lot of blind curves—as well as the traffic density and size of the vessels. There are vessels calling at Texas City up to 155,000 tons, others calling here in the ship channel up to 80,000 tons and sometimes larger. Large vessels, carrying hazardous cargo, navigating in a dangerous waterway, add up to a potentially very dangerous situation."
“We try to make ourselves a crew member of the vessels we are serving. We work for the master or the captain of a vessel much as a member of his own crew would. We try to provide him with information that is otherwise unavailable to him while trying not to be duplicative of information that is readily available to him.”
Once a towboat or ship has checked into the VTS system, her position is tracked until she has docket or until she passes the sea buoy. Everyone that comes along gets the word.
Although it sounds like a simple job—talking t0 a ship over the radio—it can get hairy. Operators must often handle 35 ships at a time.
“It’s like being in a crowded bar and trying t0 listen to six or seven different conversations at once, says Radarman First Class Michael D. White, a watchstander in the Houston center. “I think the hardest part is learning how to handle several fu°c' tions at once. If you can only concentrate on one thing at a time, then you can’t make it on this watch.”
White and the other operators use a computer to help keep things straight, but, as he explains, Coast Guardsmen still must do a lot of reasoning:
“It updates itself all the time, yet certain vessels go from one point to the other and stop without telling us. That’s when you really have to be alert- You must make sure that you are watching whats going on every moment. When the ships cross the bay, there is a good stretch of open water—about 15 miles—and the boats that travel about five knots take two or three hours to cross. You really have to watch closely, or you’ll lose track 0
them. ”
In addition to the never-ending radio traffic from ship pilots and towboat operators, there is a confirm' ous flood of telephone calls. The general public no" thinks the vessel traffic service operators are the eX' perts in marine traffic. White says:
“We get calls from agents wanting to kno" how long it’s going to be before their ship is goh'f1 to be in. The customs agents call us so they can h>-J there to inspect the ships. The wives call to f|fl out when their husbands’ ship is going to arrive^ The boatmen who tie the ship up call us now an ^
then. They want to know when the ships will nee linehandlers.”
While Jim Bacon was slowly making his way t0 ward Harrisburg Machine, Captain John B. Nid*1/’ the presiding officer for the Houston Pilots AssoC*a tion boarded the SS Shirley Lykes to take her to sCl1' He tells of physical constraints that make it har<Jer
for pilots to deal with the heavy traffic:
“We bring ships in here with up to 40 feeC draft. Since we have a 40-foot channel, we’re rig
tom and don’t do much damage. But, we are the bottom and a lot of times the ship just doesn^ respond as a ship really should. The hydraulics nn the suction of the bank has some real character^ tics of its own and a lot of times this is what "
teali
"If
y nervous:
they meet within a mile of one another at sea
think they have done something. Here they pass
13
and tell us to switch to 12 for a message. This
"°rks real well and separates the radio traffic. A has a lot more to do than just listen to VTS Continuously. He is only interested in information that’s what he gets from the operators.”
19 J>aSt ^uard VT$ personnel gave information to
dle tta
thi
ls traffic load, the operators must be highly
^ust rely on.”
^ ^iday depends on this hydraulic effect every time me«s another ship in the narrow channel. The echnique js cauecj “(he Texas chicken:”
We meet vessels head on. That is, we’ll meet n£ht in the center of the channel. We stay right ln fhe center. The oncoming vessel stays right in center, until we get less than a half mile apart, hen we do what we call a break, steering maybe 1Ve degrees to starboard while the other vessel does exactly the same thing. Then, we bounce off [he bank so to speak. When you come back to the center the other vessel has got to be out of the Way> and it’s his job to get out of your way, beCause when you come back you are going to go 0ver and bounce off the other bank before you straighten up. You just can’t have another vessel lowing closely, because you wouldn’t be able to Set your shjp unt]er control to meet this second Vessel. We need at least a mile of separation to Slve the oncoming vessel room to straighten up.” t . "% explains that a lot of the foreign sea cap. s d°n’t understand this Texas specialty and get
th
Uj.. 1
0 ln 100 feet and can’t get used to meeting head j ' ^et, it is the safest and only way to meet a ship 0Vethis channel. The worst thing you can do is to get
1 too soon. Usually you can’t get over too late, l Use you can always get over and bounce off the ts a little harder if you have to. The worst thing
j°et used to is holding on to the last minute.”
°ne cads ^'oast Guard’s vessel traffic service ° of the port’s aids to navigation:
We monitor channel 13 and then switch over t() channel 12 at the reporting points. Also, any- tlr0e danger exists, they will come over on channel
----------------- --------------- - -------------------------
^ ships and 75,884 towboats in 1979. To han- tt()ltlC^ before they take their places behind the mi- ^ad^°nes' 8et c^e men ready- Senior Chief Sj arrnan Charles F. Fisher administers a rigorous onth-lcmg training program:
In the initial stages of training, the new bcTators must thoroughly learn the channel. They ?Ust know the precise location of the more than ' facilities. They must learn the intricacies of
the computer. They must know how to talk to it, how to make it talk to them, how to make it give them specific information. There is no time for fooling around.”
The computer Fisher talks about provides a dynamic display of vessel traffic along the channel. It is capable of providing immediate information on all vessels in the system, including their locations, their speeds, and their particular traffic situation.
The computer’s accuracy is enhanced by a network of remote-controlled, closed-circuit television cameras positioned along the channel and a radar system which allows the operator to verify and update the data displayed by the computer. Yet, even though the television cameras, radios, radar, and computer help keep the information flowing, men are called in to make the decisions. One day last January, Commander Thompson walked into the dimly lit control room and stared at the green glow from the radar screen.
“It looks like that vessel anchored between 10 and 12 is protruding into the channel. Let’s call the vessel that just passed and confirm,” Thompson said to the watchstander. Moments later, his suspicions were confirmed. “Then, he’s going to have to move. Get on the horn to MSO Galveston and let’s get him moved now,” Thompson said.
The authority to issue special temporary directions when a dangerous or potentially dangerous situation exists within the VTS area comes from the appropriate Coast Guard captain of the port and is limited to only those powers over vessel traffic held by the captain of the port. In an emergency, however, any person who is acting for a vessel’s master may deviate from the directions to the extent necessary to avoid endangering persons, property, or the environment.
Vessel traffic service watchstanders also serve as the eyes and ears of the Coast Guard captain of the port. Their communications network is the quickest and most efficient way to disseminate information in an emergency. On one occasion, their electronic surveillance equipment helped Houston area authories apprehend a murderer. A watchstander happened to see a car back up to the channel and the driver unload a body from the trunk.
In summarizing the value of the Houston- Galveston VTS, perhaps Captain Niday puts it best: “It certainly is a big help to know what’s around the bend. I can recall back in the old days when you used to have to blow a whistle and walk out on the wing of the bridge and listen. Then, even if you heard the vessel, you had no idea what it was. It was strictly guesswork, and VTS takes the guesswork out of it.”
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The life of a port area comprises many disparate elements, and it is the job of the Coast Guard to facilitate the efficient operation of those elements. They include such things as tou boats scurrying about and churning up the water, a pilot in touch with the VTS by voice radio from his position on a bridge wing high above the water, a barge plying the channel, heading past burning of waste gases at an oil refinery, and a game of'‘Texas chicken” in which ships hold on a collision course, then turn aside quickly and careen off the underwater banks of the channel.
At times, the real world probably seems an abstraction to the Coast Guardsmen who man the HoustonlGalveston vessel traffic service. They experience the maritime environment in terms of television pictures, radar screen images, video data readouts, keyboarded messages, and communication by voice radios. The key to the system is the exchange of information in order to make vessel traffic move faster and more safely.
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