“Never to pass a ship closer than one mile … In case of mist, fog, snow or sleet or any other similar thing, immediately advise the captain … In case of greater [than normal] drift, the captain should be notified … Never to leave the bridge without a man as a lookout … Not to use the auto [matic] pilot at night or when it is fog or looks to be fog … Always when it looks to be foggy, put the engine telegraph on standby, advise the captain and put the helmsman at the wheel … If there is a possibility, always check the position with the echo sounder and other aids to navigation [such as] radar and the radio direction finder … To check the lookout continually … See that the [masthead and side] lights are burning bright, properly …”
Carstens strained to think as Underwood asked, “Any other instructions?”
“Oh, yes,” he remembered. “If there is anything unusual that we aren’t used to, immediately advise the master, any time of the day … any time, day or night.”
When he could remember no other instructions, Underwood suggested he had to check the steering of the helmsman. Carstens agreed to that. The lawyer suggested further that he had also to check the course recorder, which mechanically recorded even the slightest changes in heading of the ship, in order to see if the helmsman was steering a tight course. But Carstens would not accept this. The course recorder was in the chartroom and he did not leave the wheelhouse or bridge wings any more often than he had to. He checked the helmsman’s steering simply by looking over his shoulder at the gyrocompass.
How often did he check the helmsman? It varied according to the man on the helm, Carstens said. Bjorkman, the first man at the wheel during his watch, he checked about three times during his eighty minutes at the wheel.
What about Peter Larsen, the wheelman at the time of the collision? The question seemed to flow in the normal stream of inquiry but the answer took the courtroom by surprise.
“I have to check him very often,” Carstens blurted, stopping to correct himself, “rather often … when I pass by [him] every third or fourth time.”
“At about what intervals of time?” Underwood demanded. Carstens stared ahead, his face blank. One could not tell if he was thinking, daydreaming or in a momentary trance. “Two minutes?” the lawyer suggested sarcastically. “Five minutes? Ten minutes? You tell me. You were there.”
The witness replied in a low voice, “I can’t say exactly. One time two minutes, another, ten minutes, another five minutes.”
“Why did you have to check him often?” came the next incisive question. Carstens fumbled with the answer and Underwood said, “Please speak up.”
Unable to control the modulation of his voice, the witness seemed to shout his answer. “He is more interested in the surrounding things than in the compass.”
“You mean, he is not a good wheelsman, don’t you?” the lawyer shouted across the courtroom.
“He is when he wants to be,” retorted Carstens petulantly.
This was the first break in the witness’ armor and the Italian Line attorney hammered away at it. Carstens conceded that he had been obliged that night to keep a close eye on his helmsman, but he insisted at the same time that Larsen did not allow the ship to yaw more than two or three degrees from the set course. It was indicative of the verbal battle which raged for more than four full court days between the twenty-six-year-old junior officer and the sixty-three-year-old experienced maritime lawyer.
They clashed on the subject of the weather. “It was variable cloudiness,” said Carstens.
“Where was the cloudiness?” asked Underwood.
“It is hard to say.”
“I appreciate that it may be difficult for you to say,” Underwood asserted, “but you were there and I would like you to tell us.”
“They changed all over the sky. It was changing cloudiness.”
The lawyer posed question after question for further details and Carstens said the right side of his ship was brightly lighted for some six or seven miles by an almost full moon which cast a long beam of yellow light on the water. To the left of his ship, all was black. No, it was not fog, it was just the black of nighttime.
Why then, the lawyer demanded, did he not see the lights of the other ship? Masthead lights should be seen at least five miles off. “What do you think obscured her lights?” the lawyer asked.
“I’m also wondering about that,” came the ingenuous answer.
“Do you know that it was fog?”
“There was no fog around me,” Carstens insisted.
“What do you think was around her [the Andrea Doria] that obscured her lights until she got so close that she was less than two miles away?”
“Well,” said Carstens, “it could have been a patch of fog that was laying over on the port side.” But, he added, he did not think of that at the time because of the apparent speed of the other ship, which he judged from his radar. He didn’t expect a ship going that fast to be in fog.
“Were you not worried at that time as to why you did not see the vessel’s lights?” asked Underwood.
“There are many ship lights you don’t see before four or five miles,” Carstens said, adding that he did begin to worry when the other ship came within four miles but “I was sure that I would see her soon enough to have maneuverability from the port side.”
The Italian Line lawyer sought to prove that the Stockholm was approaching fog, that the watch officer should have been aware of it, and he should have reduced the speed of the Stockholm.
But Carstens insisted there might have been a small patch of fog to his port but there was no sign of general fog around his ship. He had looked up at his masthead lights for signs of fog or mist about the lights, but saw none. He explained again and again that the Stockholm could be maneuvered or stopped dead in the water in less than a mile and so he waited until he saw the other ship’s lights with his own eyes before changing course on the Stockholm.
Underwood questioned him closely on the course of the Stockholm, how he had turned his ship from eighty-seven to ninety-one degrees to compensate for the currents. He had the young officer draw his radar plot of the Doria’s approach. Carstens explained that he first sighted the Doria visually when she was 1.8 to 1.9 miles away, about twenty degrees to his port. He then turned his ship some twenty-two degrees to starboard to increase the passing distance and to give the other ship a better chance to see the red light shining on the port, or left, side of the Stockholm.
The acrimonious undertone in the courtroom which had been marked by legal objections and bickering on translations, the meaning of words used and demands of “yes or no” answers, came to the fore when Underwood, standing at his table more than twenty feet from the witness box, pointed his index finger at the end of his extended right arm and shouted: “I suggest to you, Mr. Witness, that the reason you found it necessary to show your red light [port side of the ship] more clearly was that the Doria was actually dead ahead or a little on your starboard bow! Isn’t that a fact?”
Haight, the Swedish Line attorney, jumped to his feet before the question could be translated. “Just a moment,” he asserted. “I ask counsel be instructed not to yell at the witness or at the interpreter. There is no reason to raise voices in that manner.”
Mark MacLay, the special master presiding, said impartially, “We will let it stand. But Mr. Underwood is cautioned accordingly.”
“I will try to curb my enthusiasm,” Underwood offered.
Then some of the lawyers waiting impatiently for their turn to question the witness spoke up.
“Under the circumstances,” said Leonard T. Matteson, attorney for the shippers suing for lost cargo aboard the Doria, “I don’t think Mr. Underwood’s tone or manner is improper.”
Haight, his ire rising, insisted Underwood’s shouting at the witness was “not fair or proper,” whereupon Raymond T. Greene, representing several passengers, commented acidly, “It seems strange after four days that Mr. Haight always picks an acute time to get up and give his little s
peeches.”
The hearing master rejected the lawyer’s suggestion that Haight make his objections after the witness answered the question. “The proper procedure,” said the hearing master, “is to move to strike it out before the answer is given.”
Haight rose to his feet, his eyebrows twitching, but his voice perfectly modulated. “If I may say just one word in answer to Mr. Greene’s comment? To the best of my recollection this is the second time Mr. Underwood has raised his voice. The first time occurred the first or second day. I did not object then because it seemed to me proper to let it pass once. But if it happened again, I had in mind to make my comment. This is when it has happened. I am not picking any cute or acute time.”
The Italian Line attorney had the last word. “I would like to say in my own behalf, while we are making speeches, in view of the provocation I have had, if I have only raised my voice twice, I think my behavior has been particularly good.”
“Let us get on,” said the special master from the judge’s bench.
“I would like an answer to my question.” Underwood said. The court stenographer read back the question: Was it true that the Doria had been dead ahead or a little on the starboard side of the Stockholm before Carstens made his first turn to starboard?
“No,” said Carstens flatly.
Carstens admitted that after his first twenty-odd degree turn to the right he took his eyes off the Doria in order to answer the telephone. He did not see the Doria turning to the left until it was too late and then he ordered an emergency hard right turn and full astern.
“Have you ever calculated how far you would have passed astern of the Doria if you had not changed your rudder at all?” asked Underwood.
“I have not calculated it, but I have thought about it,” Carstens answered carefully, “and I should not have passed astern of her; I should have passed right into her.”
Underwood, then reviewing Carstens’ testimony concerning his three RDF fixes at 10:04, 10:30 and at about 11 P.M., at which time he sighted the Doria radar pip for the first time, pointed out the impossibility inherent in the third mate’s calculations. It would mean that he sighted the pip only nine minutes before the collision, which he timed at 11:09 that night.
“At your speed of about eighteen knots, how far would the Stockholm advance in nine minutes?” the lawyer asked.
“Let me see now—2.7 miles,” Carstens computed in his head.
“If the Doria were ten miles away, nine minutes before the collision, and if the Stockholm advanced 2.7 miles in the same time, then the Doria had to cover 7.3 miles, did she not?”
“Yes,” said Carstens, “but what I understand from this question, you mean 2300 as a fixed time, but I have said it was about 2300.”
Disregarding the answer, Underwood went on to drive his point home. According to the third mate’s calculations, it would mean the Doria was traveling at a speed of forty-seven knots, an obvious impossibility. Not only was there something wrong with either the distance or the time as set forth by the third mate—they weren’t even close if they had the Doria traveling at forty-seven knots. Carstens admitted he was not sure of the time and that it probably was before 11 P.M., but he insisted he first plotted the Doria when the ship was ten miles away.
If one took the distance of ten miles to be accurate, then Carstens must have seen the Doria on radar fifteen minutes before the collision, based upon the approximate speeds of the two ships: the Stockholm at eighteen knots and the Doria at twenty-two knots. But, as Underwood sought to prove, if one took the times as accurate, then Carstens must have first seen the Doria on radar only six miles away.
Carstens’ testimony was corroborated by the three seamen on his deck watch. Sten Johansson, the lookout in the crow’s-nest, Ingemar Bjorkman, the bridge lookout, and Peder Larsen at the helm, testified they saw no fog, that Carstens plotted the approach of the Andrea Doria, and all three said they saw the ship off to the left side of the Stockholm before she swung across the Stockholm bow just before the collision. Larsen even agreed with Carstens’ statement that he allowed his attention to wander away from the compass. He said, in effect, that he was more interested in watching the officer at the radar to his right than keeping his eye on the compass which was to his left.
In the midst of Larsen’s testimony, even the subjects of sex and crime entered the admiralty proceeding. Larsen, testifying in Danish which was the bane of three different interpreters, at first flatly refused to say whether he had ever been in jail. Later he admitted he had served time because of “trouble with a girl” in 1955. But further than that he would not say, and Judge Walsh, when the matter was taken before him, ruled that the seaman’s sexual indiscretions had no bearing on the cause of the collision.
Carstens’ testimony also was corroborated by the Stockholm’s course recorder, that mechanical device located in the ship’s chartroom which inked on graph paper the heading of the ship every minute the vessel was under way. The graph of the course recorder, probably the most important single piece of evidence, showed that Peder Larsen had allowed the ship to yaw some two or three degrees on either side of the course line before the first of the two starboard turns.
It showed that about two and one-half minutes before the collision, Carstens had made his first starboard turn of twenty-four degrees. Two minutes later (time enough to answer the telephone call) he made a hard starboard turn, and about a half-minute later, the collision occurred. The point of collision is indicated on the course recorder graph by a jog or bump in the line where the pen apparently jumped off the paper at the point of impact. Then, presumably when the two ships were jammed together, the Stockholm swung to the right another sixty degrees in twenty seconds time. This is a turn so fast that no ship could do it alone under her own power. It could be accomplished only if the Stockholm were propelled or pushed by another force (presumably the Andrea Doria.)
Carstens-Johannsen remained in the witness box eleven court days stretched over a period of almost three weeks. Eleven different lawyers questioned the young officer on every phase of events leading up to the collision. What one lawyer forgot, the next pressed. It soon became evident that this hearing would not be completed in six weeks, as originally planned, and because of the crowded court calendar, the hearing was moved first to the assembly room of the New York County Lawyers Association Building and later to the museum room of the Seamen’s Church Institute in New York.
As the hearing wore on, Carstens, who had been nervous and shy the first few days, seemed to thrive in the limelight of the witness chair. He began to enjoy matching wits with the various attorneys who sought to trap him into some admission damaging to himself or the cause of the Stockholm or the Swedish Line. As the hearing progressed with the concomitant publicity, it became evident that more than financial damages were at stake. Witnesses for both ships were testifying in behalf of their own personal reputation and that of their ship and, indeed, the prestige of Sweden and Italy as seafaring nations.
Carstens testified he had no idea the Andrea Doria would be in those waters at the time of the collision. But it made no difference, he insisted. He had standing orders to be careful of all ships, large and small, which were encountered by the Stockholm. Neither did he try to communicate by radio with the Doria when he spotted the pip of the ship on radar twelve miles away. “There is no one who can know what ship is coming when you see a pip on the radar,” he said.
Two important questions—or series of questions—bearing on responsibility for the collision, Carstens said, could better be answered by Captain Nordenson than himself. Why was the Stockholm steaming eastward against traffic on the so-called recognized or recommended westbound lane for ships going to New York? Was it or was it not the customary practice for the Stockholm to go at full or unreduced speed through fog?
The question of speeding in fog was perhaps the most important and fought-over point of the trial. For if the Stockholm could be shown to have been following a practice of speeding
in fog and was doing that at the time of the disaster, then she would be as negligent and as guilty as the Doria. Early in the case, it became known to all attorneys—although not to the public—that the Italian Line would admit speeding in fog, and per se, at least partial blame for the collision.
Carstens displayed Teutonic stubbornness in his denial that the Stockholm always continued at full speed in fog. He insisted that on the night of the collision he, first of all, was not in fog, and secondly, even if visibility was only two miles, he was not speeding because the diesel-motor Stockholm could be stopped dead in the water in less than one mile, or less than half the distance of visibility as required by law.
Leonard Matteson, the shippers’ lawyer who became the hearing’s expert on speed in fog, pointed out that in the Stockholm’s logbook dating back from July 25 to June 6, there were sixty four-hour watches in which fog was noted. Not once in those sixty watches was there a notation that the speed of the Stockholm had been reduced, the lawyer said.
But Carstens said he believed the Stockholm did reduce speed once in fog somewhere around England on the previous voyage from Sweden to New York. Matteson, with the logbook in his hand, was stymied. He asked Haight if he would concede that the logbook showed the Stockholm had not reduced speed in any of those sixty watches. But the Swedish Line lawyer declined politely. “Mr. Matteson, no, I am not going to make any such concession.” He would have to prove it by questioning every officer of the Stockholm about those entries in the logbook, the Stockholm lawyer said.
As for the customary practice of the Stockholm when in fog, Carstens pointed out that he had been on the ship only three months and he did not stand watch twenty-four hours a day. “It is the captain who can give answer to that,” he said.
Carstens also plotted the course taken by the Stockholm on the night of the collision and the so-called recommended or recognized route for eastbound ships. Measuring the distance between the two courses at the point of collision, he testified they were approximately nineteen and one-half miles apart, and the newspapers reported that the Stockholm had been nineteen and one-half miles off course at the time of the collision. But Carstens said he was merely following the course ordered by his captain.
Collision Course Page 22
