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Warring Egos Turn Salvage Effort Into a $35 Million Misadventure

12/12/99 9:35 PM Eastern

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- The New Carissa shipwreck ended up traveling a $35 million course across the Oregon coast because the so-called "unified command" in charge of the salvage operation was anything but united, according to internal documents and interviews.

Clashing egos, shifting priorities and competing interests drove commanders to overestimate their abilities, miscommunicate, boost costs and put people and the environment at risk, The Oregonian reported in its Sunday editions.

The New Carissa salvage likely will top $35 million, making it one of the most expensive since the Exxon Valdez. Unlike the Exxon Valdez, a loaded supertanker, the New Carissa was a standard-size freighter that was empty save for its engine fuel when it ran aground Feb. 4 near Coos Bay.

Industry and government both blame mismanagement, often each other's, for the cost of the salvage operation.

Coast Guard and salvage officials have warned that the nation's unified command system -- a partnership between polluters and environmental cops -- fails to control competing agendas that has helped the cleanup price of once-routine spills to soar.

Even during the worst night of the 36 days spent on the main salvage effort, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mike Hall told reporters he had "good news."

The forward section of the broken freighter had been finally freed from the beach near Coos Bay and was under tow, but the line had broken and the hulk was blowing landward with 130,000 gallons of oil.

Hall, however, calmly told reporters that a tug would chase and snare the careening wreck amid 46-foot waves and hurricane-force winds. A chalkboard diagram mapped the high-seas rendezvous by salvage crews.

Unfortunately, the newspaper says little of what Hall told reporters was true.

Just five minutes before he faced news cameras, an outraged Hall had faced off with salvors and threatened to seize control of the recovery effort unless a tug was dispatched. The salvors, dead set against it, relented. As they predicted, a hookup was impossible, and the wreck beached again, in Waldport.

"It was a nice big show to make the Coast Guard look good and make it look like they were doing something," said Bill Milwee, a salvage expert who was among the operation's commanders.

"We did a lot of things in this job to cover their asses," he said.

The New Carissa's odyssey bewildered Oregonians for weeks: firebombing by napalm that caused it to break apart, an elaborate failure to pump off oil, the sinking of the forward section by a Navy torpedo. Each event seemed a last-ditch measure, and each raised the question of who was in charge.

At the start, Roger Elliot, the chief of the Dutch salvage outfit Smit Internationale N.V., told Hall that he would not be talking to the Coast Guard -- company policy.

The man who did speak to the Coast Guard and the public was Milwee, a Portlander hired by the ship insurers to oversee Smit.

When the ship ran aground, Smit officials determined letting the wreck sit on soft sand was a "safe risk" and drafted a refloating plan that would take three weeks.

Milwee decided to wait for the arrival of J.H. "Mick" Leitz and his legendary vessel the Salvage Chief -- based 200 miles north in Astoria.

"We have no fear," Milwee said at the time. "We'll get it out of here."

Counting on Leitz's record, Milwee never called up two Sause Bros. tugs in Coos Bay that were waiting on standby. Sause Bros. officials now argue that they had at least a shot at pulling the ship off the first day.

Leitz, on the other hand, wasn't ready. He could no longer afford to keep a crew on standby, and the Salvage Chief -- which had towed the Exxon Valdez from Bligh Reef in Alaska -- was on the verge of being sold.

Leitz spent 24 hours assembling a crew and trucking fuel from Portland. By the time he was set, however, the Columbia River bar was too rough to cross, leaving the New Carissa at the mercy of the fierce Oregon surf, a force Milwee and Smit underestimated.

Five days after the New Carissa grounded, the ship's engine room filled with water, making the ship worthless as a working vessel, unsalvageable except for scrap.

But Cmdr. Paul Jewell of the Coast Guard's elite Pacific Strike Team had another plan. He wanted to burn the ship. Hall agreed, and gathered his men, the ship's schematics and a battery of cell phones at a pizza parlor. Smit's Elliott, who had questioned the idea, was not invited.

The burn only partly succeeded, and it complicated salvage efforts after the ship broke into two sections. Some, including Navy salvage officers, believe the intense heat hastened the ship's breakup.

Blowing open the oil tanks to fan the fire also limited options, because tanks with holes were harder to fill with air for refloating.

"I think we learned a lot about it," Hall said recently of the burn, "and what man's limitations are with it."

After the burn, Jewell saw a new opportunity: pumping off remaining oil. But salvors told him it would be impossible without heat because heavy fuel oil turns into a thick sludge below room temperature. [ make note of that ]

Even Reiter, Jewell's predecessor in the Pacific Strike Team and now a private contractor at the scene, called Jewell's idea "ridiculous." Milwee later called it "stupid."

Jewell forged ahead, vowing to move 200 gallons a minute. Four days later, Jewell and his crew, faces blackened with soot, quit with just a trickle of oil to show.

Meantime, Elliott signed a contract with the ship's owners to keep his salvors working -- this time to remove the forward section and its pollution threat. But he kept everyone waiting for days while Smit flew in a custom-made, floating synthetic rope from Holland.

The Navy, Hall now says, had a suitable line just hours away in California that might have sped up the tow enough to avoid the line-snapping storm.

On Feb. 28, Hall and Mike Szerlog, that state of Oregon's representative to the Unified Command, drafted a memo for Milwee to sign pledging cooperation -- to avoid "separation of purpose, unknown agendas, possibly doubts of cooperative intent."

Days later, the Unified Command nearly split apart.

Using the Dutch rope, the Sea Victory pulled the New Carissa's oil-laden bow section off the beach while Hall and company broke out cigars.

Then, about 50 miles out in stormy seas, a cable linking the rope to the tug snapped. Hall was enraged. He found Milwee and told him to send a tug to retrieve the broken towline at sea. Milwee said no, believing a high-seas rescue was impossibly risky.

Hall turned to an assistant and demanded an administrative order. If Milwee refused to dispatch the tug, the Coast Guard would take over the entire salvage effort as well.

Hall walked up to Milwee's boss, Jack Gallagher, and brandished the order in his face. Send the tug, Hall said, or lose control.

"Captain," Gallagher recalled saying, "you can put that away. We'll do anything possible."

Hall went out to face TV cameras, where claims a tug had been called "right away" and that it was sailing "as we speak" -- seemed comforting. In reality, all tugs were stuck in harbor for the night.

"Under no circumstances did anyone have any plan" to chase the ship, Gallagher said recently.

In the end, it was the Navy that decided the New Carissa's fate. It secretly dispatched a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine to finally scuttle the bow section.

But when Hall was alerted to the presence of the sub, the USS Bremerton, he urged "the minimum amount of force" to sink the New Carissa.

The Navy first tried to sink the freighter with explosives planted aboard. Then the destroyer USS David R. Ray fired 69 rounds. Eventually, the destroyer's skipper, Cmdr. Cliff Perkins Jr., declared the plan failed and he ordered the sub into place.

Months later, the Navy submitted a bill for one $683,000 Mark 48 torpedo -- a cost that Coast Guard officials want the ship's insurers to pay.

-- Ashton & Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), December 13, 1999

Answers

Good catch you guys!

Gives new context to the timehonoured phrase: "FUBAR"

Definitely worth considering when it comes to "emergency management"

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), December 13, 1999.

mind-blowing stuff here, big clues, all this while everything was up & purrrrring purrrfectly infrastructure-wise

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Warring Egos Hampered Salvage of New Carissa's Grounded Hulk

Unified Command disarray slows responses and turns the job into a $35 million misadventure

Sunday, December 12, 1999

By Brent Hunsberger and Steve Suo of The Oregonian staff

On the New Carissa's darkest night of bedlam, when the broken hulk snapped its towline and blew landward with 130,000 gallons of oil, a composed U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mike Hall told reporters he had "good news."

A tug would chase and snare the careening wreck amid 46-foot waves and hurricane-force winds -- salvors had seen to it. A chalkboard diagram mapped the high-seas rendezvous.

Little of it was true.

Just five minutes before, an outraged Hall faced off with salvors and threatened to seize control of the recovery effort unless a tug were dispatched. The salvors, dead set against it, relented. As they predicted, a hookup was impossible, and the wreck beached again, in Waldport.

"It was a nice big show," salvor Bill Milwee said recently, "to make the Coast Guard look good and make it look like they were doing something. We did a lot of things in this job to cover their asses."

Hundreds of pages of internal documents and interviews with key players show that the New Carissa's damaging course was charted not by a "unified command" but, instead, by endless clashes of ego.

Hubris coursed through the 36-day event, driving men to overestimate their abilities, miscommunicate, boost costs and put people and the environment at risk.

It is much the same at every oil spill. Coast Guard and salvage officials have warned that the nation's unified command system -- a partnership between polluter and environmental cops -- fails to control competing agendas that can swamp a ship in peril.

None of these problems has been resolved, and the price of once-routine spills has soared: The New Carissa will probably top $35.5 million, making it one of the most expensive since the Exxon Valdez. Industry and government blame mismanagement for the trend.

Moreover, Oregon is less prepared than elsewhere for a big oil spill. State regulators, hindered by budget cuts, have less of a say in managing the cleanup.

The New Carissa's odyssey bewildered Oregonians for weeks: firebombing by napalm, an elaborate failure to pump off oil, the sinking by a U.S. Navy torpedo. Each event bore the mark of individuals vying for control. They worked out their strategies not in the Unified Command's gymnasium headquarters, but in small clusters in the fast-food joints and hotel bars of Coos Bay.

The men in orange

Three days after the New Carissa ran aground, salvors hustled Navy and Coast Guard officers into the ship's galley to lay down ground rules.

"Nobody here is lieutenant commander; nobody here is in the Coast Guard; nobody here is the master of this vessel," Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Jason Smith recalled Dutch salvor Jacob Hogerdorp as saying. "We're here to do one thing."

During these initial hours and days -- when the New Carissa was still a ship to be saved, repaired and sent back into service -- salvors reigned. These were the men who strode up in their bright orange Mustang survival suits to tackle their first job on the Oregon coast.

"They just walk right in saying, 'We're gonna tow that boat off there, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, and we need you all to do this and that,' " Smith recalled.

Such fierce independence is natural. The men of the Dutch salvage outfit Smit Internationale N.V. were survivors in a cannibalistic industry fed by competition, huge risks and a dogged sense of adventure.

The way they see it, salvors solve the real problem: hauling the casualty out of harm's way. Everyone else at the scene sets up defensive booms and absorbent beach pompoms.

"It's not just the Carissa spill; it's every spill," said Gary Reiter, a private cleanup contractor for the New Carissa's insurer. "They have a tendency to be arrogant and view pollution response people and everybody else as dummies."

The salvors may be right. Of the nearly 1,000 groundings that occur on U.S. coasts and rivers each year, less than half a dozen result in large oil spills -- thanks to quick action by salvors or vessel crews.

The New Carissa's salvors had no time for second-guessing. They would be paid only if they removed the ship intact, an interest that coincided with the public's desire for clean beaches. How the job was done should be up to them.

It was industry doctrine. Although cooperation with the Coast Guard is important "to a degree," a 1998 cost-control report warned, it's also important for ship owners and contractors "not to roll over."

Smit's brash chief, Roger Elliott, didn't. He told Hall from the start that he would not be talking to the Coast Guard. Company policy. The Englishman worked for the ship's owners and no one else.

The man who did speak to the Coast Guard and the public was Milwee, a Portlander hired by the ship insurers to oversee Smit.

He'd cut his teeth in the Navy rescuing old warships and had written a 777-page text, "Modern Marine Salvage." His mentor was a salvage captain who gave Milwee room to make his own decisions.

"I'd call this guy from halfway around the world," Milwee, now 62, recalled, "and I'd say 'Boss, everything just turned to (expletive). I don't know what the hell's going to go on here.' We'd talk for a little while, and he'd say 'Oh, Bill do what's right.' "

What seemed right, when the New Carissa grounded, was to wait for the arrival of J.H. "Mick" Leitz and his legendary vessel the Salvage Chief -- based 200 miles north in Astoria.

Smit officials determined letting the wreck sit on soft sand was a "safe risk" and drafted a refloating plan that would take three weeks. "We have no fear," Milwee said. "We'll get it out of here."

Counting on Leitz's record, Milwee never called up two Sause Bros. tugs in Coos Bay that were waiting on standby. Sause Bros. officials now argue that they had at least a shot at pulling the ship off the first day.

Leitz, on the other hand, wasn't ready. A decline in vessel collisions and groundings, the result of tougher safety regulations, had drained his business. Leitz could no longer afford to keep a crew on standby, and calls by salvors and the Coast Guard for subsidies to do so had gone ignored. The Salvage Chief, the one that towed the Exxon Valdez from Bligh Reef, was on the verge of being sold.

After Milwee's call, Leitz spent 24 hours assembling a crew and trucking fuel from Portland. By the time he was set, however, the Columbia River bar was too rough to cross.

That left Milwee and Smit at the mercy of the fierce Oregon surf, a force they underestimated.

Five days after the ship grounded, Smith saw the Dutchmen's dejection when they found the engine room filling with water. It made the ship worthless as a working vessel, unsalvageable except for scrap.

They would be going home without pay. The Oregon coast had pounded them.

"They thought they knew what they were doing," Smith said recently. "And I'm sure they did. But maybe they just didn't know everything."

Burn it!

Before Cmdr. Paul Jewell ever heard of the New Carissa, he wanted to burn a ship. The leader of the Coast Guard's elite Pacific Strike Team thought about it his entire 10-hour drive to Coos Bay from Novato, Calif.

Ship burning had been tried only on the most remote wrecks in Alaska. No guidelines existed for the Lower 48. And there was reason to pause.

When the tank barge Morris J. Berman, carrying 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil, struck rocks off Puerto Rico in 1994, planners ruled out burning it because they saw difficulty keeping the oil lit.

In 1967, the Royal Navy dropped 1,000-pound bombs on the Torrey Canyon, a tanker that grounded in the English Channel. The fire lasted minutes, and the ship spilled 38.2 million gallons, killing roughly 25,000 sea birds.

But Jewell had no fear. With few caveats, he lived by the Coast Guard's written spill response policy: "Shoot first, ask questions later."

No matter that a review by two Coast Guard officers and a pair of consultants found this year that the shoot-first policy "sets the framework for a throw-money-at-the-problem approach."

"I like to be on the pointy end of the spear," Jewell said of his job.

Even as the Smit men fought to keep the engine room from flooding, many on land suspected the ship was soon to break up. Jewell sprung his idea, and Hall agreed.

Hall gathered his men, the ship's schematics and a battery of cell phones at the North Bend Pizza Hut and kept it open past closing. Smit's Elliott, who had questioned the idea, was not invited.

Jewell, meanwhile, worked on obtaining explosives. He phoned an Army base near Seattle.

"I need to talk to somebody that knows how to blow up a ship," Jewell said.

The woman hung up. Jewell redialed and asked for a sergeant.

"This is the guy that wants to blow up a ship," the woman said, taking Jewell half seriously this time. "Wait a minute."

The next morning, Hall walked into the command center and presented a near fait accompli.

The burn, of course, only partly succeeded, and it complicated salvage efforts after the ship split in two.

Some, including Navy salvage officers, believe intense heat hastened the ship's breakup. It's elementary, said L. Paul Zankich, former vice president of The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers: Hot steel in cold water turns brittle.

Blowing open the oil tanks to fan the fire also limited salvors' options. Tanks with holes were harder to fill with air for refloating. Further, oil and water bubbled up into cargo holds. The sloshing liquids threatened to topple the ship.

"I think we learned a lot about it," Hall said recently of the burn, "and what man's limitations are with it."

Pumping for oil, getting water

After the burn, Jewell saw a new opportunity: pumping off remaining oil. No matter that salvors told him it would be impossible without heat. Below room temperature, heavy fuel oil is like Vaseline.

Even Reiter, Jewell's predecessor in the Pacific Strike Team and now a private contractor at the scene, called Jewell's idea "ridiculous." Milwee later called it "stupid."

Jewell forged ahead, vowing to move 200 gallons a minute. Four days later, Jewell and his crew, faces blackened with soot, quit with just a trickle of oil to show.

Jewell blames a clogged Y-joint in a hose. Critics blame his plan.

"They did everything they possibly could to make that not work," Milwee said. ". . . And you know, 130,000 gallons of water and 250 gallons of oil is not very impressive."

The floating Dutch rope

Elliott found a way to keep his orange-suited salvors working -- by signing a contract with the ship's owners to remove the pollution threat. But he kept everyone waiting for days while Smit flew in a custom-made, floating synthetic rope from Holland. And in doing so, he played poker with offshore weather that would soon turn ugly.

Tensions between salvors and the Coast Guard grew.

To Hall, there were other ropes in the world. The Navy, Hall said recently, had a suitable line just hours away in California. But Elliott and Hall hadn't discussed it in time. Obtaining the Navy line, Hall now says, might have sped the tow enough to evade the line-snapping storm.

Meanwhile, the salvors seemed bent on flouting the Coast Guard's attention to organizational charts, schedules and protocol.

Hall became irate after dispatching a helicopter on a risky evening mission to lift Smit's men off the ship. The men pleaded exhaustion, but Hall learned through the Coos Bay grapevine that they'd gone on to close a motel bar.

"If you're so fatigued that you can't function properly, how can you then go out and go partying?" Hall said. "Tell me the truth!"

As salvors prepared to hook the tug to the bow with the Dutch rope, Coast Guard engineers in Washington, D.C., were irritated by their struggle to reach Smit's naval architect, Rik van Hemmen. Three separate computers -- the Coast Guard's, the Navy's and Smit's -- had modeled the New Carissa's readiness for towing and the Coast Guard's showed pumping cargo hold No. 4 to be crucial.

"We had some serious questions," said Coast Guard Lt. Todd Schauer, "about whether the thing was going to float and float upright."

As it turned out, van Hemmen already had it covered. He just hadn't told anyone. He'd been working alone in his hotel room to avoid the clamor of the command center, where hundreds discussed bird counts and beach sweeping.

Numbers being shoved van Hemmen's way seemed utterly irrelevant. Calculations "for the sake of making calculations," Milwee called them. He chafed at government desk jockeys who'd never walked the decks of a dying ship.

The clash of perspectives should have been as familiar to salvors and the Coast Guard as to an old married couple.

In 1996, after the tank barge North Cape grounded off Rhode Island and spilled 828,000 gallons, a high-level Coast Guard review found an "almost complete lack of integration" of salvors into the Unified Command.

In 1997, salvors demanded that Coast Guard officials clarify "who's in charge" of salvage. The group said commanders are poorly trained, yet private salvage masters are "either overlooked or minimized."

"If this shortfall were to be addressed," a Coast Guard commander told superiors after Puerto Rico's Morris J. Berman spill, "the words 'Unified Command' would become more than an empty buzz phrase."

On Feb. 28, Hall and Mike Szerlog, Oregon's representative to the Unified Command, drafted a memo for Milwee to sign pledging cooperation -- to avoid "separation of purpose, unknown agendas, possibly doubts of cooperative intent."

Days later, the Unified Command nearly split apart.

Drifting to Waldport

Using the Dutch rope, the Sea Victory pulled the broken ship's oil-laden bow section off Horsfall Beach under the light of a full moon. Hall and company broke out cigars.

Then, about 50 miles out in monstrous seas, a cable linking the rope to the tug snapped. The crewless ship was "sailing" landward, but no one knew quite where.

Beach crews wandered about, asking where to move next. Milwee was nowhere to be found. Hall was enraged.

Milwee was with Elliott, at the North Bend Sizzler. Talking strategy.

When Milwee returned, Hall strode up to him "like a buzz saw," Milwee recalled. The tug you promised is not under way, Hall said, having checked for himself. Send it now. He was seeking a tug equipped to retrieve the broken towline at sea.

Milwee, thinking a high-seas rescue impossibly risky, said no.

Hall turned to an assistant and demanded an administrative order. If Milwee refused to dispatch the tug, the Coast Guard would -- and come within one step of taking over the entire salvage effort as well. The ship owners' limited financial liability would become unlimited. Coast Guard fiat would replace the Unified Command.

Hall walked up to Milwee's boss, Jack Gallagher, and brandished the order in his face. Send the tug, Hall said, or lose control.

"Captain," Gallagher recalled saying, "you can put that away. We'll do anything possible."

Smit's Elliott joined in. Though he and other Smit officials declined to comment for this story, others described Elliott as speaking so softly that Hall had to lean forward. Hall calmed down. But he wasn't going to go out and face TV cameras alone. He and Elliott headed into the news conference, and Milwee left, sick to his stomach.

Hall's pronouncements -- that salvors had sent a tug "right away," that it was sailing "as we speak" -- seemed comforting. In reality, all tugs were stuck in harbor for the night. "Under no circumstances did anyone have any plan" to chase the ship, Gallagher said recently.

Hall says he didn't know the weather was so bad, or that the tug was stuck. "I wasn't willing to tell anybody a lie," he said.

A few nights later, Elliott ran into Leitz in a bar. The Northwest salvor had hung around, hoping for a second chance with the Salvage Chief, and talk radio had clamored for his return. The Englishman called Leitz an embarrassment to the industry.

"I'm sick and tired of looking at you," he seethed, according to Leitz and his attorney. "I'm sick and tired of having the Salvage Chief shoved down my throat."

Making Mike look strong

Where were Oregon's environmental officials during all this?

Buffing their commander's image.

Mild-mannered Szerlog, a 32-year-old Oregon Department of Environmental Quality official, often seemed dwarfed by the broad-shouldered Hall and burly Milwee.

So, one morning at the command center's public relations section, someone scrawled onto the day's priority list: "Make Mike look strong."

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality staff discouraged a visit from director Langdon Marsh because they feared Szerlog's status would be eroded. They suggested Szerlog speak first when the Unified Command met with Coos Bay's City Council.

But when the towline snapped, Szerlog hung back as others argued. Speaking up wasn't his style. He saw himself as a filter between wildlife officials and the Unified Command, a role that allowed Milwee and Hall to work in peace.

"Mike did a very nice job of working with the state agencies in keeping them pretty much off our backs," Milwee said.

Szerlog's reticence was partly of necessity. The 1997 Legislature had cut the DEQ's spills staff from 10 to five. Washington state fields 60, California 190, including deputized game wardens.

It meant life was easier here for the shipping industry.

Gallagher, spill manager for the New Carissa's insurers, called Oregon "a wonderful state."

"The agencies seem to be much more reasonable. My nightmare is to wake up one morning and to find out I have to go to California for a major spill."

Short staffing also left Oregon officials flat-footed.

The Coast Guard barred the DEQ from its wreck investigation, citing a lack of maritime expertise. DEQ officials later confided in colleagues at the Washington Department of Ecology that they felt ship representatives withheld information about the wreck's condition.

Federal wildlife officials similarly complained they were routinely misled on how much oil the vessel held.

Documents show that federal and state wildlife officials went to Szerlog and his assistant on at least four occasions with concerns about short staffing and poor communication -- many of which Szerlog considered unreasonable.

Afterward, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials, complaining of "post-spill depression" and "during-spill anxiety," slammed Szerlog's agency for failing to defend Oregon's interests.

"It became apparent, especially as the incident wore on, that DEQ did not completely share or represent ODFW's concerns," wildlife biologist Peg Boulay wrote.

Charlie Bruce, another Fish and Wildlife official, agreed. He asked rhetorically, in a memo summing up the response, "What gives?"

A submarine, a torpedo

In the end, none of these people decided the New Carissa's fate.

The U.S. Navy did.

For more than a month, the Unified Command had worked to keep the ship's oil from leaking. Now the trick was to have the Navy sink the ship while ensuring that the ship held its oil, entombing it on the ocean bottom. Doing it cheaply would be a bonus.

So Smit and Coast Guard naval architects devised a sequence of explosives to slowly flood it, controlling the sinking. They also showed the Navy how to fire shells from a destroyer along the ship's waterline.

Done right, the aft end would sink until the ship arched its nose up, trapping oil in the bow. Done wrong, the ship could break open, spilling oil.

There was reason to worry. After the Morris J. Berman was scuttled off Puerto Rico, crews watched an estimated 8,400 gallons surface. Within two weeks, the oil hit a sea turtle nesting ground.

But the Navy had other concerns. It worried that the sinking might fail before TV cameras.

"Let's just hope both guns don't go boom, boom, click," Cmdr. Bruce Cole wrote in an e-mail.

But Cole's superiors in the Navy public relations corps also saw an opportunity.

"This could be big if it goes well," Capt. Kevin M. Wensing wrote his staff, naming TV reporters to contact.

"I want to hear the word 'Navy,' " Wensing said, "so let's keep it in every sound bite."

For good measure, the Navy secretly dispatched a Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine to issue the New Carissa's coup-de-grace. It would be a rare chance to test the USS Bremerton's $683,000 Mark 48 torpedoes on a live target.

When Hall was alerted to the sub's presence, he urged "the minimum amount of force." Who knew what damage the torpedo's 650 pounds of explosives could do?

But the Navy was eager. When the Pacific Fleet's submarine command learned the Coast Guard was lobbying against the torpedo, the Navy acted fast.

"It appears we may have moved down the pecking order," Lt. Cmdr. John Caccivio warned superiors in an e-mail. His bosses dismissed the Coast Guard's quibbling.

"If you put a large enough hole or enough holes in the hull to sink it, you will undoubtedly open a few tanks," Capt. Thomas Mader told Caccivio. But so would any other sinking method.

"Their concerns make little sense to me," Capt. John C. Brandes wrote. "What do they think the hull will do when it hits the ocean floor? Keep pushing."

At 2:08 p.m. March 11, the charges aboard New Carissa's bow blew. Over the next hour, the destroyer USS David R. Ray fired 69 rounds. But midway through, the New Carissa started listing away from the destroyer, leaving many of the holes high and dry.

The destroyer's skipper, Cmdr. Cliff E. Perkins Jr., declared the plan failed. Pointing to rising seas and the risk of another landward drift, he retreated and ordered the sub into place.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. John Cushing, Hall's representative on the destroyer, became alarmed. He had designed the scuttling plan and hadn't learned of the submarine's presence until the destroyer's enthusiastic crew pointed to the mast on the water.

Weeks of stemming leaks flashed before him. He still thought his plan could work, given time for the punctured New Carissa to flood. He phoned Waldport.

The Unified Command was in a news conference. State and Coast Guard officials ducked out to stop the torpedo. But they were too late.

"There wasn't much they could really do at that point," Cushing said. "They were so far removed from the events that were taking place that they basically put it in my hands."

Cushing got off the phone and turned to Perkins.

"Well, I would like to wait," Cushing said, "but I concur, at this point, it would be appropriate, if you deem necessary, to torpedo."

Perkins gave the order.

Navy Capt. David W. Hearding was with top admirals when he got to break the news.

"The timing was superb," he wrote a colleague, Capt. Terry Foster.

"We came, we saw, we kicked its ass," Foster said.

In Waldport, the celebration was more muted.

"We asked them not to use torpedo," DEQ's Loren Garner wrote in his log that day. "However, we are not presently in control of the Navy decisions."

Months later, the Navy submitted a bill for one Mark 48 torpedo -- a cost Coast Guard officials want the ship's insurers to pay.

Promotions and decorations

For those who fought over it, the New Carissa changed lives.

Hall, promoted to Coast Guard headquarters in Washington D.C., is in line to become an admiral.

Szerlog works a better-paying spill job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle.

Cushing and other Coast Guard officers received medals.

Jewell takes calls from England and Japan seeking advice on burning ships. His team recently retooled its cold-oil pumps.

Smith keeps a thank-you note from a Smit salvor tacked to his office wall and makes coasters from the ship's kitchen tiles.

DEQ bought its spill staff Gore-Tex jackets bearing the agency logo.

Milwee, between speaking engagements, continues to manage the wreck for Britannia Steam Ship Insurance Association Ltd.

Elliott, bitten this summer by a brown recluse spider while riding horseback, recovered in time to jet off to a job in Brazil.

Leitz won a contract to remove the stern section Elliott left behind. The effort failed, and on Oct. 29, he suffered a heart attack. His company is out millions, leaving the Salvage Chief, perhaps Oregon's best weapon against the next New Carissa, in doubt.

---------------------------------------------

You can reach Brent Hunsberger at 503-221-8359 or by e-mail at
brenthunsberger@news.oregonian.com. You can reach Steve Suo at 503-221-8288 or by e-mail at
stevesuo@news.oregonian.com

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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 13, 1999.

Thanks I never new the MK48 cost 683,000 smackola's. Imagine that, a collection of ego's spending more time trying to cover their hind quarters than plan, manage and fix a problem. Thank heavens that this type of grossly stupid incompentance never happens in coporate America. I almost hope the T.V. goes off so I don't have to listen to the excuses of why the economy USS Titanic was steering so far north at such a high rate of speed when warned about chunks of ice.

Steerage is TOAST.

-- Squid (ItsDark@down.here), December 13, 1999.

Since around 1975, it has been possible for all the "real" work needed for 100 people to be done by 10 people.

That is true of business, government and military. 2 men run trains that used to take 5. 2 men fly planes that used to take 7. The destrution that used to take 3000 men in B-17's in WW II can now be done with 6 men and a salvo of cruise missiles.

We can't shoot the unneaded extra 90 people. So they just take up space, consume resources and money, and get in the way of people trying to do the work.

We now have more generals and admirals in the military than we did at the hight of a two front WW II.

All young women should have been on birth control and most men should have had knots tied in their plumbing. Instead we still have people screaming "Abortion is murder, birth control is a sin, and teaching responsible sex is immoral."

We have doubled the planetary population since 1960 and tripled it since 1900.

Maybe Y2K will thin the herd a little.

-- woody (woody11420@aol.com), December 13, 1999.

Woody, as far as thinning goes, why dont you "volunteer" if you think "thinning" is so important?

-- lil ol me (lilolme@onebox.com), December 13, 1999.

Lets start with sterilizing anyone on wellfare and take it from there. This done on a worldwide scale would reduce the population by a stunning 43%.

Ahhh more oxigen to breath for the rest of us.

-- Larry (lscarin@monroecc.edu), December 13, 1999.

All the ships plying all the seas and oceans. If even some of them get grounded, huge mess, huge costs. Is there a quote about the oceans turning black or red? Ports not all compliant either.

-- too much incompetence (break@forth.18 days), December 13, 1999.