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NEW ORLEANS - The Associated Press The Chinese master of the freighter that smashed into a crowded waterfront shopping mall testified today that he overruled a river pilot's orders and waited to drop anchor so his ship wouldn't swing into a cruise ship.
- The captain, Jing Quan Deng, said he then ordered the anchor dropped at the last minute to avoid ramming a loaded casino boat.
- The pilot, Ted Davisson, testified Tuesday that the master and his crew showed no signs of responding to his commands as he tried futilely to keep the 763-foot freighter Bright Field under control before Saturday's crash. No one was killed, but 116 were injured when the ship plowed into the Riverwalk complex.
- Pilots are required to be aboard to navigate ships down the tricky Mississippi River, but the ship's master or captain stays in command of his ship.
- Deng testified today through an interpreter, although he did not have an interpreter on the bridge at the time of the accident. He showed that he understood some of the English questions, occasionally answering before the translator repeated them, but his answers were in Chinese.
- Deng said he concurred with Davisson's orders to put the rudder hard right, drop anchor and rev the engines to full speed astern. However, he said, his first order to the man at the anchor could not be heard because of alarms being blown on the ship's whistle.
- After he could be heard, Deng said, he held off dropping the anchor because it would have swung his ship into a cruise ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, which was docked nearby.
- He said he held the anchor until the freighter was bearing down on the docked casino boat, and then dropped it to stop the ship's forward motion.
- ``I overruled the pilot,'' he testified.
- Deng also testified that he transferred control of the ship's engines to the engineering crew, so that the bridge was no longer in control. That was done because the engine speed can be increased more quickly from below than from the bridge.
- He said he did not initially advise the crew that there was an emergency. ``They were informed when the collision became unavoidable even with increased speed,'' he said.
- He did not address the question of why he waited so long.
- The testimony came in the second day of a National Transportation Safety Board inquiry. It added a new dimension to the accounts of what happened Saturday in the three minutes between the loss of power and the moment the ship hit the Riverwalk.
- It's not uncommon for ships to lose power on the river, Coast Guard officials said at a news briefing today.
- In fact, three freighters lost power in the previous 24 hours and anchored upriver from the city, Coast Guard Capt. Gordon Marsh said. He said such ships are told to not move until their problem is corrected and the ship is inspected and cleared by the Coast Guard.
- In addition, two pilots refused to take ships down river because of power fluctuations, said Marsh, commander of the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office. He said he didn't know if they did that because of heightened awareness following the crash.
- Davisson, hailed by maritime experts for narrowly missing two loaded cruise ships and the casino boat, testified Tuesday of his frustration as the ship bore down on the crowded mall.
- ``People were just standing there watching like it was some Mardi Gras event or something,'' he said.
- Davisson also said the Chinese crew never told him the ship was slipping out of control and didn't seem to respond to his orders with any sense of urgency.
- ``I told the captain to stand by the anchors. ... He did not say anything,'' Davisson said. ``I remember literally yelling at him on two occasions to stand by the anchors.''
- The hearing opened Tuesday with a recording of Davisson's urgent radio transmissions to the Coast Guard as the ship headed out of control _ first toward the Creole Queen excursion boat, and then toward the Riverwalk.
- ``I'm going to hit that damned cruise ship!'' Davisson exclaimed. ``Call them or do something! I'm going right for them!''
- As he neared the dock, he shouted into the radio: ``Tell those people to get away! Those people on the dock, tell them to get away!''
[12-18-96 at 14:24 EST, Copyright 1996, The Associated Press]
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