Sinking Of The Marine Electric In 1983 Transformed The U.S. Coast Guard
What’s the most influential marine casualty in modern times? Movie-goers and TV watchers might name the sinking of the Titanic; environmentalists might cite the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez. The Edmund Fitzgerald made its mark on popular culture thanks to Gordon Lightfoot’s popular song.
But maritime professionals would probably name a World War II-era tanker with a welded-in midsection. The Marine Electric sank off the coast of Virginia in 130 feet of water during a February storm in 1983. This year marks the 40th anniversary of its sinking, in which only three mariners out of 34 survived the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.
Ship Inspection Changes
The reason the sinking is of such interest to those in the maritime industry is because the hearing that followed, featuring the testimony of the surviving chief mate, Robert Cusick, resulted in the most significant changes to ship inspection and Coast Guard practices since World War II. The hearings achieved strong publicity thanks to an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer who devoted huge resources to the story. The key mover was a member of the three-man Marine Board of Investigation, Capt. Domenic Calicchio, who had had a long career as a captain in the merchant marine before making the Coast Guard his career.
The story of the Marine Electric and the aftermath of its sinking is told in the 2001 book Until the Sea Shall Free Them (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md.), by maritime writer Robert Frump, who led the Inquirer reporters and won a George Polk Award for his work concerning the Marine Electric.
The Marine Electric had been recently “passed” for inspection by both the ABS—to which the Coast Guard at the time delegated many ship inspection duties—and the Coast Guard itself, though it later emerged that serious defects in deck plating and hatch covers were ignored, and the ship should never have sailed.
Reporters for the Inquirer, digging into records dating back to World War II, uncovered numerous other instances of marine casualties among older vessels similarly passed that resulted in a total of more than 500 mariner deaths in the postwar period. To reformers like Calicchio, it seemed as if the shipowners, unions, ABS and his own Coast Guard were colluding in a system that turned a blind eye to defects to keep ships sailing and men employed—at whatever cost.
Survival Suit
Cusick was wearing a new coat his wife had bought him with a then brand-new material called Thinsulate. The Marine Electric sinking resulted in all ships being required to carry survival suits. It also caused the Coast Guard to establish its own rescue swimmer program; at the time, it had relied on a single Navy rescue swimmer who happened to be available.
Calicchio’s report strongly recommended that the Coast Guard take back responsibility for ship inspections—but not until it had formed a task force to properly train its own inspectors.
This was done, and in the few years after the report was released, about 70 older, unsafe vessels were sent to the scrapyard, costing shipowners about $1 billion at the time. Younger mariners will certainly not recognize today’s Subchapter M Coast Guard in its pre-Marine Electric ancestor.
