The Longest Passage

On a good trip it carries 3,000 containers 33,000 tons of cargo Cargo from 5 continents from 40 different ports of call headed for the Chesapeake Bay At Cape Henry, the gateway to the Bay, a guide team goes to work tracking, identifying, communicating, automated radar plotting, VHF communications This is one of the first Vessel Traffic Information Systems in the country Maryland Pilots calling the Motor Vessel Texas From an inlet behind Cape Henry, the rest of the guide team goes to work sending out a fast boat and an experienced pilot The Motor Vessel Texas, a cargo carrier out of Norway, nearly 900 feet long northbound for Baltimore, Maryland On the bridge, a captain out of Norway waiting to turn his ship over to a Bay pilot from Baltimore A ship's captain is like a general practitioner, his coastal navigation experience is very limited A pilot is a specialist, he has been trained and certified to do this coastal navigation ship handling First the TH channel, then the Chesapeake and then the York spit 35 miles of narrow channels cutting through some of the richest fishing grounds in the world and one hour futher north the Rappahannock channel, a 15-mile cut leading into the deep-water channel of the old river that ran through here 10,000 years ago My responsibility as a pilot is to provide navigational direction and to ensure navigational safety as the ship transits the Chesapeake Bay From the bottom of the Bay to Baltimore is 150 miles It is for pilots one of the longest passages in America This is the Motor Vessel Texas northbound approaching the Bay bridge putting out a security call and one of the trickiest passages At the upper end of the trip, the Baltimore approach another 20 miles of narrow, dredged out, twisting channels First, the Craig Hill entrance channel then the Craig Hill channel then the upper Craig Hill and the Brewerton Channel and the Fort McHenry The Port of Baltimore has recently had the depths of its channels increased to 50 feet We're bringing ships in now that draw 47-1/2 feet With increased size of ships we're talking about reduced safety parameters The pressure of every decision that a pilot makes the ultimate consequence of a bad decision is increased dramatically In Alaska a bad decision on a big ship in Prince William Sound sent out the Exxon Valdez without a state licensed pilot The result, an oil spill in one of America's great coastal ecosystems The Exxon Valdez did not safely make it out one night It was a huge monumental disaster The expanse of that spill was an area that is easily larger than the entire Chesapeake Bay It would extend up the coast probably to Connecticut There was over 5 billion dollars worth of damages claim and environmental disaster all of which would have been prevented had a state pilot been on board In Maryland, the men and women who bring ships up the Bay all spent years at sea as ship's officers They hold Master's licenses for handling ships of all sizes Most are graduates from maritime universities There has been no Exxon Valdez on the Chesapeake no Torrey Canyon, no Amoco Cadiz For nearly 150 years, Maryland pilots have led ship after ship on the long passage up the Bay On station, serving the citizens of Maryland