The Blackthorn is lifted from the Tampa Bay ship channel. Twenty-three sailors lost their lives aboard the cutter. [Times file photo]

When the Blackthorn sank after a collision in the Tampa Bay ship channel, a part of the service was lost, too.

By DAVID BALLINGRUD

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 28, 2000

Engineering officer John S. Miller says he has repressed many of the memories of that night in the Tampa Bay ship channel 20 years ago today, but some will never go away.

He remembers the shriek of tearing steel, and the frenzied few minutes that followed.

He remembers running toward the officers' wardroom and encountering a crewman in the narrow passageway. "There's an anchor in the crew shower!" the man shouted.

He remembers the ship leaning suddenly, sharply to the left.

A Service of Remembrance will be held today to mark the 20th anniversary of the sinking of the Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn and the deaths of 23 members of its crew. The commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. James M. Loy, will speak at the ceremony, scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at the Blackthorn Memorial, at the north end of the Skyway. The Coast Guard Band will begin playing at 10:30. The ship's bell, removed from the Blackthorn, will toll twice for each of the 23 who died as Chaplain Lacy Harwell reads their names.

He remembers finding himself suddenly fighting for his life in the black water, clinging to a large piece of wood, spinning wildly.

And he remembers his last view of the Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn on the night of Jan. 28, 1980.

The 180-foot vessel, carrying a crew of 50, capsized after colliding with the tanker Capricorn. It was upside down in the water, its rounded hull glistening in the light from a nearly full moon, its giant propeller, 8-feet in diameter, flailing the night air.

Miller and 26 other sailors from the Blackthorn were rescued. Twenty-three others perished in what remains the service's single worst peacetime disaster.

But tragedy sometimes brings change for the better.

The loss shocked the small, relatively close ranks of the Coast Guard and forced it to rethink the gung-ho culture embodied by its unofficial motto: You have to go out; you don't have to come back.

It brought about the creation of a special school for Coast Guard officers who will command ships, and it raised standards for emergency training and equipment aboard their vessels. It prompted improvement of navigational aides in the ship channel and led to a system of tracking vessels as they travel through it.

"Suddenly . . . you've got trouble'

	Click here to see the full-size map, showing how the accident happened.

The Blackthorn was outbound in the Tampa Bay ship channel that night, its crew eager to return to its home port: Galveston, Texas.

Seas were calm; visibility was good. The air temperature was 61 degrees, and there was a light wind from the north.

In these near-perfect conditions, it seems absurd that two large vessels could collide.

But those who have not steered ships through the channel at night cannot appreciate its difficulty, according to people who make the trip.

With no visible horizon for perspective, lights on the shore and on the Sunshine Skyway merge with the navigational lights on buoys, markers and other ships. Even experienced lookouts can have trouble distinguishing one light from another.

Radar screens are jumbled with numerous blips, or targets. A single target can suddenly separate into two, revealing two vessels where it had appeared there was one.

It's a long channel, with numerous turns, and traffic is often heavy. Large vessels that meet in the channel must pass close to one another to keep deep water beneath them.

"It's a little like driving on a highway at night," said Randy Maxson, commanding officer of the Coast Guard tug Vise. "You can't see around the corners. You can have a sense of security, then suddenly the situation is not what you thought, and you've got trouble."

"Have you ever been surprised to see a tractor-trailer in your car's rear view mirror?" asks Cmdr. Mike Parks. "That can happen with ships, too."

A survivor cries after receiving treatment on the night of Jan. 28, 1980.

The Blackthorn had just passed under the Sunshine Skyway bridge, following the Kazakhstan, a cruise liner festooned with deck lights. As it entered a turn in the channel at 8:21 p.m., it collided with the inbound SS Capricorn, a much larger, 605-foot vessel carrying 150,000 barrels of oil to the Florida Power generating plant on Weedon Island.

Both vessels had been too close to the center of the channel, according to the official investigation.

Capricorn received only minor damage, and no one in its crew was injured. Blackthorn's damage was more severe, but above the waterline. The vessel probably would have stayed afloat, had it not been for one terrible bit of misfortune.

One of Capricorn's two, 13,500-pound anchors punched through Blackthorn's hull and lodged there. The Capricorn then began dragging the smaller vessel backward and sideways through the water.

Briefly the two vessels came closer together, allowing the chain to slacken. The slack chain, however, wrapped underneath Blackthorn's hull. Then, as the two vessels frantically maneuvered, the chain became taut again and yanked Blackthorn over until it capsized.

It happened in about three minutes.

Twenty-seven of Blackthorn's crew escaped into the water -- some swimming through flooded passageways in the overturned vessel. Many of the 23 who died were trapped inside without a chance to escape.

The official inquiry that followed placed primary blame for the accident with the crews of both vessels. Neither stayed far enough to the right of the channel, the investigators found.

But they found other "contributing" causes, too:

The Blackthorn's captain "failed to keep apprised of the situation, and failed to effectively supervise his relatively inexperienced conning officer."

In turn, the conning officer was faulted for not telling the captain when the Capricorn was sighted just a few minutes before the collision.

The captain of the Capricorn, and the pilot temporarily in charge of the vessel, were criticized for not sounding danger signals and for not slowing down even when they became unsure of the Blackthorn's intentions.

Both vessels were faulted for not sounding proper signals and for not making proper use of their radar.

The tanker Capricorn after the collision. A few months later, the Sunshine Skyway would be struck by tragedy in the form of a freighter. [Times files photo]

'Trying to do the right thing'

Jim Sepel lives in Juneau, Alaska, today, about as far from Tampa Bay and its long, winding ship channel as a man can get without leaving the country.

He's a marine surveyor, inspecting boats for seaworthiness and compliance with safety regulations. He has become, in his own words, an enthusiastic nitpicker in behalf of safety.

He chose this line of work, he said, because of what happened in his earlier life, as Lt. Cmdr. George James Sepel Jr., captain of the Blackthorn.

Today, Jim Sepel lives in Juneau, Alaska. In his earlier life, Lt. Cmdr. Sepel, below, views the shattered Blackthorn, which he commanded.

"I'm just trying to do the right thing in my life," he said. "I can't tell you the hundreds of nights of sleep I have lost. Hardly a day passes without (the accident) coming to mind in some way.

"I couldn't deal with it if I didn't have the loving support of my family and friends."

Sepel did not leave the Coast Guard after the accident. He stayed in for eight more years and was promoted once, to the rank of commander. The Coast Guard could have promoted him again to captain, he said, but did not because of the Blackthorn.

He never went back to sea, though.

"I didn't ask to, and they didn't send me," he said.

He retired in 1988 after 21 years of service, still not accepting the official finding that both vessels were too far toward the center of the channel. The location of the debris found on the bottom of the channel proves the Blackthorn was where it was supposed to be, he argues.

Following the investigation, the Coast Guard considered bringing Sepel before a general court-martial but decided it was not warranted. Instead he was issued a "letter of admonition."

"Jim's conduct was not criminal, and his punishment was technically punitive, but minor," said his Coast Guard attorney and friend, Roger Brunell. "This case was hard on him, hard on all of us. Jim did nothing that would make him responsible for those deaths. But captains are accountable, and he does accept that. He was a good skipper."

Hard lessons learned

The Blackthorn disaster came soon after another, similar tragedy. On Oct. 20, 1978, the cutter Cuyahoga collided with the coal freighter Santa Cruz in Chesapeake Bay. Eleven Coast Guardsmen died in that accident.

Until Blackthorn, the Cuyahoga had been the Coast Guard's worst peacetime moment. The two incidents caused the Coast Guard to do some soul-searching and to make some fundamental changes in the way officers are trained to handle ships

The most concrete step taken was the formation of the Command and Operations School at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. Every Coast Guard officer who will be directly responsible for the navigation of a ship must attend for two weeks.

"The Blackthorn provided the impetus for the school," said Cmdr. Parks, who heads the facility. "We study the case extensively.

"The old thinking that "you have to go out; you don't have to come back' has changed," said Parks. "Commanding officers are required now to formally assess the risk of something like leaving or entering an unfamiliar harbor at night. They are encouraged to feel free to say, "My crew is tired; my crew is not properly trained.'

"Putting our people at risk remains a necessary part of what we do," said Parks. "But now we will do it only with an understanding of the risks involved."

There have been some changes in the Tampa Bay ship channel brought about in part by the Blackthorn incident, and in part by the Sunshine Skyway bridge disaster a few months later. Thirty-five people died when the Summit Venture knocked down the bridge's southbound span.

The lights on some buoys and markers in the channel have been brightened, said Coast Guard Lt. Warren Weedon, chief of waterways management for the Marine Safety Office in Tampa.

Range lights have been added to help incoming and outgoing traffic stay in the channel, he said. A "range" is made up of two lights -- the more distant one higher than the nearer one. If the two lights appear aligned vertically, the vessel is in the center of the channel. If the lights appear to drift out of alignment, it means the vessel has moved off the channel's centerline.

In addition, said Weedon, inbound and outbound vessels now must report their location to the Tampa Port Authority as they move through the channel. By monitoring these reports, pilots and captains can keep track of one another.

The 180-foot Blackthorn was part of the Coast Guard's "black-hulled fleet."

'It's a family tragedy'

Aboard the Coast Guard's hard-working little tug Vise in St. Petersburg's Bayboro Harbor, there is a worn and dog-eared sheaf of papers inside a plastic binder. It's usually found on the mess deck, the small room where the crew eats, relaxes, reads.

The binder contains the official investigation into the Blackthorn sinking. It is filled with the arcane language of the sea -- plots, watches, port and starboard running lights, bulkheads and the like -- and the dry language of government bureaucracy

But to Maxson, the skipper of the Vise, it is really the story of a family tragedy, and the lessons the family should take from it.

Blackthorn, like the Vise, was part of the Coast Guard's "black-hulled fleet" of tugs, barges and buoy tenders. Black-hulled cutters carry hard-working crews with dirt under fingernails and grease on their overalls, sailors who drive marine pilings and haul giant buoys from the water for paint and repair. The work is difficult and dangerous, and a source of pride for the crew.

It's not that the crews of the white-hulled, search-and-rescue fleet aren't good sailors, said Maxson with a smile, "but we work harder."

The Guard, as sailors call it, "is sort of a large extended family," said Maxson. "A lot of us knew people on the Blackthorn, or knew people who knew people."

And so on Maxson's black-hulled vessel, the report is required reading for every new member of the crew.

"It's so they can better appreciate why we run drills, why we prepare the way we do to sail in these busy waters."

And so today, the entire 14-man crew of the Vise will be in dress uniform. They will stand inspection, then drive to a memorial service near the Sunshine Skyway.

There will be Coast Guardsmen from other units in the area, too: the Air Station in Clearwater, the Marine Safety Office in Tampa, the Group offices in St. Petersburg and the cutters that tie up in Bayboro Harbor.

The commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. James M. Loy will speak. A bell will sound as the names of the dead crew members are read from the permanent monument erected after the accident.

Former skipper Sepel said he has been contacted "from time to time" about attending a Blackthorn memorial service. But for one reason or another, he has not made the trip.

"In the winter my son and I have a snowplowing business, and we stay pretty busy," he said. "It's quite a distance to travel."

He did make one visit to the Blackthorn Memorial, though -- a private one.

"I had come to Florida for a boat show in Fort Lauderdale, and I thought I should visit. My wife and I went, just the two of us. We didn't tell anyone we were coming."

They stood there for 10 or 15 minutes, he said, saying little.

"It was difficult," he said, "very emotional."

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