It's early Sunday morning, a beautiful day to be headed out to sea.
I'm a South Korean crew member aboard the massive cargo ship, the Golden Ray.
While we're capable of taking on all matter of cargo, today we're hauling a load of automobiles
and shipping cargo containers, full of all kinds of household and electronic goods.
The Golden Ray is massive, the size of a seventy story building and bigger than the aircraft
carriers of World War II!
But keeping her afloat is a challenge, and takes the effort of the entire crew.
The distribution of weight around the ship has to be carefully calculated.
Experienced ship captains call the Ray and ships like her floating shoe boxes, given
how very unstable they can become if the ship's load distribution isn't carefully managed.
To do this we assess everything we're taking on before letting a single item of cargo onto
the ship, calculating exactly how much our expected load will weigh.
Then, with the help of a computer, we plot where to place each item, down to the very
last car or shipping container.
Even a tiny discrepancy in weight could result in disaster!
This time around, we were a bit rushed in taking on our over 4,000 vehicles and smattering
of cargo containers, but the crew is still confident we did our jobs well.
We're headed out of the Port of Brunswick in Georgia, and leaving the American east
coast behind, but first we have to cross the St. Simon's Sound before making for open water.
Hurricane Dorian grazed this part of the coast not too long ago, but the US Army Corps of
Engineers performed their usual post-hurricane assessment of the waterway and decided that
it was safe for large cargo ships to cross.
That's a great relief for me and the rest of the crew, as there's no telling what might
happen if we were to strike a bunch of underwater debris.
While the ship's thick steel hull would prevent a puncture, we're more worried about the ship's
two propellers being damaged.
Those could take weeks to repair, and would be a financial nightmare for the company that
owns our ship.
After a busy night loading cars and a few shipping containers though, it's smooth sailing
out to the open sea.
We pass by many beaches, and can see the American beach goers gawking in awe at the size of
our massive ship.
I always like to watch people as we sail in and out of harbor, getting to meet new people
and experience new cultures is one of the biggest reasons why I became a merchant marine
in the first place!
Suddenly though the ship lists slightly to its side, just a few degrees at first.
I feel a bit of alarm rising up inside of me, the waters are calm and smooth, we shouldn't
be feeling the effects of the waves at all.
Something else must be wrong I realize, a growing cold feeling of dread sneaking up
my spine.
As if to reassure my worst fears, the list suddenly grows worse, and what started off
as a two or three degree list is now about six degrees.
Across the various cargo decks of the ship I can hear car wheels squealing as they slide
across the floor- the brakes are engaged and they've been choked in place, but the list
is too great to resist.
As the cars shift to starboard I know deep down inside that the ship's fate is sealed.
The comparison to shoe boxes by other sea captains aren't wrong- our ship is very wide,
and this makes it inherently unstable.
It requires the careful pumping of fuel and water in ballast tanks to offset the effects
of high seas or sharp turns.
But nothing can stop the ship from capsizing if its entire cargo suddenly shifts to one
side- as is happening right now.
I can hear 16,000 tires screaming as their rubber squeaks across the stainless steel
floor.
I barely have time to react before suddenly the entire ship lists completely on its side!
Furniture and all kinds of items go flying across the room and I'm slammed into what
was formerly the right wall of the engine room.
With me are two other colleagues, and I watch one of them take a pretty serious blow to
the head as he crashes against what was formerly the wall, and now is our floor.
The waters we're crossing aren't too deep, but deep enough to completely swallow up the
Golden Ray.
Escape from the room is impossible, as the door outside leads to a hallway which is now
a vertical shaft.
There's no windows here in the engine room, as we're basically deep in the bowels of the
ship, so there's no hope of escape.
The only thing we can do is sit tight and wait for rescuers.
Luckily we're not far from port, and haven't even cleared the sound to enter open waters
yet- without a doubt dozens of beach goers have already seen the accident and must surely
be on their cell phones calling for help.
Though hopefully someone in the control room got a radio call out before disaster struck
as well.
There's nothing to do but wait.
None of my training has prepared me for this.
We've been trained on how to escape the ship if it began to sink, how to fight fires, even
how to secure cargo in raging storms, but nothing ever covered what to do if you were
trapped on a ship capsized ninety degrees, and escape was impossible.
The engine room is hot, really hot.
The engines stopped running shortly after the accident, and I'm grateful for that because
any damage to the exhaust vents might have flooded the room with deadly carbon monoxide.
Unfortunately because the engines cut off, the lights very quickly died, flickering off
after a few minutes, which was all the battery power the ship had.
That likely means that some of the batteries were damaged, but it doesn't matter now.
I'm stuck alone in the dark with two other sailors, and the temperature is steadily soaring.
Engine rooms on big ships are always hot, well over 100 degrees, but with no ventilation
and the hot Georgia sun beating down on the ship outside, the temperature rises ever slowly
upwards.
As the hours go by, all three of us stuck in the engine room start stripping off clothes.
We have no water, no food, and no cell phone or radio.
Surely though, people outside know that we're alive.
The three of us take turns encouraging each other, pushing away terrifying thoughts of
being left here to die.
At least no water has entered the engine room, which means the ship isn't sinking.
As the day wears on though and the heat rises, I find myself wishing that at least part of
the ship would flood, I'd give anything for cool, refreshing water right now.
Suddenly we can hear banging on the hull right outside the engine room!
Shouting for joy we pick up whatever we can find and start banging back!
We can barely hear a voice through the several inches of steel shouting back at us, “This
is the US Coast Guard, we will rescue you!”
Hope!
We're not going to steam to death in our overturned pressure cooker!
An hour later we can hear the sound of a blowtorch cutting through the steel.
We make sure to back away so we don't get accidentally cut or burned, and await eagerly
as the torch works its way through the thick steel of the ship's hull.
After a half hour we can start to see the metal on our side of the hull glowing cherry
red, and then shortly after, the torch breaks through!
It's a small hole, but it's enough to communicate with the people outside.
The American coast guard has been pulling survivors out of the ship all day long, determined
to save the life of every single crewman.
I learn that we're some of the last survivors being rescued, and that specialized equipment
is being flown in to rescue us.
The blowtorch can't cut a hole wide enough to free us, that would take too long, so industrial
cutters are being flown in for the job.
For now we have to remain in the overturned engine room.
The heat is now over 150 degrees and it's hard to breathe.
I feel faint, and try as hard as I can to keep myself and the others awake.
The hole that the coast guard cut was just big enough to push through bottles of water
and food, and I didn't realize how dehydrated I was until I drank two bottles of water within
seconds!
I try to pace myself with the rest, I know that heat exhaustion can cause nausea and
make you vomit the water you drink, which only adds to your dehydration.
Right now it's all about keeping our spirits up and surviving.
Night time comes and the Coast Guard officers outside the ship reassure us that they haven't
given up on us.
Don't give up hope they tell us, and they push through more supplies.
Someone always stays near the hole so we have someone to talk to, and in the darkness, the
voice of a friendly rescuer is enough to keep us going.
The next day just after sunrise I can hear the sound of what must be the industrial cutters
the Coast Guard has been waiting for.
Diamond tipped saw blades start chewing into the hull of the ship, but it's agonizingly
slow going.
The temperature didn't improve much over night, and we're all starting to feel the effects
of extreme heat exhaustion.
Luckily the Coast Guard keeps pushing through ice-cold bottles of water for us, and the
cold water tastes like heaven.
Hour after hour passes, the saws gradually getting closer and closer, but impossibly
slow.
My head is swimming, the heat is so severe it's really starting to get to me.
I talk with the others and we sing songs to keep alert and keep our spirits up.
After a few more hours the saw blades are so loud that we can't hear each other unless
we shout anymore, but at least it means that rescue is close.
Finally, it happens.
One of the blades cuts through the steel on the wall, and slowly a large opening is cut
into the engine room.
Coast Guard rescuers are there, waiting for us, helping to pull us out and along the small
tunnel they've had to drill through the hull.
In moments I can see light for the first time in almost two days, and taste fresh, sweet,
beautiful air!
Behind me, the air venting out of the engine room feels like the blast of a furnace, and
the Coast Guard rescuers had to work with ice packs in their pockets just to stand the
extreme heat.
We're rushed off to the hospital, and later I learn that a fourth crew man was rescued
from deeper in the ship.
He had taken refuge behind a blast-proof door, and that required a specialized saw to cut
through.
In the end the ship is a total loss, along with its cargo, but not a single one of us
died, due in no small part to the heroic non-stop rescue efforts of the US Coast Guard.
How would you survive stuck in the dark and heat for almost two days?!
Have you ever been in a ship accident?
Let us know in the comments!
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