Bosporus by Oil Tanker, 2005, by Bruce Falconer

From MemoryArchive

Who: B. Falconer
What: The Bosporus
When: Winter 2005
Where: Istanbul, Turkey

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Awoke just before 8am to the ringing of my phone. It was Captain Istikbal calling to tell me that a supertanker would be entering the strait later in the morning. He asked me to meet him at the pilots’ station in Karakoy at no later than 10am. Quickly got out of bed, but had made it no farther than the bathroom when my food poisoning came back. Sick to my stomach. Wondered for a moment whether I’d be able to make it through a day of climbing and wave action. Took a shower and downed some Immodium caplets. Dressed in dirty clothes because I was expecting to either fall into the water or at the very least be drenched by waves while climbing aboard the tanker. Black jeans, two pairs of black socks, t-shirt, gray hooded sweatshirt, and my Gore-Tex jacket with hat, scarf, and gloves. It had been very cold out on the water last night, so I decided to prepare for the worst.

Left the house just before 9am. Promptly fell on my ass trying to negotiate the icy stairs leading down to Bankalar Caddesi. Walked to Kadikoy Iskelesi, paid one lira for a token, and got on a ferry. A sunny, but very hazy morning. Visibility poor. The water taxi arrived in Karakoy at around 9:30am. Hopped in a cab and handed the phone to the driver. Captain Istikbal gave him directions to the pilots’ station, but the cabbie didn’t listen. He dropped me in the wrong place, so I was forced to ask a security guard at the police station for help. He didn’t speak English. A lot of hand gestures. Called Captain Istikbal again and gave the phone to the guard. He finally pointed me to a rounded white house located on a point jutting out from the shore. I walked down the street and turned on a gravel road near the fast ferry landing, where the modern passenger catamarans load commuters bound for points on the European side of Istanbul. Mounds of trash were strewn about in front of a metal fence that surrounded the building. Captain Istikbal met me at the front door and invited me in.

Captain Istikbal was younger than I had imagined. He was wearing wrinkled black slacks that fell loosely around his shoes. His potbelly fit snugly against his white, button-down shirt and black tie. He wore a blue athletic sweatshirt with a silver zipper running down the front. His face was chubby with fleshy cheeks and a large mouth. His eyes peaked out from under a full head of moppy brown hair. He stood just under six-feet, but tended to slouch. Captain Istikbal was born in 1963 in the town of Rize in Turkey’s Black Sea region. The son of a schoolteacher, he was introduced to the sea by his uncles, who worked as commercial shipmasters. At the age of sixteen, he went to sea. He says he didn’t know anything about the ocean at that early point, but was innately drawn to it. He graduated Turkey’s merchant marine academy after four years and eventually became a deck officer on a supertanker, the Turkish-flagged “Gaziantep,” where he remained for only one year. The vessel carried crude oil in the Persian Gulf area during the Gulf War. He remembered how the Japanese government had sent a notice warning of at least 155 areas that contained sea mines left over from the Iran-Iraq war, but that their delivery schedule had not allowed much time for concern. The ship routinely weaved its way through the hazards in the service of the global petroleum market. After his year on “Gaziantep,” he completed his mandatory military service as a translator with the general staff in Ankara. Then he began seven years as a deck officer on luxury passenger ships operating between Turkey and the Norwegian fjords. It is a time he remembers fondly. But in the name of “a more settled life,” he returned to Turkey in 1996 to become a pilot. [Note: Qualifications to become a pilot include experience as a shipmaster and written, oral, and physical exams. If you pass, you then enter into three months of training on the Bosporus and three months on the Dardanelles.) Since then he has piloted ships both through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, a similar strategic choke point located at the southern entrance to the Marmara Sea from the Aegean. He recently completed a two-year rotation (2003-2004) as a harbor pilot at the Istanbul container port and at the international passenger terminal in Beyoglu, but has now returned to ushering ships through the Bosporus. From 1996 through 1999, Captain Istikbal also served on the Turkish delegation to the International Maritime Organization, where he worked on issues related to the Bosporus.

There are about 115 pilots now working on the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The Bosporus division has two pilothouses, one at the southern entrance on the Marmara and another just below the Black Sea on the northern end. Pilots work two days on and four days off. The building on the Marmara shore has a series of offices, each with its own bed. They have the appearance of dorm rooms. Captain Istikbal said they have to sleep there during their days and nights on call. A firehouse-sort of feel with pilots waiting through the boredom for brief moments of action. Most ships passing through don’t take pilots, however, because it is not required. Suez and Panama can mandate pilots because they are manmade waterways, but because the Bosporus and Dardanelles are natural formations, Turkey for some reason cannot require pilots. Ships passing through “natural channels” are guaranteed “freedom of passage” by the International Law of the Sea (to which Turkey is not a signatory because of something having to do with Cypress). The principle is further enshrined in the Montreux Convention of 1936, which outlines Turkey’s rights and responsibilities with regard to the Bosporusand the Dardanelles. Turkey must guarantee freedom of passage, but it is able to control safety and security in the state because after all the Bosporus is under Turkish sovereignty (unlike Suez and Panama, which are under international control). This sovereignty was put to the test in 1994 after a tanker collision that resulted in about thirty deaths and left the straits impassable for almost a week as fires raged, blackening the skies over Istanbul. Afterwards, Turkey imposed a series of new requirements, including tonnage and length restrictions, a two-lane traffic system, and limits on how many hazardous cargos can pass the strait at once and in which direction. The strait was closed to opposing traffic whenever a ship in excess of 200 meters (originally 250 meters, but revised in 2001) was passing through. No ship over 300 meters in length was permitted to pass without the express permission of the Turkish government. Masters of such ships were required submit to costly safety measures, such as extra tugs and coast guard escorts. Russian, Greece, and Cypress later protested the changes. It was these types of issues that Captain Istikbal helped to hash out at the IMO over the years.

Turkey installed the so-called Vessel Traffic System (VTS) at the end of 2003. It includes eight mushroom-shaped radar towers along the Bosporus and five more in the Dardanelles. Expansion of the system will soon enable the VTS to monitor all vessel traffic in the Marmara, as well. The Turkish government paid for and built the $45-million system as an added safety measure. Passing ships do not have to pay for the service; their only costs are for the pilot, which is pro-rated according to each ship’s gross tonnage. I asked Captain Istikbal is the VTS was helping to make the Bosporussafer. He said no, that it primarily helps with after-action reports, but doesn’t really have any preventative capacity. Indeed, while the number of accidents has fallen in recent years, the Bosporus remains an intensely dangerous place. Ships run aground two or three time a year at Yenikoy, the strait’s narrowest point, which requires masters to execute a difficult eighty-degree turn. Most are unfamiliar with the strong currents that run through that part of the strait, currents that pull ships toward the far shore very quickly. Captain Istikbal’s Turkish Maritime Pilots Organization keeps careful records of all accidents on the strait, which show that incidents happen far more often on ships that decline to accept a pilot. Houses along the shore are periodically destroyed when supertankers crash through the walls of people’s living rooms. People are occasionally killed while sitting on their couches or laying in their beds. Captain Istikbal’s numbers show that between 1982 and 2001, 406 vessels were involved in 291 accidents (groundings, collisions, shore contact, etc.). Only 58 of these accidents involved ships that had accepted a pilot. Another of his statistics showed that 85 percent of accidents on the strait occur on ships without pilots. Details are available in Captain Istikbal’s March 2002 PowerPoint presentation to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and on the TMPA website.

Captain Istikbal lead me up a staircase to a rounded room lined with pane glass windows, affording a 360 degree view of the Marmara and the entrance to the Bosporus. It was a control center of some type. Beige carpet with a wood trim and a wood panel ceiling. A computer monitor showing the locations of all the ships lined up to pass the Bosporus. Telephones. A short-wave radio. The center was manned by an old, balding man in a white sweater. He had a Caucasian complexion, but spoke Turkish like a native. He could also speak English, as can all of the pilots and shipmasters, as English is the international language of the sea. I spoke for a while with Captain Istikbal about his childhood, his interest in the sea, his professional history, etc. He suggested that I refrain from using a tape recorder today, as it might spook the master of the ship. I could see ships entering view on the horizon. One of them was a massive cargo ship with two large booms standing tall from the deck. Behind it was our supertanker.

The “Saint Nicholas” was a 244-meter, Maltese-flagged oil tanker out of Valletta. Operated by a Greek tanker company called Thenamaris. IMO #9229362. Red below the water line and blue above. Red again on the deck. It was riding empty (or in ballast) today, so both colors were clearly visible above the water. A huge white superstructure aft of the deck was eight or ten stories tall and held the crew quarters, common areas, and the pilot’s bridge. The ship appeared to be fairly new and in decent condition. Captain Istikbal told me that all Thenamaris ships are well maintained. As the ship entered the southern approach to the strait, we piled into a red tugboat and went to meet it. Cold on the water. Chop from the waves. I didn’t know we were there until I peered out the window and saw the massive hull of the tanker looming just out the window. The tug pulled close alongside, with rubber tires the only thing separated it from the metal side of the tanker. A rope ladder had been lowered from the main deck. Captain Istikbal told me that the climb was about 10 meters over open water (on a fast moving tanker, no less) and asked if I was up for it. I told him that we’d soon find out. He went first. I noticed that he was very deliberate in how he placed his hands and feet, so I did the same when it came my turn. The ladder swung back and forth wildly in the wind as I climbed. Did not look down. Captain Istikbal later told me that every year at least one pilot dies somewhere in the world while climbing aboard tankers like this one. There are no safety harnesses and to fall would land you either on the steel tugboat below or in the frigid water. Just above the water line where the hull turned from red to blue, there was a metal gangplank leading diagonally across the upper portion of the hull to the main deck. It also swung in the wind, and our steps caused it to strain against the ropes that held it in place. We were met at the top by a deck officer, who led us across the enormous red expanse into the superstructure and up some winding stairs to the bridge. Caught glimpses of the crew rooms and common areas on the way up. Everything very clean and sterile. The pilot room was the same. Full of instrument panels. Gauges and buttons, radar screens and telephones. A row of circular gauges above the window looking out over the ship: time, water depth, speed, rate of turn, and wind direction. The floors were white linoleum. The control panels had blue countertops. A red button on the far right control panel operated the foghorn.

When we entered the bridge area, Captain Istikbal said, “My friend here is a writer.” The master and the officers nodded. A potentially tricky situation had been diffused, at least temporarily. I’d been warned that masters don’t like journalists, especially on ships that have lots of mechanical or maintenance problems as most tankers in the Black Sea region do. (Note: As the European Union and the United States tighten restrictions on the types of ships they will receive in their ports, most of the rust buckets have been banished to less developed parts of the world, where they are used by poorer countries. The Black Sea with coasts belonging to Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Iran is just such a place.) Our ship was typical in its mockery of national conceits. The master and most of the officers were Bulgarian. The man behind the wheel was Filipino. The ship was registered in Malta, but was being operated by a Greek company. The country of construction was unknown, as was the nationality of the ship owner. Don’t know yet the classification society, either. Much of this information, however, should be available on Lloyds List. Captain Istikbal said he could get it for me if I have trouble.

The master was a tallish man, maybe a little over six-feet, with long brown hair and brown eyes.. He wore a black waistcoat with a captain’s naval epaulettes, tan pants, and black sneakers. His bushy chest hair spilled over the top of his brown t-shirt. A gold chain and sunglasses hung around his neck. He did not engage me in conversation and seemed a bit put off at my even being there. At one point I tried to ask the Filipino wheelman a question and he quickly admonished me to direct all questions directly to him. I apologized and remained quiet for a while. When finally I summoned the courage to engage the master in conversation, our talk was short. This was his twenty-fifth year at sea and his fifth year as a master of his own ship. He said he’d passed the Bosporus more times than he could remember. The “Saint Nicholas” and its crew of about 35 had come from a port in Italy through some rough weather in the Mediterranean. Due to heavy snowfall in Istanbul last week that reduced visibility to zero and closed the strait for a while, it had been forced to wait four days to clear the Dardanelles to the south and another three before it was finally allowed to proceed through the Bosporus. Such delays are very costly for ship owners. The ship was going to Odessa, Ukraine, to pick up a load of Russian crude oil for an unknown buyer. Even the master and his officers were confused by the concept of loading Russian oil in Odessa. “Odessa is part of Ukraine now, not the Soviet Union,” one of the officers said to Captain Istikbal. “Yes, I know,” he replied. “I heard Ukraine is importing its oil from Libya.” I marveled at the randomness of it all and questioned Captain Istikbal why the Ukrainians don’t simply get their oil from Russia. He didn’t know.

One of the officers served us both with coffee and water. Captain Istikbal looked very relaxed sipping his drink and staring out the huge glass windows. The strait was full of traffic from other commercial ships, fishing boats, commuter ferries, private boats, tugboats, and coast guard vessels. We were by far, however, the biggest ship in the strait. All oncoming traffic had been halted to allow us to pass. What concerned the officers most seemed to be other ships that might cross our path and lead to a collision. Captain Istikbal kept careful watch of all ships in our path and notified them via radio of our speed and course. As we approached Kandilli, the narrowest and deepest point (110 meters) in the Bosporus, we called to a small tanker to our right that we were about to pass. The VTS system carried conversations with other craft that was frantic at times. “This VTS is talking too much,” Captain Istikbal said. “It is not helping.” He had a laugh with the master about it. Captain Istikbal’s commands were repetitive. “Starboard 10”… ”Midships”… “Steady as she goes”… He told me later that he likes to keep it simple so that there is less room for error. At every command the wheelman would repeat the order, execute it, and repeat the order again.

Visibility had improved briefly, but as we ventured further north, it worsened again. Haze. The faint outline of another large ship was barely visible ahead of us. The weather in the strait is notoriously fickle and can be a serious hazard. The predominant surface current is from northwest to southeast, but about twenty times a year the wind shifts, pushing from the Mediterranean towards the Black Sea. The wind is known as the Lodos. If it continues long enough, the surface current also reverses, creating treacherous going for mariners. I was lucky enough to be in the strait at just one of these moments. The winds in the strait had begun to shift during the early morning hours. The Black Sea’s currents had already been affected, and Captain Istikbal told the master that it would have full effect in the strait by tomorrow when they’d be loading their cargo in Odessa for the return trip, again through the Bosporus.

From the bridge I could see men in orange jumpsuits and orange hats applying fresh coats of red paint to the main deck. Even as the ship passed one of the most scenic channels on Earth, the crew was steeped in the monotony of their daily chores. There was time, however, for the officers on the bridge to take in the view. They asked about Leander’s Tower near the Asian shore. The master, seeing cars zooming by overhead on the Bosporus extension bridge, the seventh largest of its kind in the world, asked Captain Istikbal how they keep the it from freezing over in the wintertime. Urea for the bridge, salt for the roads. Later, another deck officer, perhaps astonished by the frenzied human activity on the nearby shorelines after so many lonely weeks on the open ocean, asked, “How many million are in Istanbul?” Captain Istikbal told him the official number was eight million, but that the real number was much higher, perhaps ten million. In actuality, it’s more than that. Most estimates put the total urban population at anywhere from twelve-to-eighteen million people. This is, of course, the problem, too. The population of Istanbul is daily put at risk by massive commercial ships carrying millions of tons of poisonous or flammable cargos right through the city’s center. No other modern city in the world is subjected to such risk so thoughtlessly. Istanbul has, of course, simply by virtue of its location always been a trade center and a transit point for goods bound for other parts of the world. But in the modern world, those cargos have become potentially deadly. A collision between two supertankers loaded with oil, gas, or flammable chemicals could be catastrophic. Thousands could die in the explosion and many others from the atmospheric affects. The strait could be closed for weeks or months after such an incident, leading to economic collapse for nations dependent on getting their oil to or from the international market.

I asked Captain Istikbal how much space it would require for a tanker this size to come to a complete stop. Fully laden with cargo, he said, the ship would need about five kilometers. Riding in ballast (as we were), would require about half that distance. The Bosporus doesn’t provide for these margins of error—A ship that loses steering in the strait almost inevitably goes aground or rams into the shore. The only recourse a master has in such a situation is to drop anchor, but this is usually not enough, particularly for the southbound ships that are fully laden with crude.

After we passed under Fatih Ali Mehmet bridge near the narrowest point in the strait (the part with the least room for maneuver), there was some concern with a small red tanker that was turning in our direction. “What’s that red one doing, huh? Turning?” asked the master. Captain Istikbal made contact through a short-wave radio and had a brief conversation in Turkish. “No problem,” he replied. The officers, perhaps not convinced, continued to peer at the small ship through their binoculars and talked amongst themselves in Bulgarian. Shortly thereafter, the strait opened up again and began to broaden. We stood by for a few more minutes as Captain Istikbal made conversation with the officers. They took care of the bill discreetly. The master went to a cabinet in the back and brought out two cartons of Marlboro 100s, one for Captain Istikbal and one for me. Snapped a couple of pictures with the master. Captain Istikbal told him that opposing traffic would be suspended until the evening, so he should not be troubled by ships approaching from the other direction. We thanked him and said good-bye. Back down through the superstructure and out onto the deck. Down the gangplank and back onto the rope ladder leading to the tugboat that had again pulled alongside. Captain Istikbal went first so that he could snap my picture as I climbed down.

The tugboat docked at the northern pilots’ station. Not as nice as the southern station, but in a nicer location. We climbed up some stone stairs leading up the hillside through the trees. A cook on duty at the station prepared lunch. I sat upstairs with Captain Istikbal as he walked me through his CSIS presentation on his laptop computer. Then back downstairs to the common room, where we ate bean soup, salad, and bread. Many pilots hanging out with nothing to do. Captain Istikbal ordered me a taxi. It arrived a few minutes later. We snapped some pictures together before I left. Traffic back to Galata was a nightmare. The cabbie took me out on the modern highway that passed through the modern business district of Istanbul. Tall glass office buildings everywhere. We were deadlocked in traffic until we passed Metro City, one of Istanbul’s huge modern shopping malls. Arrived home around 2pm. Gave the Marlboro 100s to Farooq. Worked on my notes. Felt sick to my stomach, so crawled into bed with my iPod. Stayed there most of the afternoon. Eventually took a Nyquil caplet and went back to bed for the night.