The ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the MV Dali, has docked in the Port of Baltimore, but the crew will likely need to remain on board.
After 55 days of being entangled in the wreckage in the Patapsco River, the Dali was moved and docked this week. The crew, composed of 20 Indians and one Sri Lankan, remained aboard for the entirety of it being stuck and will likely need to stay on board “for the foreseeable future.”
Some of the reasons the crew will need to remain on the ship include U.S. visas that have expired while they have been trapped on board. Maritime law also requires a ship of the Dali’s size (984 feet and 106,000 tons) to be manned at all times.
“You can take on water. There’s machinery running. … Anytime machinery is running, there’s a particular risk of something failing and causing a fire or something like that,” Philip C. Schifflin Jr., the director of the Center for Mariner Advocacy, said. “So seafarers need to be on board ready to respond to those various hazards. And that’s by law.”
There is no immediate plan for what will happen to the crew members now that the ship is docked.
“It has been tough for the seafarers, primarily (because) they know that there’s been loss of life,” said Gwee Guo Duan, the assistant general secretary of the Singapore Maritime Officers’ Union, one of the unions representing crew members on the Dali. “It is tough for them, being on board and having to look at the accident site every single day.”
The crew is playing a critical role in the investigation, alongside their normal duties.
“They know all the passageways. They know where everything is on the ship,” Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for Synergy Marine Group, the company that manages the ship, said. “So if somebody has a question about where can we hook up to get running water, the crew is essentially just assisting in any way possible.”
While investigations have led to no one person being responsible for the power outage that resulted in the crash, two unions have said crew members on board feel an “unfounded fear of personal criminal liability.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation also seized the cellphones of crew members as part of the investigation, which has caused some to feel disconnected from the outside world.
“They are a little anxious because of the phone situation. We are trying to get their cellphones back to them,” Josh Messick, the executive director of the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center, told CNN. “It’s not just a phone. They can’t access their online banking, their finances, their contacts. They can’t look at photos of their loved ones before they go to sleep at night. It’s a lot more than just a phone.”
Some crew members have since been given new cellphones, while others have been given back their old devices.
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“However long the investigation takes, the crew’s rights and welfare should not be infringed upon during its course,” Dave Heindel, the president of the Seafarers International Union, said in a statement.
“We call on the authorities to be mindful that seafarers utilize mobile devices to conduct personal business for bill payments and more importantly, transfer money to their home country to sustain families,” he said. “Crew members are becoming demoralized without the basic tools we all take for granted.”