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Tragedy came fast for 'Stellamare'
As anniversary of deadly capsizing approaches, survivors and witnesses
recall speed of disaster
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By
KATE GURNETT
and JENIA FEDOROVA, Staff writers
First published: Sunday, December 5, 2004
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| ALBANY -- The first jolt was a warning.
Sulieman Khasenevich felt it 30 feet below deck on the Stellamare on Dec. 9,
2003. "What are they doing over there?" he hollered to his friend Nikolay
Zhuk, a welder. They stood next to a locomotive-sized generator in the open
hold of the ship at the Port of Albany. Looking up, in their jumpsuits and
gloves, they'd see another locomotive-sized generator, slung from a crane,
between them and the overcast sky.
The crew was tense, as usual on loading day. The 289-foot Dutch vessel would take on two 308-ton General Electric generators headed for power plants in Romania and Italy. They'd been through it many times. But the slightest miscalculation could cause an imbalance and topple the vessel like a sailboat in a gale. Khasenevich was homesick. He'd gone to sea for one reason: to earn enough cash to free his family from the small flat they shared with neighbors in St. Petersburg, Russia. A short, stocky man with a bald head and dark-blue eyes, he'd grown weary, at 43, of the strain of loading $12 million generators. This is my last trip, he'd told his wife, Natalia. Their son, Sasha, was 10. We've got enough money. After this, I'll be home for good. He felt the jolt at 3 p.m. as the crew shifted water into ballast tanks to steady the heavy-lift ship. One generator was on board, welded to rings on the hold's floor. The second hung over the open hatch. Cables slung through huge bolts on the generator's sides connected to the ship's fore and aft cranes, capable of lifting 360 tons. In the engine room, chief engineer Oleg Istyagin stood at a wall of controls near noisy machinery, a can of Pittjes Nuss-Mix nuts at his elbow, preparing the ballast. Like his shipmates, he hailed from St. Petersburg, home of the Winter Palace, gloomy weather and generations of proud mariners. When the second generator came down, Zhuk and Victor Alexeev, the deck fitters, would weld it to the floor. Khasenevich and Yuri Akofin, 48, would add heavy planking, metal braces and 3-inch cables to protect it during the voyage. Zhuk, 45, was taller than Khasenevich. He'd quit smoking years before, filled out behind his large nose and brown eyes. He'd be glad when the generator was loaded. Then he and five other crew members would fly home, replaced by six newcomers. Ten days earlier, Zhuk had had a dream. He was trying, desperately, to get out of some place. He didn't know if he'd make it. Zhuk never had a chance to answer Khasenevich's question about the unexpected jolt. At 3:02 p.m., the Stellamare tilted again, and kept rolling. Zhuk grabbed a flashlight and ran across a steel deck that was falling away beneath his feet. As he moved, icy water poured in, swallowing his body. Decking and debris smashed his torso, breaking his ribs and both arms. He held his breath and swam. He was trying desperately to get out. He didn't know if he'd make it. In interviews with survivors, witnesses and victims' relatives, the Times Union reconstructed the details of Albany's worst maritime accident in decades. 100 ships arrive at the Port of Albany each year. They trade cement, scrap iron, grain and coal. Heavy-lift ships are built to load and unload bulky, heavy items using cranes that lift 100 tons or more. Some, owned by Netherlands-based Jumbo Shipping Co., pick up General Electric generators that arrive by rail spur from Schenectady. Crews come from China, the Philippines, Poland and Indonesia; 23 countries in 2003. Post-9/11 security restricts many to their vessels. After arriving in Albany from Onne, Nigeria, all but two of the Stellamare's crew found themselves confined to the ship. They watched movies and played classical music cassette tapes or Russian rock by the group Kino. Mostly, port traffic goes unnoticed. Accidents are unusual, fatalities rare. When the Stellamare lurched to port, it triggered a free-fall of cargo and gear that hurled 11 people into deadly waters, killing three, and spilled 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel in Albany's worst marine disaster in modern times. The accident caused $30 million in damage, prompted a U.S. Coast Guard investigation and led to two lawsuits. Before the disaster, the ship's crew had enjoyed a decent job in the merchant marine, which is marked worldwide by low pay, piracy and secretive companies. Each year, thousands of workers are stranded when shell corporations simply stop functioning. Jumbo Shipping was known for its stability as well as its top-of-the-line vessels. The Stellamare was 21 years old, but in mint condition. The smallest of the Jumbo fleet, it's a shallow-draft ship suited to harbors like Albany's, which is about 35 feet deep. Many of the men had seen ferocious seas. They would not have expected to die tied to a dock in port. Especially those six, who by 3 p.m. on Dec. 9, were hours away from heading home. Khasenevich felt the first jolt, Captain Aleksey Zhavoronkov stood on shore, directing operations by radio. He was fairly new to the ship, having come in April from Hai Phong, Vietnam. On the rail, marine consultant Rainer Hoelzl of EWIG International of New Jersey surveyed the load for General Electric. An East German by birth, he had a brushy mustache, piercing blue eyes and 20 years of experience in the merchant marine. Loading generators is a technical operation requiring hours of preparation. In the hours before a load, Stellamare officers checked cargo weight and width specifications, deciding exactly how many thousands of gallons of water to shift in the ballast tanks to prevent the top-heavy, 2,368-ton ship from listing. "There are a number of different people that give orders," said Patrick Lennon, a Manhattan maritime attorney who represents Jumbo Shipping. "Some watch the ship move. Some operate the valves that move the water. ... They have radios." Loading takes several hours. A longshoreman stood on deck, dreadlocks peeking from under his hard hat. Dennis Wilson, 43, watched crane operators lift the generator. The next thing he saw was the gangplank, flying skyward past his face as the deck slid under his feet. Wilson, who was reared in Jamaica, swam poorly, and never in cold water. He tried to brace himself. "I'm going to drown," he thought. There was no shortage of crew members that day. Eighteen men worked instead of the usual 12. The four men in the hold -- Khasenevich, Zhuk, Alexeev and Akofin -- shared a century of experience. They had 15 combined years with Jumbo Shipping. Nor did the equipment fail, said Coast Guard Lt. Carissa VanderMay. The Coast Guard has not released its final report on the accident. Those familiar with the capsizing blame simple human error. aren't given to screaming. When the radio clicked inside the warm dockside trailer of Local 1294 of the International Longshoremen's Association, President Jim Kelleher heard desperation. "The ship tipped over," a port manager hollered. Kelleher ran outside. Sailors in orange jumpsuits flailed in the 33 water. Others perched on a cockeyed bridge. Water gushed into the ship's open hold like a lake filling a bathtub. Longshoremen were dropping a ladder to Hoelzl, who had fallen into a chunk of ice, snapping facial bones and fracturing his skull. When he grabbed the ladder, his broken shoulder gave way and he slipped into the water. "We're losin' him," a longshoreman yelled. Hoelzl's blue eyes stared up in shock. Pink smoke spewed from the ship when emergency crews arrived at 3:07 p.m. From afar, the seamen looked like toy sailors, men in orange jumpsuits waving their arms. One man clung to a crane. Another gripped a life buoy in the river, a head gash oozing blood. As the ship tilted, the generator swung like an unruly anchor, falling into the river and pulling the Stellamare over onto its side. Four men were in the hold. Nikolay Zhuk had signed onto the Stellamare in Hawaii in May. He was ready to go home to his wife, Ludmila, and their daughter Nadezhda, 17. As a volleyball player, Zhuk learned how to take a blow. He thinks it saved his life. When water swept over him, heavy wooden planks and cables smacked his head and chest, breaking both arms, three ribs and a toe. He held his breath. He swam. He remembers no sound, no sight, just one thought: I don't want to die. After 90 seconds, Zhuk broke the surface of the Hudson River. Tufts of snow covered ice in the water. Shaking, he scanned the river for Khasenevich and Alexeev and realized they were trapped. Seventy-five yards downstream, the crew of the channel dredger Columbia stared in disbelief at the bloodied man floating near the blue hull of the Stellamare. Capt. Stephen Taylor radioed the Rhea I. Bouchard, a tug docked 400 yards south, and its crew motored up and pulled Zhuk on board. Men are dead down there, he told them in English. Meanwhile, longshoremen had pulled Hoelzl from the river and cradled him in their arms and jackets. Rescuers used the port's crane to pluck others from the ship. As the afternoon yawned into darkness, the crowd gathering at the port came to realize these things: Three men were missing. Finding victims and raising the vessel in the oily sheen could take months. Hours passed with no sound or sign of life from the ship. Crewmates sketched a crude map of the hull for rescuers, to no avail. Zhuk and Hoelzl underwent surgery; seven seamen were treated at local hospitals. As hope dimmed, Jumbo Shipping, which has offices in Rotterdam, Singapore, Seoul and elsewhere, moved the crew to the Crowne Plaza Hotel and hired Russian guards to watch them. As foreign nationals, the men had to be confined. The guards also prevented them from speaking to reporters. Ship cook Oleg Petrenko sat in his hotel room thinking about that last day. He'd been in the galley, a tiny rectangle with coffee mugs on hooks and plates held tight by wooden slats. He'd made lunch, giving last-minute instructions to his replacement, Sergei Kucherenko. A feeling came over him. Something was wrong with the ship. Then it passed. Now, he couldn't get it out of his mind. For 10 days, divers inched through oily, brown water in the ship's hold. The Albany Maritime Ministry held a memorial for Khasenevich, Alexeev and Akofin. Later, they would erect a stone at the port. Sailors would christen it in the Russian way, with flowers, brown bread and a glass of vodka. The new Russian Orthodox calendar celebrates Dec. 19 as the day of St. Nicholas, the seaman's patron saint. You'll find them then, one Stellamare sailor said. Jumbo Shipping hired Smit Salvage to right the ship. The Dutch firm had raised the Russian submarine Kursk, which sank in 2000 with two nuclear reactors and 22 cruise missiles, killing 118. On Dec. 19, a diver for Smit Salvage saw Yuri Akofin's boots sticking out from behind the generator in the cargo hold. The hulking Norwegian diver refused to touch the body. On Dec. 20, divers found Khasenevich's body. Alexeev, said to be kind and respected for his intelligence, was thought to have been washed downriver until Jan. 4, when a crew pumping water out of the now-upright ship saw his legs dangling from a mass of cables in the forward part of the hold. Firefighters had to cut Alexeev's clothing to free his body. Firefighters said all three men had drowned. Shipping agent Kahn Scheepvaart paid death benefits to the families, said Patrick Lennon, the attorney who represents Jumbo Shipping. Alexeev, initially reported to be single, left a widow, Tatiana, a devout Russian Orthodox who believes a person should be buried on the third day after his death. Akofin was divorced and had a grown daughter. Khasenevich's widow, Natalia, received $60,000; her son, $15,000. She moved out of her flat, with its communal bathrooms and kitchen, and bought her own place. But it's no good, she said recently, because her husband is dead. After the accident, Zhuk began smoking again. He lost 30 pounds wondering why he lived when his friends died. He still grieves his inability to help them. "It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly," he said from his home in Russia. "I just reacted." A lifelong sailor, he plans to return to the sea. I must be strong, he tells himself, not give in to despair. He wants to let life go its natural course. Last month, Rainer Hoelzl and the longshoremen who saved him were back at the Port of Albany, loading two massive General Electric generators onto a Jumbo Shipping vessel, the Fairlift. "I've got to make a living," said Hoelzl, who lost his sense of smell and gained metal plates and screws in his skull, cheek and brow. He is suing Jumbo Shipping and Kahn Scheepvaart for failing to provide a safe workplace. General Electric will sue Jumbo for the loss of cargo, Lennon said. The Stellamare spent last winter at a small port south of Albany, where Herbert Brake and Bill Welch rebuilt their $125,000 purchase. They sold it last month to a Greek captain, Alexander Saleh. On the morning of Dec. 2, nearly a year after it capsized, the ship parted the still waters of the Hudson River and passed the Port of Albany en route to the Bahamas and a future hauling lumber and oranges to and from Egypt. As it passed under its new name, the Nadalina S, members of the Albany Maritime Ministry sounded the horn of the USS Slater and tossed a pine bough wreath with three roses into the water. Towed by a tug, the ship's stern was crunched like a soda can, a hole where a crane was used to lift it from the river bottom. On the bridge, the captain's binoculars were covered in Hudson River mud. For anyone who might listen, the steering deck carried Russian rock cassettes by Kino. In the galley, a single bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcestshire sauce stood watch on a shelf, waiting for the next crew. Gurnett can be reached at 454-5490 or by e-mail at kgurnett@timesunion.com. Jenia Fedorova is a Russian exchange journalist through the Albany-Tula Alliance. She interpreted and interviewed Russian families for this story.
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