LAWYER: SKIPPER DIDN'T TRY TO MOVE SHIP
ACCOUNT GIVEN BY HAZELWOOD'S ATTORNEY CONTRADICTED BY RADIO TRAFFIC TAPE

By STAN JONES
Daily News reporter

ANCHORAGE- A lawyer for Capt. Joseph Hazelwood says the master of the Exxon Valdez never tried to move the tanker off Bligh Reef after it ran aground on March 24, an action that would have risked sinking the vessel.

Instead, Hazelwood used the ship's engines sometimes at full power to hold it on the reef against the incoming tide, said New York attorney Michael Chalos.

"He wants to keep the vessel on the ledge," Chalos said. "He's concerned about coming off the ledge and possibly capsizing or breaking up."

Chalos said he based his information on an automatic computer printout of the power settings on the Valdez's engines around the time of the grounding, and on interviews with sources. He declined to provide the Daily News with a copy of the printout or any other documentation, and he refused to identify any of the people interviewed. He also wouldn't disclose what Hazelwood himself said about the cause of the disaster or its aftermath.

"I'm doing the best I can without having to reveal conversations that I had with my client," Chalos said. "We have nothing to hide and we have nothing that we don't want to disclose to the press so long as it doesn't prejudice the position of our client in these criminal proceedings."

But Chalos' account is contradicted by what Hazelwood repeatedly told the Coast Guard by radio on the night of the grounding that he was trying to get the Valdez off the reef.

"We're (in) pretty good shape now, stability wise, and, ah, trying to extract her off the shoal here," Hazelwood radioed to Coast Guard Commander Steve McCall shortly after the grounding. "Once we get under way, I'll let you know."

McCall and his boss, Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost, have said in recent days they believed the ship would have sunk if it had come unstuck from the reef.

Chalos' version of events was also questioned by a Seattle naval architect and didn't square with federal tide data for the Bligh Reef area, which show the speed of the incoming tide didn't exceed onetenth of a knot on the night of the grounding. The architect said Hazelwood would have needed only a small amount of power to counteract the current.

The Exxon Valdez, bound for Long Beach, Calif., with 53 million gallons of North Slope crude oil in its tanks, hit the reef about 25 miles southwest of the port of Valdez shortly after midnight on March 24, spilling more than 10 million gallons into Prince William Sound.

In the first detailed version of the accident from Hazelwood's camp, Chalos made other new claims in an hour long interview with the Daily News on Wednesday:

* The ship's autopilot was not a factor in the accident and was probably not on, Chalos said. Other accounts have said that the autopilot was on at the time of the grounding, and may have interfered with the crew's efforts to avoid the reef.

* The ship ran aground 12 minutes later than previously reported, according to Chalos. He put the grounding at 12:16 a.m., March 24. Earlier accounts, by the National Transportation Safety Board and other sources, put the grounding at 12:04 a.m. Hazelwood, who had gone to his cabin below the bridge a few minutes before the grounding, returned to the bridge within 30 seconds of the grounding, Chalos said.

* Hazelwood's reference shortly after the grounding to a "little problem here with the third mate" didn't mean the third mate was a problem, according to Chalos. "There was nothing cryptic about it. I think it was a reference to the problem (of the grounding) and the third mate having been on watch at the time," Chalos said.

Hazelwood faces state criminal charges in Alaska and extradition proceedings are scheduled to begin next week in New York, though Hazelwood's lawyers have said he may return voluntarily. He has been charged with three misdemeanors: operating a watercraft while intoxicated, reckless endangerment and negligent discharge of oil.

Hazelwood's defense has been evolving as Chalos investigates the events surrounding the grounding and prepares for trial. Until the tapes of the Valdez Coast Guard conversations were obtained by the Daily News a few days ago under the Freedom of Information Act, Chalos said, he was unaware of their content and of Hazelwood's repeated declarations that he was trying to move from the reef.

Chalos said that within minutes of the grounding, Hazelwood had concluded he needed to take immediate action to keep the ship from floating off the reef in the incoming tide, which could have caused it to capsize or break up.

To stay in position, Chalos said, Hazelwood put out an anchor from the right side of the ship and ran the engines at gradually increasing power. By 12:50 a.m., Chalos said, Hazelwood had the engines at full speed ahead in the effort to maintain himself on the reef.

But Chalos was unable to explain why, at 1:07 a.m., 17 minutes later, Hazelwood three times told McCall that he was trying to get the ship off the reef, despite the Coast Guard officer's repeated urging that he be careful.

"We're trying just to get her off the reef," Hazelwood said after McCall asked him for a situation report.

"We're . . . trying to extract her off the shoal here," Hazelwood said after McCall warned him to take it "slow and easy."

"We're just kind of hung up on the stern here . . . we'll drift over it," Hazelwood said after McCall warned him against "doing any ripping" or "much wiggling."

And at 1:59, when McCall called back for another situation report, an unidentified crewman indicated there were still plans to try to free the Valdez under its own power.

"We're going to wait till there's a little more water underneath us," the crewman said when McCall asked if they were still trying to get off the reef.

When Chalos was read a transcript of Hazelwood's conversations with McCall, he insisted that Hazelwood's actions were more important than his words.

"You're looking at it as though the guy was making erroneous maneuvering when, in fact, he was making very delicate, very sophisticated and . . . proper maneuvers," Chalos said.

"I sail, and if I were aground I would say the exact same thing, because no mariner wants his ship aground," said Chalos. "He's hoping to get off the reef at this particular time, but he's taking no action to cause him to come off the reef."

John Waterhouse, a naval architect and president of the Elliott Bay Design Group in Seattle who studied the Valdez accident as a consultant, seriously questioned the idea of using full power to keep the Valdez on the reef.

"You would need fairly gentle orders," he said. A proper command would be dead slow or one quarter ahead, he said.

Waterhouse said that at full power a tanker like the Valdez generates a million pounds of thrust or more.

John Whitney, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said after studying federal tide tables that tidal currents in the Bligh Reef area wouldn't have been more than 1|10 of a knot at the time of the Valdez grounding.

A knot is one nautical mile per hour, slightly faster than a statute mile per hour.

"You can't make anything out of the current," Whitney said. "The tidal current had nothing to do with it."

Chalos' account of the first half hour after the grounding contained one additional inconsistency.

He said that Hazelwood determined that the ship was grounded about onethird of the way back from the bow. But Hazelwood told the Coast Guard he was "hung up by the stern."

Some reports on the grounding have speculated that the ship's autopilot was on at the time and may have thwarted the crew's efforts to avoid the reef by preventing the ship's rudder from responding as the helmsman turned the wheel.

But Chalos said that even if the autopilot was on, it shouldn't have interfered with manual steering of the ship, even if it was.

Chalos said the autopilot used on the Valdez had an automatic override. If the helmsman had turned the wheel while the autopilot was engaged, he said, the ship would have responded, although more slowly than normal.

In addition, Chalos said, two alarms a light and a bell or buzzer would have gone off if the helmsman turned the ship with the autopilot engaged.

"The third mate and the helmsman would automatically have known that the automatic pilot was on and all they had to do to disengage it, if it was on, is push one button," Chalos said.

Chalos' claim that the Valdez ran aground at 12:16 a.m. is the first anyone has made that the time was not 12:04, the figure used since it was provided at press briefings shortly after the accident. Chalos' time would mean that the Coast Guard was notified 11 minutes after the grounding, instead of 23 minutes.

Leo McLean, an Exxon spokesman in Houston, said the company wouldn't go beyond what it had said earlier, because the matter is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Alan Pollock, a spokesman for the board, said it hadn't come up with its own official figure for the time of the grounding, but would determine one as part of its investigation.

Chalos said that Gregory Cousins, the third mate, did log 12:04 as the time of the grounding. But that entry was made some time after the event, Chalos said, and Cousins later concluded the time, 12:04 a.m., was in error.

Daily News reporter Craig Medred contributed to this story.

---

Story Index: Main | The Captain	Overall: story 101 of 380 The Captain story 16 of 56