The North Cape »I was just a fledgling Narragansett Baykeeper, setting up an aquarium at the Providence Boat Show on a nasty winter Friday evening January 19, 1996, when my pager went off. From a payphone, I learned that a board member of Save the Bay (Narragansett Baykeeper’s parent organization) listening to marine radio had overheard a situation unfolding in the ocean off of Point Judith. A tug boat towing a fully-laden tank barge had caught fire and was adrift in high seas and heading for the Rhode Island coast. Not sure exactly what to do, I jumped into my car and headed for the Coast Guard station at Point Judith. When I got there I walked in and sat down in the galley with the enlisted crew, some of whom had just returned from the scene. There had been a daring rescue of the tugboat’s crew who were plucked from the unmanned barge after trying unsuccessfully to anchor it. No one knew how much oil had spilled, but early reports were of a strong odor of oil near where the tug and barge had grounded on the rocks off of Moonstone Beach, a National Wildlife Refuge. Officials began to stream into the station, including the state environmental agency director, the Coast Guard Captain of the Port and eventually the governor. I managed to greet them all and pledge our full support. In a daze, I drove out to the access road to the beach and walked the path through the dunes, still at the height of the raging storm. On the beach, I saw nothing but blackness and massive waves. The stench, however, was unmistakable: home heating oil mixed with the saturated sea air. I headed home, knowing that the Big One had finally come. The next few days are blurred together in my memory, although the official records tell the story. A fire in the engine room disabled the tug Scandia. The oil barge called North Cape grounded on the rocks off Moonstone Beach spilling 828,000 gallons of heating oil. The oil spread out in a sheen covering 250 square miles of ocean and flowed into estuaries and inlets coating everything with toxic oil. More than 12 million lobsters perished and scores of dead baby lobsters came up with every tide. More than 300 seabirds died, including federally-protected loons and eider ducks. The scene was horrifying. www.waterkeeper.org
AP Photo/POOL, Mark Wilson
By John Torgan, Narragansett Baykeeper
Oil leaks from a barge and beached tugboat that went aground during a storm near Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown, R.I., on January 20, 1996. Four million gallons of home heating oil spilled into the Atlantic Ocean. The barge lacked basic safety equipment that would have prevented the accident. The owners of the barge and tug later admitted to criminal negligence in allowing the barge to be grounded after the tug caught fire and paid an $8.5 million fine.
Summer 2007 Waterkeeper Magazine
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