Brush with a bridge...

Riding the subway train home on a rather drab, routine winter day some weeks ago, I gazed out the window as the train skittered across a high bridge on Stockholm's south side and caught sight of a brightly lit freighter coming down the shipping channel, her spotlights stiffly jerking about, illuminating various buoys and pylons worth avoiding as she churned along.

She was a big freighter, a bit over 300 feet long and thus among the largest that steam into Sweden's interior lakes. She was outbound for the Baltic, coming down the channel from the Liljehomen area towards Gullmarsplan which sits on the bluff over the locks that separate Lake Mälaren from the the salty waters of the Baltic that surge in through the skerries (The Tegelbacken area is essentially the heart of Stockholm).

Unable to restrain my boundless fascination in all things nautical, I jumped off the train at the first chance and hopped over the edge of the bluff, slipping and sliding all the way down the icy path to the shipping channel at the bottom. Success! The big beast (PIONEER) was just easing into the locks...

The lockhands took the heavy mooring hawsers and--as if holding the leash of a seriously overgrown and ungainly Great Dane--walked the ship forward in the locks.

Eager to get a good view, I scrambled up to the old drawbridge that cowers under the new, modern high-level bridges that carry the subway trains and the highway. From there I watched the lockhands and the foredeck crew as they carefully guided the huge ship in. (PIONEER is huge for the Baltic and inland lakes, but compared to gigantic freighters built for the open Atlantic and Pacific, she's a bathtub toy).

Her heavy steel plate hatches were all battened down but clearly there was little or nothing in the cargo holds. She was floating high, her waterline lying far above the icy waters.

After a few minutes it became readily apparent just how large this particular ship was as she eased right up to the drawbridge, cornering a few ice sheets against the lock gates. They would have to squeeze her in as far as she would go in order to close the other gate behind her.

Foot by foot, inch by inch, the deckhands toyed with the winch controls, gently taughtening and slackening the mooring lines and snugging the ship as far forward in the lock as possible. Here the deckhand (likely one of the junior mates), leans over the rail, warily watching to make sure the ship doesn't 'bump' the lock gates--an accident that could hypothetically end up dumping the whole of Lake Mälaren into the Baltic.

Yet her crew kept crowding her forward, desperately trying to get the big ship far enough in to the lock to close the other gates. Her bow began to nudge the ice floes aside....

Then, her deck fell into the shadow of the bridge as she plowed deeper into the ice flow, now only a few feet from the lock gates. Something of a crowd was gathering on the bridge to see this ship shoe-horned into the locks. As the minutes crept by and the ship moved dangerously close to the bridge, the spectators began to trade worried glances and cringe in anticipation of the awful sounds that had to be coming.....

The ship continued to advance, her prow slipping under the drawbridge while the deck officer's radio crackled with requests from the wheelhouse to move the ship in just a little further. Here you can see the bow bulb not four feet from the lock gate. Yet the winches began to turn again and the mooring lines groaned under the strain....

Then there was a jarring twang and screech of steel-on-steel as the wire forestay from the foremast caught under the bridge span. The mast jerked wildly as the cable slipped haltingly under the edge of the bridge in short, ear-splitting jolts. The foredeck crew took off running for cover and shouting into their radios. But it was too late. Five-thousands tons of steel was still drifting forward under its massive momentum and no sudden counter measure with the engines or mooring lines was going to stop her before the damage was done.
Strand by strand, the cable began to part, snapping in sharp cracking bangs. The crewmen crouched behind various deckboxes and other impromtu shields, watching the violent thrashing of the mast as the ship continued to move under the bridge. "BANG!".....the cable parted, whipping back across the deck striking the mast. Then all was quiet. The mast stood still and the crew straigtened and came forward to inspect the damage.

Within the minute a watch officer came running forward from the wheelhouse. It looked like some dramatic scene in a movie with the long run across the expansive hatch covers, the spotlights from behind. It could have been a prison break scene except that there was something in the way he ran that told you he was furious.

When he reached the foredeck, he talked briefly with the deck crew, examined the damage and picked up his radio.

Within a few minutes the deck crew had produced a coil of rope and was rigging a new forestay to support the mast up while the draw bridge began to open and the lines were adjusted to move the ship forward just a touch more, finally getting PIONEER into the lock far enough to close the gates.

The water level began to fall and in a few short minutes, the lower gates opened and PIONEER began to ease forward....

Having left a mark on Stockholm (or vice versa) PIONEER's rumbling engines propelled her out of the locks and took her down channel toward the archipelago and the open Baltic.


The PIONEER by day, transiting the Kiel Canal.