Bulker captain to towboat before spill: 'If you keep on coming, I'm going to get you'

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(GALVESTON, Texas) — The captains of a bulk carrier and barge that collided March 22 in the Houston Ship Channel, causing a 168,000-gallon oil spill, appear to acknowledge the potential for collision five minutes before it occurred, KPRC Houston reports. "If you keep on coming, I'm going to get you," the captain of the cargo ship Summer Wind radioed to the captain of Miss Susan, a Kirby Inland Marine towboat guiding the barge. "There is communication. Was it early? No," said Steven Nerheim, director of the U.S. Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Service for Houston/Galveston.

Click here to read the story and to hear a recording of radio transmissions before the collision.

By Professional Mariner Staff