After almost two days, I haven’t heard any word on the role of any HARBOR PIOLT being on board while this ship was leaving the harbor.
I have not heard one word about the captain or pilot on this ship. Kind of weird because the pilot is being credited with saving lives by promptly calling Mayday.
That ship couldn’t untie from the dock without two pilots on board. One for the harbor clearance and one to take it from the harbor boundary out to where the channel ends and the open sea starts. Harbor pilot hands off to the channel pilot and the channel pilot hands off to the ships captain and the both pilots get on the pilot boat and leave.
Having a Harbor Master on board a large ship is quite common, even for military ships. Their job is primarily navigational: they know the channel, navigational hazards, waypoints for turns, and currents. They typically come aboard onshore, or shortly after a ship departs. They stay aboard until the ship has exited or is about to exit the navigation channel.
The harbor master does not typically get involved with any engineering issues, though they will give steering commands to the helm.
The harbor master being aboard does not concern me at all.
2 Harbor Pilots were on board. IIRC one of them called in the Mayday, but I can’t swear to that. Beyond that, we’ll need to wait for NTSB to release a transcript or the audio from the bridge itself. NTSB is working on cleaning up the audio on the VDR, which was interrupted by alarms and such.