Thanks for the info, this certainly changes the picture about the maneuvering of the cargo ship. Still a big mystery how a USN destroyer could let a huge ship get so close. I don’t have a ton of seafaring experience but I used to work on a 130’ utility boat in the Gulf of Mexico, and on our bridge radar we could see every individual buoy and small boat as we were going in and out of harbor (this was in the 1970s). I don’t know how it’s possible not to be aware of a huge cargo ship unless systems simply weren’t functioning or personnel were totally inattentive.
I suspect that eventually we’ll learn that this was similar to the USS Porter collision, and the Fitzgerald tried to “beat the train.” After reading some more commentary, I’m also coming around to the belief that the container ship wasn’t keeping a lookout at all. It’s horrifyingly common for foreign flag crews to disable the “watch alarm system” and go to sleep while the ship is on autopilot, and that would explain why ACX Crystal not only resumed course after the collision, but started accelerating back to full speed. If they only woke up after the collision, that would also explain the sluggish reaction time before turning around and getting on the radio. This is going to wreck a lot of people’s jobs.