Disaster: Negligence and Ineptitude on the Black Sea

By Tracy Dove, Ph.D
Editor, The Russia News Service

November 12, 2007

This time of year brings storms to most sea channels and the largely peaceful Black Sea is not immune to brewing up its own dangerous squalls. Russian and Ukrainian sailors both know it, but more than one sea captain thumbed his nose at the weather this weekend to later wipe out his ship and lose crew members to an avoidable calamity. If one looks back only a few years it becomes obvious that Russian officials entrusted with public safety don't follow the rules of engagement with disasters. This, of course, is not unlike America's problems with hurricane management, so there needs to be more accountability in all geographies where "acts of God" clauses get carefully written into weasely insurance contracts. For Russia, this wasn't the first time that life was lost in the Black Sea due to incompetence.

Just over 20 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev let leak the strategic secret that the Soviet Union was melting at the core, and the result at home was even more disrespect for the state apparatus than there was before. Most of the regulations that governed the country were arcane and absurd to start with, and with a vacuum of judicial fortitude citizens became used to subjecting laws to a personal judicial review before adhering to them. Naturally Russian sea captains on the Black Sea thought that Soviet maritime regulations were just as flimsy and they were jettisoned in favor of a wait-and-see analysis. In the West, citizens would call this attitude negligence; in the disintegrating USSR, it was called democracy.

On the night of August 31, 1986, there wasn't even a sprinkle coming down on the deck of the SS Admiral Nakhimov as it sailed along the Black Sea coast on its way to Sochi to pick up more passengers. The captain noticed at the start of the journey that it was on a collision course with the freighter Pyotr Vasev and radioed ahead with lots of forewarning to the captain on that vessel. "Don't worry. We will pass clear of each other. We will take care of everything," the freighter answered, and like the derelict captain of one of America's great oil spill disasters- the ExxonValdiz- the Soviet captain turned over the bridge to someone less experienced than himself and went back to his cabin to rest.

Just off the coast of Novorossisk on that same night, the Pyotr Vasev struck the SS Admiral Nakhimov at the very low speed of 9 m.p.h. but it ripped a huge and fatal hole in the passenger ships hull. It had 1,234 passengers and crew on board. At first the lights went out in the entire ship, but then a trusty diesel generator kicked in and the lights went back on- before going off again. In total, 423 people died because two captains were foolish enough to disregard standard maritime rules, and the captain of the Pyotr Vasev got 15 years in prison.

The situation this weekend was complicated by a violent storm on the sea- also just out of reach of the port city of Novorossisk- but that should have been a clear sign to stay in port. Many of the ships that were lost were built during Soviet times and were not certified to be out in stormy weather. While the damage in this accident was primarily to sea birds and other natural resources, it does not excuse the fact that the captains were duly warned not to go out in the storm.

The SS Admiral Nakhimov disaster and this recent wipe out of rickety oil and merchant ships reminds readers that even after 20 years, the rule of law in Russia is still subject to individual interpretation.

Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and Dean of Summer Programs for the Lessing Institute. He also teaches history at the Anglo-American College in Prague.

See all previous articles by Tracy Dove here.