Original West Seattle Bridge & Ship Incident
At 2:38 a.m. on June 11, 1978, the freighter Chavez rammed the West Seattle Bridge over the Duwamish West Waterway, thereby closing it to automobile traffic for the next six years.
The Chavez was 550 feet long and was carrying 20,000 tons of gypsum under the command of 80-year-old Puget Sound Pilot Rolf Neslund (1897-1980) and its master, Gojko Gospodnetic, when, just before dawn, it struck the east end of the bridge. A Coast Guard board of inquiry found both officers negligent. Neslund retired two weeks after the accident. Gospodnetic, a Yugoslav national, was fired.
Two years later, Neslund's wife murdered him on Lopez Island, later claiming that he had returned to Norway. Although no trace of the body was ever found, she was convicted of the crime and died in prison.
The accident had one positive result: It ended years of debate over a new West Seattle Bridge, particularly a high bridge to accommodate Port of Seattle plans for expanded use of the Duwamish Waterway. The previous effort to build a bridge collapsed in 1975 amid a kickback scandal that sent the City Engineer to prison.
After the accident, Mayor Charles Royer (b. 1939) and City Councilmember Jeanette Williams (1914-2008) enlisted the aid of U.S. Senator Warren G. Magnuson (1905-1989) to secure federal funds and the participation of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as project manager for the high-level bridge. The new span was dedicated on July 14, 1984, at a cost of $150 million including $60 million in federal money. A new pivot-wing bridge later replaced the original bascule bridge.
Read more about this topic: West Seattle Bridge
Famous quotes containing the words original, west, seattle, bridge, ship and/or incident:
“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“O native country, repossessed by thee!
For, rather than I’ll to the West return,
I’ll beg of thee first here to have mine urn.
Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall;
Give thou my sacred relics burial.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“London Bridge is broken down,
Dance o’er my lady lee,
London Bridge is broken down,
With a gay lady.
How shall we build it up again?
Dance o’er my lady lee,”
—Unknown. London Bridge (l. 1–6)
“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I teazed him with fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.””
—James Boswell (1740–1795)