2009 USS Port Royal grounding

The 2009 USS Port Royal grounding was a ship grounding by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal off of Oahu, Hawaii on 5 February 2009. In the incident, the ship ran aground on a coral reef, damaging and necessitating repairs to both the ship and the reef. The incident received wide press coverage in Hawaii, at least in part because of the damage caused to a sensitive coral environment.

A US Navy investigation found that the grounding was caused by a combination of a misread navigation system, a sleep-deprived skipper, broken equipment, and an inexperienced and dysfunctional bridge team. The ship's commander, John Carroll, was relieved of duty and disciplined. Three other officers and one enlisted sailor were also disciplined.

Grounding

After spending time in the Pearl Harbor shipyard for $18 million in scheduled repairs, the Port Royal departed for the open ocean off Oahu for sea trials at 08:15 on February 5, 2009. The ship's fathometer was broken. At 12:01, the Voyage Management System's (VMS), an automated navigation system, primary input at the chart table was shifted from a forward Global Positioning System to forward Ring Laser Gyro Navigation, an inertial navigator. Three times the VMS dead-reckoned the ship's location, mistakenly reporting the ship's location as 1.5 miles from its actual position. The error was not noticed by watchstanders. The ship was undergoing its first sea trials, including full power, steering and helicopter flight operation checks.

The grounding occurred at 8 p.m. on February 5, 2009 when the Port Royal ran aground about a half-mile south of the Honolulu International Airport's Reef Runway. No one was injured in the incident and no fuel was spilled. The location of the grounding was in full view of aircraft landing and departing from the nearby airport, causing embarrassment to the Navy.

The cruiser, which has a draft of 33 feet, ran hard aground on a sand and rock ledge in an estimated 14 to 22 feet (5–7 m) of water. The salvage ship USNS Salvor made three unsuccessful efforts to pull the Port Royal off the sandbar (Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 6–7–8 February), despite full-moon high tides and the offloading of 200 tons of fuel and water, 7,000 gallons of raw sewage, and 15 tons of crew members.

According to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the ship ran aground while moving very slowly as it transferred shore-based aviation assessment officials to a smaller boat to take them to shore. An oil recovery ship, the Clean Islands was behind the ship to clean up oil spills. Rear Admiral Dixon R. Smith, the commander of the Navy Region Hawaii and the Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, embarked the ship on the morning of 6 February to serve as the on-scene commander.

Recovery

On 9 February 2009, the Port Royal was pulled off the rock and sand shoal at around 2 a.m. after crews removed another 500 tons of water and 100 tons of anchors and other equipment to lighten the vessel, the Navy said in a statement. The removal by a salvage ship and seven tug boats took about 40 minutes. No one was injured during the recovery effort, said Rear Adm. Joe Walsh, the U.S. Pacific Fleet deputy commander. Smith relieved the ship's commanding officer, Captain John Carroll, of his duties pending investigation. Carroll had been skipper of the Port Royal since October 2008. Captain John Lauer, an official in Smith's Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, temporarily assumed command.

The warship suffered heavy damage to the underwater bow sonar dome and to its propellers and propeller shafts and was drydocked for repairs. Captain Neil Parrott was assigned to preside over the investigation into the grounding.

Damage assessment and repair

Once the raw sewage dumped by the ship had dissipated, divers from the Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resources examined the site and discovered that the grounding had damaged the coral reef. The Hawaii divers, with help from Navy divers, began mapping the damage to ascertain the extent of work required to repair the coral. As of 12 February 2009, several of the cruiser's propeller blade tips had yet to be recovered from the ocean floor. Laura Thielen, chairwoman of the Hawaii state Board of Land and Natural Resources, told the US Navy in a letter in April 2009 that the grounding had damaged between six to 10 acres of the reef and that the "main injury scar" covered about 9,600 square feet. She added that the grounding may have damaged the habitat of Green turtles.

On February 18, the ship entered Dry Dock Number 4 at Pearl Harbor for repair to the ship's shafting, running gear, propellers, painting of the underwater hull, replacement of the bow sonar dome and its internal elements, and repairs to damaged tanks and superstructure cracks. The Navy estimated that repairs would cost between $25 and $40 million and would be completed by September 2009. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that a shipyard worker had said that no work had been done to repair the warship as of April 12, 2009. The newspaper reported that its attempts to obtain information on the status of the warship had received short shrift or had not been answered by the Navy.

As of the end of July 2009, most of the repairs to the ship had been completed. Structural problems occurred in rebuilding the sonar dome, the area of the ship most heavily damaged in the grounding. Also, the struts that support the propulsion shafts were found to be out of alignment by a small, but critical amount. The repairs are expected to be completed in September and the ship is expected to return to operation in October.

Acting on a request from the state of Hawaii to repair the damage to the coral habitat, Navy-contracted divers from AECOM and Sea Engineering began work on repairing the damaged reef the last week of April 2009. At a cost of $7 million, by June 27, 2009 the divers had collected 5,400 loose coral colonies and reattached them to the reef using cement and plaster of Paris. The divers also removed 250 cubic yards of rubble.

On June 2, 2009 the navy disciplined four Port Royal officers for the grounding. In a hearing presided over by Vice Adm. Samuel J. Locklear, commander of the US Third Fleet, John Carroll was given non-judicial punishment for "dereliction of duty and improper hazarding of a vessel." Port Royal Executive Officer Commander Steve Okun was also given non-judicial punishment for dereliction of duty at the same hearing. In a separate hearing, Rear Admiral Dixon Smith, commander of Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, imposed non-judicial punishment on two other, unnamed Port Royal officers and an enlisted seaman for dereliction of duty and improper hazarding of a vessel. The Navy refused to provide further details of the punishments the sailors received.

Investigation findings

The US Navy safety investigation into the accident, not intended for public release but which was obtained by the Honolulu Advertiser in July 2009, listed several contributing factors for the grounding. The factors included a misinterpreted navigation system, a sleep-deprived skipper, faulty equipment and an inexperienced and dysfunctional bridge team.

The report stated that John Carroll had only 4 1/2 hours of sleep in the 24-hours prior to the grounding, and only 15 hours of sleep during the previous three days. Also, he was at sea after a five-year break in sea command duty. Carroll had directed that the aviation assessment personnel aboard the cruiser be returned to shore in a small boat just before the grounding occurred.

The report found that the ship's fathometer, which measures water depth, was broken, as well as both radar repeaters on the cruiser's bridge. Some time before the grounding, the ship switched navigation systems from a Global Positioning System, called the Voyage Management System, to a gyroscope. The switch caused a 1.5-mile discrepancy in the ship's reported position. Audible alarm bells triggered by the discrepancy were disregarded by the ship's crew. During the small-boat transfer, the cruiser's operations officer took a binocular bearing to the harbor landing from the boat deck and noted the position discrepancy, but was unable to correct the ship's course in time. Shortly thereafter, the ship ran soft aground, but then quickly was forced hard aground by the force of the waves.

The report concluded that in spite of the equipment and navigation systems failures, there were enough working sensors and visual clues to prevent the grounding. The report found that the ship's navigation evaluator lost situational awareness and that the "Bridge watch team, navigation, and (Combat Information Center) team did not work together to assess situation and keep the ship from standing into danger." Qualified lookouts were on board for watch duty the night of the grounding, but they were working in the mess as food service attendants and were not allowed to assume the watch. Furthermore, set and drift were not calculated.

The report stated that the cruiser had been rushed out of drydock, with some work scaffolding removed from the ship only 30-minutes before the cruiser departed for the ocean trials. Also, the quartermaster of the watch was inexperienced and lacked training, having stood three months of watch on a deployment a year earlier, but could not plot fixes in near-shore waters. The report recommended a supervisory-level navigation course, as well as an "operational pause" of at least 96 hours between shipyard availabilities and sea trials to ensure crews were adequately rested and prepared for underway operations. Captain W. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet, declined to comment on the investigation's findings.