As ships go, the United States Coast Guard cutter Blackthorn was diminutive: Just 180 feet from bow to stern, and 37 feet abeam, with a displacement tonnage (weight) of 984 tons.

By comparison, the tanker Capricorn, which rammed and sank the World War II-era buoy tender January 28, 1980 in Southern Tampa Bay, was a leviathan, weighing more than 14,000 tons, and stretching 605 feet lengthwise, and 75 feet from port side to starboard.

Capricorn was also carrying 151,611 barrels of viscous No. 6 fuel oil that day, inbound for the docks at Weedon Island.

Blackthorn, with a crew of six officers and 44 enlisted crewmen, many of whom had never gone to sea before, was leaving Tampa, where it had been in drydock – for repairs and upgrades – since October. The sailors were excited to finally be underway; the first stop would be Mobile, Alabama, followed by a short sail to Galveston, Texas, Blackthorn’s home port.

The Coast Guard ship started its outbound transit at 6:04 p.m., precisely at sunset. Two hours and 17 uneventful minutes later, Blackthorn and Capricorn collided, bow-to-bow, just west of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Within a matter of moments, the smaller vessel capsized and sank to the bottom of the shipping channel, drowning 23 crewmen. It remains the worst peacetime disaster in Coast Guard history.

USCGC Blackthorn was one of 39 original 180-foot seagoing buoy tenders built between 1942 and 1944. Coast Guard photo.

Why did it happen? How did it happen? The facts are these: The temperature over Tampa Bay was 61 degrees on the early evening of Jan. 28, 1980, with a light wind out of the north. Seas were calm.

For ships, passage in and out of Tampa Bay consists of a series of marked channels, dredged to specific depths to allow for vessels with deep drafts (the amount of hull below the waterline) to move without grounding. The majority of the bay is naturally shallow, 12 to 13 feet.

In a way, these channels are like roads, and all watercraft traffic, regardless of size, must adhere to the maritime rules of the road. At its most basic, this boils down to a single directive: Stay in your lane.

A Soviet cruise ship, Kazakhstan, had just left the Port of Tampa and was making its way through the labyrinth of dredged passages towards Mullet Key Channel, the main “road” on the seaward side of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Initially Blackthorn was ahead of the cruise vessel, and also overtook and passed a slow-moving tugboat, Pat B, pushing a barge.

Kazakhstan, brightly lit with red, blue, green and white deck lights, had increased speed, and the harbor pilot aboard radioed for permission to pass Blackthorn. Permission was granted and the cruise ship moved around and ahead without incident.

In the moments before Blackthorn approached Cut A, a dogleg turn under the Sunshine Skyway that would quickly straighten out into the main channel, Commanding Officer George J. Sepel, 34 had handed the conn (control) of the cutter to his Officer of the Deck, 29-year-old Ensign John Ryan.

Determining a ship’s exact position, and the position of potential obstacles, is a scientific process using radar, strategically placed lookouts, terrestrial point fixing, astronomy, range lights, deck lights … and common sense. It’s much harder after dark. Without a fixed horizon at which to compare distances and sizes, the human eye is fallible. Perspectives are unreliable.

None of the lookouts on the cutter’s forecastle (raised bow), nor on the flying bridge, knew Capricorn was in the short channel ahead of them and moving in their direction. They were transfixed by the bright lights of the towering Kazakhstan.

Once Blackthorn cleared the Skyway, Sepel looked at the radar screen and observed a “large radar contact” turning into Cut A. At the window, Sepel, Ryan and the executive officer saw the blinding lights of Kazakhstan – and a larger, darker shape emerging from beyond its port side.

Aboard the tanker, harbor pilot Gene Knight observed that Blackthorn appeared to be keeping to the center of Cut A, and not to the right side, its designated “lane.” Knight tried to contact the Coast Guard vessel but received no reply. “What’s this guy trying to prove?” asked Capricorn’s captain George McShea.

Sepel then stepped out onto the port bridge wing of Blackthorn and beheld the giant tanker bearing down on his little ship. “Where the f–k did he come from?” he exclaimed.

Jan. 29, 1980: The morning after. Capricorn rests, self-grounded, as the clouds of silt and diesel fuel on the water are all that remain of Blackthorn. Tampa Bay Times/Zuma Press photo.

It was obvious to pilot Knight that a standard port-to-port passing was not going to be possible. He issued two short whistle blasts, indicating that he would attempt an unorthodox starboard-to-starboard pass. Blackthorn’s course did not change, and Knight – out of options – sounded four whistle blasts – the danger signal.

Sepel ordered Right Full Rudder, automatically taking back conn of his ship. “Stand By For Collision” was piped, Sepel put the engines back full … and the two vessels hit.

Knight stopped his engines, but the forward motion of Capricorn continued. One survivor testified that he saw sparks, like someone was welding, as the ships’ metallic sides slid and grated together. Capricorn’s seven-ton port anchor became embedded in Blackthorn’s side, ripping a massive hole in the head and shower area belowdecks. Four feet of anchor was later found embedded in the showers.

Knight ordered his rudder hard aport, to avoid drifting into the Skyway Bridge, and the engines full astern. But the ship continued forward until the anchor chain pulled taught. And so Blackthorn, listing to port, was dragged, backwards, like an uncooperative dog on a rope.

All was pandemonium aboard the cutter. Rookie crewmen scrambled to a bulletin board to check where they were supposed to be during an emergency. It was discovered that several of the life rafts were not in inflatable condition; not that there would have been time. Several crewmembers later testified that they didn’t know how to inflate the rafts, anyway.

When the chain reached its “bitter end,” with Capricorn still in motion, Blackthorn began to violently roll and went belly-up. Sepel shouted “Abandon Ship,” and crewmen began jumping into Tampa Bay. And the vessel sank on the edge of Cut A Channel, in approximately 40 feet of 64-degree water.

“I could see two men in the water that was bubbling up,” Quartermaster 1st Class Jeff Huse testified. “I was washed aft. I was caught by cable across the stomach. I was drug down with the ship. I freed myself and fought to reach the surface.

“Upon reaching the surface I saw the hull upside down. Water was spewing out … it was spraying on me. I was looking for a place to hang onto … a man reached out and grabbed me. The man turned out to be the captain.”

It came to light that there had been a hero amidst the calamity: Seaman apprentice William R. Flores, an 18-year-old Texan, located the starboard lifejacket locker and began throwing lifejackets over the side to fellow crewmembers in the water.

As the inverted vessel began to sink, Flores used his belt to tie open the locker door, and continued distributing lifejackets, as well as aiding shipmates in distress.

His body was among the first recovered when rescue teams descended on the site that night.

In 2000, Flores was posthumously given the Coast Guard Award, the highest non-combat bravery award the service can bestow. Eleven years later, a new cutter was named the SS William Flores.

­Blackthorn was raised via barge and crane on Feb. 19. Fourteen bodies were found inside the wreck.

Incoming and outgoing ships had been forced to navigate a temporary channel, beneath the Skyway, while the sunken cutter rested on the bottom. As soon as Blackthorn was successfully floated and removed, normal shipping resumed.

It was determined that the cutter was a total loss; it was later scuttled in the Gulf of Mexico to create an artificial reef.

When his turn came to testify, Blackthorn CO Sepel – fearing he was to be held to the fire – gave his rank and number, then declared: “Sir, under the advice of my attorneys, I am invoking my rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and I respectfully refuse to answer your questions.”

Later, after days of legal back-and-forth, Sepel was offered the opportunity to re-think his response; he then spent five days on the witness stand.

Major changes were to come, according to Rear Admiral W. F. Merlin USCG (ret.). who was Deputy Controller of the United States Coast Guard in Washington, D.C. in 1980. “As a result of the investigation,” the now Tampa-based Merlin says, “the Coast Guard took several actions requiring prospective commanding officers, and perspective executive officers, to take a special course, offered by the Navy, in emergency ship handling. Which heretofore had been recommended but not demanded.”

“Also, a selection process: The other thing was they established boards for review of the backgrounds of potential COs. This independent panel reviewed their backgrounds to determine whether they were recommended to be CO or not.”

Before he took command of Blackthorn, Sepel had not been aboard a ship for five years.

The National Transportation Safety Board put the blame on Sepel, for allowing an inexperienced sailor to conn the vessel in unfamiliar waters, in heavy traffic. In its conclusion, the report said “The Safety Board can only conclude that these officers did not know where they were.”

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Inquiry concluded that “the proximate cause of the casualty was the failure of both vessels to keep well to the side of the channel which lay on their starboard side.”

“I believe,” says Merlin, “in the final analysis, the conduct of the Blackthorn was at least ninety-nine percent at fault. And if you hold the ship at fault, the CO is responsible for the conduct of the ship.”

Both CO Sepel and Ensign Ryan narrowly averted court-martial; instead, through a legal procedure known as an Admirals’ Mast, Sepel was given a letter of admonition, to be placed as a permanent entry in his military record – the lightest possible punishment for an officer.

Ryan received a similar letter.

The Coast Guard Blackthorn memorial, near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge’s Pinellas rest area. Cost Guard photo.

Every Jan. 28, the United States Coast Guard holds a memorial ceremony at the site of its Blackthorn memorial, at the rest area on the north (Pinellas) side of the Sunshine Skyway.

Bill Merlin has sat on the memorial committee for decades. The full-dress ceremony, he stressed, is significant in several ways.

“These were innocent people who lost their lives in the service of their country. They couldn’t be held responsible for the accident. So it’s a memorial to them – let’s make sure that those 23 lads are not forgotten.

“But the secondary purpose of holding it is to remind everybody of the dangers of going to sea if you’re not fully prepared, and not following the regulations, et cetera, that were designed to prevent accidents like that from happening. It’s an annual reminder for the entire Coast Guard that we need to be careful out there.”

With the loss of 23 sailors, Blackthorn was the worst disaster visited upon Tampa Bay – for 102 days. On May 9, during a blinding, unanticipated squall, the 606-foot freighter Summit Venture, approaching the Cut A Channel turn at almost exactly the same spot as Capricorn before it, was blown off-course and collided with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, causing the deaths of 35 motorists whose vehicles plunged 150 feet into the water below.

Thank you Bill. Great read about a day many remember.

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