Texas Global ran six ships, but Global Bronco was the only LNG carrier. Heseltine was right proud of his Texan roots, and he had named the other five ships Global Star, Global Rose, Global Brand, Global Steer and Global Range. They were all 300,000-ton VLCCs, which normally plied among the Gulf of Iran, southern Africa, the northeast tanker ports of the USA, and Europe.
Bronco usually worked in the east, steaming between the gas-rich gulf ports of Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and Tokyo Bay, where Japanese Electric unloads millions of cubic meters of natural gas every week. This particular voyage, however, was shorter — just as far as the southern Taiwan port of Yung-An. The massive liquid-gas cargo would be used almost exclusively for electric power generation.
Robert J. Heseltine III had not laid eyes on one of his ships for three years, and probably wouldn’t for another three years. Giant tankers cost $100,000 a day to operate and they have to keep working, roaming the world picking up cargo and unloading it. There never was a reason for any of the ships to return to home base in Texas, and both crew and supplies were ferried out to them, by commercial airlines, and then by helicopter, while the great energy ships kept right on moving, thousands of miles from home. No merchantmen since the days of sail, indeed since the clipper ships, had ever undertaken such vast and endless transworld journeys.
Commodore McGhee was now traveling a couple of knots faster than the VLCC up ahead, and he positioned himself accordingly, preparing to run past, a half mile off the tanker’s port beam, a couple of hours from now.
The sun beat down on the scarlet deck as the Global Bronco crossed the 26.20-degree line of latitude right on 56.38 north. They were eight miles off Ra’s Qabr al Hindi, and the captain could just make out the headland through his glasses. He ordered a steward to bring him up a cup of coffee, and a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and the 80,000-tonner ran on due south for another mile.
It was 12.10 P.M. precisely, in glaring sunshine on a still-calm sea, when the Global Bronco nudged into Admiral Zhang Yushu’s Russian PLT-3 contact mine. The one-ton steel container of compressed high explosives, riding high on its anchor line, detonated with savage force. The massive forward inertia of the ship carried her on for just a few yards before the echoing underwater blast blew a huge hole in her hull, starboard side of the keel, right behind the bow.
All the for’ard plates along the starboard side buckled back with a tearing of metal showering a hailstorm of sparks inside the hull. The for’ard liquid gas tank, reinforced aluminum, held, then ruptured, and nearly 20,000 tons of one of the world’s most volatile liquid gasses, its content bolstered by both methane and propane, began to flood out of its refrigerated environment. It hit an atmosphere almost 200 degrees centigrade warmer, and it flashed instantly into vaporized gas, exploding with a near-deafening WHOOOOOOOSSSSH! Consider the sound made by a cupful of gasoline on a bonfire just before you toss a lighted match into it — and then multiply that sound by around 40 million. That’s loud.
The destruction to the entire front section of the ship was staggering. The liquid gas was, after all, just a highly compressed version of regular gas, and everyone has seen photographs of houses being obliterated by occasional explosions from this stuff. The sheer volume of LNG contained in the vast holding tanks of the Global Bronco caused a monumental blast, and the blast from Tank Four somehow smashed a hole in Tank Three, and seconds later the 20,000 tons of liquid fuel in there also blew.
The great ship shuddered. Flames leaped a hundred feet into the sky. Against all odds, Tanks Two and One held. But thousands of tons of fuel from the for’ard tanks poured through the fractured hull plates on the smashed starboard side of the ship, below the waterline, and into the waters of the Hormuz Strait, rising rapidly to the surface.
Commodore McGhee and his Chief Engineer were still on the bridge, almost in shock at what they had seen erupt 250 yards in front of them. Heat from the for’ard inferno was already melting the metal. They could see the white-hot bow end of the high gantry sagging like strips of putty. But the still-powerful forward motion of the Bronco was allowing her to leave a wide, unexploded slipstream lake of liquid gas in the water, which was evaporating at a diabolical rate, rising up off the water.
Don McGhee realized the danger. The gas, decompressed, and now in contact with the atmosphere, would evaporate over a relatively short period of time. But the danger of ignition was tantamout. Miraculously the great diesel engines were still running, and the Captain ordered, “ALL STOP!”
The bow of the ship was now dipping deep and the fires were reducing. The glowing-hot foredeck sent clouds of steam into the air as the waters of the strait washed over. But the gas continued to gush into the ocean, 20 feet below the surface. Don McGhee did not think his strongly compartmentalized ship would go down, and he did think the fires would reduce as the bow went lower. It was the unseen gas cloud he knew was rising rapidly up off the surface that worried him. Both he and Andre Waugh could smell it, light and carbonized on the air.
Members of the crew were racing toward the bridge, terrified, uncertain what to do. Astonishingly, no one had been for’ard at the time the ship hit, and no one was hurt. The problem was how to get off. There was no chance of jumping over the side into the toxic lake of liquid gas, and Commodore McGhee knew it would be lethal for a helicopter to try to reach them, since a tiny spark from the engine could ignite the gas cloud into a mountainous pillar of fire that would climb thousands of feet into the air, the heat almost certainly vaporizing the ship and the final two 20,000-ton tanks of liquid gas.
The roar of the for’ard fire way down the deck was like a 50-foot-high gas cooker, blasting out blue flame, too loud, too intimidating, to allow any question of trying to control it. Commodore McGhee ordered: “ABANDON SHIP! MAN THE LIFEBOATS PORT SIDE.”
The crew charged off the bridge. The radio operator shouted, “I’ll transmit a MAYDAY! before we go.” The rest of them made for the three big orange Zodiacs moored on their davits along the deck rails. And then Commodore McGhee saw it — the Royal Navy’s helicopter clattering toward them, low over the surface, totally unaware of the gas cloud rising up along the Bronco’s aft starboard side and stern.
The tanker’s master ordered his radio operator to open up the VHF on 16 and stop the chopper’s advance at all costs. Then he opened the door to the viewing catwalk, a white-walkway jutting over the main deck. And he raced out onto it, jumping up and down, waving his arms, yelling to the pilot at the top of his lungs in futile desperation…“STOP…FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP…PLEASE STOP…TURN AROUND…”
Inside the helicopter both the pilot and his navigator saw the Captain’s frenzied signal. The Navigator just had time to say, “Take a turn to the left here…this guy’s waving us off…. I’ll try the radio….”
But it was too late. The Royal Navy’s Sea King Mk 4, making just over 60 knots, flew bang into the middle of the rising gas-cloud, which ignited like a nuclear bomb, causing a gigantic blowtorch to rear up from off the surface of the water, roaring a black, scarlet and blue tower of fire 5,000 feet into the air.
The Navy helicopter was incinerated instantly. The Global Bronco and her crew perished in a split second, when the entire after end of the ship was enveloped by the searing near-2,000-degree-centigrade petrochemical blaze. Two minutes later there was just a blistered, white-hot steel-and-aluminum hulk, sizzling in the water, where once the mighty tanker had been. And the flames on board were dying. There was nothing left to burn, not even a coat of paint, not even an electric wire.