In 1986, the National Steel and Shipbuilding company yard in San Diego, California, launched two ships with very different destinies. The USNS Mercy, a converted oil tanker, set off in white livery emblazoned with red crosses: a floating hospital for use in humanitarian aid efforts around the world. The Exxon Valdez, by contrast, was never intended to do more than cart crude oil from Valdez, Alaska, to Long Beach in California.
But on 23 March 1989, she entered history after her captain, Joseph Hazelwood, eased her out of the shipping lane. Icebergs made navigation especially dangerous that night for the ship, which was as long as three football fields and laden with 210,000 cubic metres of crude. Yet Hazelwood went below, just for 10 minutes to do some paperwork, he said, though perhaps also woozy from the vodkas he had drunk before coming on board (he was later acquitted of operating a vessel while intoxicated) — leaving an unlicensed third mate in charge.
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