That is a terrible accident. I have wondered about vessels moving in fog since an incident I experienced some years ago on a small cruise vessel traveling from Detroit, Michigan north to Port Huron, Michigan. We were crossing the shallow Lake St. Clair in very dense fog when the captain announced that we were close to an oncoming Great Lakes bulker and he was going to stop and pull out of the navigation channel and wait for the ship to pass. A few minutes later the downbound bulker appeared suddenly out of the fog and very close without any noise whatsoever and then disappeared quickly back into the fog. I was amazed at the lack of noise from the ship and how close to us it was when we first saw it. There are times that I remember that incident and realize that our captain really knew what he was doing. There was not any room for error.
I also remember being out on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Highway at the rest area where the tunnel goes under the navigation channel into Norfolk/Newport News and I heard both an outbound and inbound ship meeting each other at that location and never seeing either ship. Visibility was zero at the time and the channel was only a few hundred yards wide.
There are times when I am glad I am a landlubber -- not many but just a few!
