As the massive cargo ship that downed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge last monthnavigated the globe, its sister ship was never too far away.
The Dali, a 984-foot, Singapore-flagged vessel, apparently lost power while departing the Port of Baltimore early in the morning March 26 and smashed into one of the Key Bridge’s main support piers, immediately collapsing thespan and sending six construction workers plunging to their deaths.
Its sister ship, the Cezanne, which also is registered in Singapore, departed Baltimore 10 days earlier en route to the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, according to several vessel tracking websites. It’s scheduled to arrive there Monday.
Over its seafaring life, the Cezanne has been cited for many more “deficiencies” than the Dali during port inspections, but neither ship had one so significant that it was prevented from sailing.
“I don’t think there’s any red flags there at all,” former merchant mariner Sal Mercogliano, who reviewed the ships’ inspection histories, told The Baltimore Sun. “Ships will get caught for typically minor infractions.”
Like the Dali, the Cezanne operates in an around-the-world container service offered by the Danish shipping giant Maersk that goes from Colombo to a port in Malaysia, four ports in China and one in South Korea before crossing the Pacific Ocean to transit the Panama Canal. From there it calls in Newark, New Jersey, and Norfolk, Virginia, before coming up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. That voyage takes roughly eight weeks.
The Cezanne is next due in Baltimore on June 8, its schedule on Maersk’s website says.
Maersk doesn’t own the two ships but leases them. The Dali and Cezanne are ownedby different companies that list the same Singapore address and both are managed by Synergy Marine Pte. Ltd., also from Singapore.
The South Korean manufacturer Hyundai built the ships two months apart in 2015 in the same shipyard. They are approximately the same weight and length and feature the same main engine and generators.
Both vessels have a capacity to carry 9,971 20-foot equivalent units of containers. Such units offer a way to measure the truck-sized metal boxes that now carry most global cargo, but range in size from a typical 40 feet, to as little as 20 feet and and long as 53 feet.
The Japanese ship classification society Nippon Kaiji Kyokai established standards for the vessels’ construction and operation. The classification society conducts safety surveys every few years, for insurance purposes, and both ships passed their most recent reviews.
Neither the Singapore flag nor the Dali and Cezanne’s classification society were listed as medium or high risk by the Coast Guard in its 2023 annual report on ship inspections.
Each time a vessel makes a port call, the port nation can inspect it. The port can “detain” a ship if it notices a significant issue during inspection.
Per the Coast Guard, the Singapore flag had a detention ratio of 0.32%, while the ships’ classification society had a 0.05% ratio. The Coast Guard’s overall annual detention ratio was 1.22% in 2023, the report said.
The Dali has faced at least 27 such inspections around the world since it was completed in 2015, according to the website Equasis, which maintains data on ships. It was twice cited for “deficiencies” but never detained. The Dali’s most recent deficiency was recognized during a June 2023 inspection at the port in San Antonio, Chile.
During an “initial inspection,” inspectors flagged a problem categorized under “propulsion and auxiliary machinery,” noting a deficiency with Dali’s “gauges, thermometers, etc.,” Equasis data shows. Inspectors did not detain the ship, and the Dali later called in New York, where it passed a “standard examination” by the Coast Guard last September.
Mercogliano described the Dali’s latest deficiency as “really minor” in an interview days after the Key Bridge collapse.
“That’s pretty typical, to tell you the truth,” Mercogliano said in March. “Ships will get dinged all the time for it. The big thing is the ship had an inspection in September up in New York by the Coast Guard and there was not anything there.”
The Cezanne faced 24 inspections over the same time period as the Dali, and was cited by various ports for 11 deficiencies, according to Equasis. None of those deficiencies were categorized as propulsion problems, nor was the ship ever detained, but several pertained to safe operation of the vessel.
“There was nothing that jumped out to me that this was a major, mechanical issue,” Mercogliano said Thursday. “It’s pretty typical in the wear and tear of a ship.”
It was cited in Hong Kong in 2015 and 2018 for lack of “establishment of working language onboard.” In October 2018, after the Hong Kong inspection, the vessel was cited in a South African port for a lack of “specific plans for the recovery of persons from the water.”
On Jan. 15, 2019, while Cezanne was sailing near Sri Lanka, the crew’s third officer didn’t report to the bridge for a shift, according to a 2020 report by the Singapore Ministry of Transport’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau. Authorities in Singapore concluded that the officer had likely fallen overboard and it was “deemed probable” they were not wearing a personal flotation device.
The Cezanne was cited for five deficiencies in China’s Port of Shenzhen in January 2019, following the disappearance of the third officer, Equasis data shows.
Its latest citation came during a July 20inspection at the Port of Qingdao in China, with the deficiency described as “lights, shapes and sound signal.”
Less than a month later, the Cezanne passed an inspection by the Coast Guard in California.
Baltimore Sun reporter Hayes Gardner contributed to this article.
