Growing up on Jones Creek in Edgemere, Lyle Armacost could see the lights of the Francis Scott Key Bridge from his backyard on Suncrest Road. The sight was comforting to the future seafarer, as indelibly Crabtown as the potato chip girl and the one-eyed beer man so fond of her.
The bridge, as the world learned, was struck last March by the container ship Dali. The vessel is named for the playful Spanish artist Salvador Dali, the bridge for the author of the Star Spangled Banner. When Dali collided with Key, the steel arch toppled like a Tinker Toy. Six road workers on the bridge, all Hispanic immigrants, were killed.
Armacost, a 40-year-old chief engineer, was working aboard the 62,240 horsepower cargo ship Maersk Ohio the night of the crash, headed from Norfolk to Antwerp and other ports in Northern Europe.
Armacost, the married father of two young boys, lives in Kingsville. He suspects the accident may have been the result of laxity and oversight. The Dali is a foreign-flag ship registered in Singapore with a foreign crew.
Doing business under a foreign-flag—also known as a “flag of convenience”—is a longstanding cost-cutting practice of global shipping companies. It’s of great concern and an on-going battle for the Seafarers International Union (SIU), which represents unlicensed crew on American ships, negotiating dramatically better wages, benefits and safety protocols than those on most foreign ships.
“How many times had I driven over that bridge,” lamented Armacost. “I was angry because I knew it was a foreign flag ship and I had seen firsthand how poorly foreign crews can be at maintaining and operating” vessels.
A graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York and member of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, he wanted to know “What failed on that ship?”
A National Transportation Safety Board report from last September pointed to a loose cable connection resulting in a failed generator and four power outages leaving the ship without steering. It struck the bridge just before 1:30 am on March 26 of last year.
Last October, the Department of Justice reported that Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, Singapore companies which own and operate the Dali, agreed to pay $102 million in civil damages.
“What a terrifying way to go,” said Armacost. “Whose fault is it?”
A criminal investigation into the collision continues.
‘You need good humans on ships’
I met Lyle on board the Maersk Ohio in early January when I sailed on the 902-foot container ship from Norfolk, Virginia to Antwerp, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven, where I signed off after the 19-day crossing.
The Ohio turned back for the States and I toured the dockside Bremerhaven immigration museum which keeps files on many of the hundreds of thousands Germans who entered the United States at Locust Point.
The museum had one sign that I’ll never forget, emblazoned on a wall above vintage trunks and suitcases: Who Were They? Why Did They Leave?
The same might be said of the six men who died when the Key Bridge collapsed.
I sailed as a correspondent for the SIU’s monthly newspaper, The Log – a gig that will continue on various vessels throughout the year – and sat next to Armacost at the captain’s table during meals.
His office door sports a large decal of a Ravens helmet and his Baltimore pedigree is sterling. Descended from 19thcentury Polish and German immigrants (his last name from a distant English ancestor) his paternal and maternal grandparents hail from the nations of Dundalk and Highlandtown.
His parents – Allan Armacost, a retired warehouseman for Mars Supermarkets (now Weis) and the former Bonnie Orzech – have been married for 51 years and graduated from Patterson High School.
“My Dad would walk from Dundalk avenue and O’Donnell street to Captain Harvey’s for a cheesesteak sub,” said Armacost. “Mom grew up on Anglesea street” near the Southeastern police district.
Lyle and I connected in the traditional Baltimore way, over high schools. I graduated from Mount St. Joseph before he was born and went to sea as a deckhand after receiving my diploma. A scholar athlete at Archbishop Curley, Armacost played varsity football and lacrosse, skated on Curley’s ’01 championship hockey team and graduated in 2003.
His heart was set on the Naval Academy until a “Blue and Gold” volunteer from Annapolis told him Maryland is particularly competitive for nominations. The man was friends with the superintendent of Kings Point on the north shore of Long Island. Lyle chose the engine department.
Immediately falling into the provincial patois – I called him Lahl, he called me Ralph, the crew tried not to laugh — we became fast friends.
Lyle fell in love with hockey going to Skipjacks games at the downtown arena on Baltimore Street burdened with so many names that old-timers still call it the Civic Center. Family occasions were held at Karson’s, a long-closed 1950s and ’60s classic at Holabird and Ponca, not far from the Dundalk Marine Terminal. It is now a Peterbilt trucking store.
“I grew up rowing up the creek to fish on a 12-foot Jon Boat with my brother Allan,” said Lyle. “He’s a CPA but he’d fish for a living if he could.”
Easy-going, somewhat quiet but not shy, he was remembered by a high school teacher as “funny but not disrespectful.”
“He dressed up as me for a skit during homecoming,” said Kathleen Maskell, retired and living in Ocean City, the granddaughter of a merchant seaman. “His depiction was spot on.”
Lyle’s hearty appetite is grounded in a fondness for cookies, a fresh-baked, warm-from-the-oven treat on American ships where the level of talent in the galley is a measure of morale on the ship.
“Lyle was advanced in math going into kindergarten so they took him to first grade for math class,” said his mother. “One day he told his teacher he didn’t want to go anymore. They said okay because they didn’t want him to hate math.
“A few weeks later they asked if he wanted to return to first grade math. He said no because when he went he missed cookies and milk in kindergarten.”
There’s a smoker grill on the portside deck of the Ohio and during the two-and-a-half week crossing Lyle used it twice to cook brisket as a Sunday treat, slicing it in the galley for his shipmates. It reminded me of my late father (a chief engineer on the Baltimore waterfront) and his skill with a carving knife, particularly baked ham on Christmas Day.
“Competency is a given but can that guy be a good shipmate?” said Captain Joseph S. Smith, master of the Ohio and a fellow Kings Point graduate. “You need good humans on these ships. Lyle cares about his crew and the morale of the engine department. That’s the beauty of it.”
Lyle served up the first brisket on Sunday January 19th, the day the Ravens met the Buffalo Bills in a divisional round playoff. We gathered in the officer’s lounge to watch the game on a large flat-screen, a satellite convenience unknown to sailors of yore.
In the final seconds, we watched the Purple and Black lose when Mark Andrews dropped a ball in the endzone. For a week afterward, I’d bump into Lyle in the passageway near the galley and, before I could greet him, he’d say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Rafael Alvarez is filing stories from around the world in 2025. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com
