No Regrets

then to straighten it out.
    The
Chavez’s
captain, a citizen of Yugoslavia who had an impeccable safety record, suddenly realizing they were in trouble, raced to the wheelhouse, shouting “Hard-a-starboard!” And then he desperately ordered the man at the wheel to put the huge ship into reverse.
    They were headed straight for the West Seattle Bridge’s east support piers at a speed of nearly six knots.
    At that point, Rolf snapped back to alertness and realizedthe danger, too. He stumbled toward the wheelhouse to repeat the same order the captain had just given. The only thing they could possibly do to stop—or even slow— the
Chavez
was to drop the anchors. But that maneuver wasn’t likely to work because the ship’s path was already committed. From his long, long experience, Rolf knew that there were huge cables carrying power and phone lines to homes and businesses on either side of the bridge span below. If they dropped the anchors, they would cut underwater cables which were as thick as a man is tall.
    It was far too late to do anything but stand on the
Chavez
and wait for what was about to happen. It only took ten or twenty seconds, seconds when the tugboat captain of the
Carole Foss
frantically did what he could to keep his crew from being crushed between the ship and the bridge piers or decapitated by wires, ropes, or knifelike slivers of shattered steel from the bridge.
    And then, inevitably, the
Chavez
sliced into the bridge as if the span’s supports were made of butter. There was a tremendous shudder and a sound like an earthquake as the force of the impact exploded, sending steel and concrete and wood, and everything else that made the West Seattle Bridge strong, into the river and its shores.
    It was quite possible now that the whole structure would fall down upon those who watched, almost stupefied with shock. Everything was suspended for seconds that seemed hours. The ruined bridge could easily plunge into the sudden abyss: the cars and their drivers and passengers, the bridge tender in his little house, all of it.
    Thank God, however, the remnants of the ruined bridge held, and no one died.
    That was the good part of it, the almost miraculous part of it. But there was hell to pay, and a long Coast Guard investigationlay ahead. The young Yugoslavian captain lost his job, Rolf Neslund lost his reputation as a peerless captain and pilot, and people who lived in West Seattle or wanted to go to West Seattle had to wait seven years for a new bridge to be built.
    Even so, some residents of West Seattle were oddly grateful to Rolf Neslund for doing what they had hoped for for years. One woman, a high school student then, recalls: “Most people don’t realize that some of us in West Seattle were almost glad [when] Rolf Neslund finally forced the city, county, and state to do something about the old drawbridge and the awful traffic snarls it caused.
    “Our Job’s Daughters’ group sold T-shirts that summer that said, ‘Where were you when the ship hit the span?’ and they were a big hit. It couldn’t have been easy for Neslund to be the butt of such jokes, but surely he also knew it wasn’t all a bad outcome?”
    Rolf was allowed to retire without censure, but there were many who thought how much better it might have been if he had chosen to bow out a year or so earlier. And the Coast Guard enacted age regulations for future pilots. It was the end of an era.
    Rolf’s fellow pilots continued to revere him and welcome him to their meetings, parties, and celebrations. He had had so many, many years of being among the best men on the sea. Nevertheless, Rolf Neslund became a target for jokes—not just on Lopez Island for his domestic fisticuffs—but for being the man who destroyed the West Seattle Bridge.
    Everyone who read the newspapers or watched television recognized his name.
    Rolf returned to Lopez Island, to his wife and his home on Alec Bay Road. Lesser men might have been humiliated and hidden away, but he wasn’t a broken man, not at all. Some people even said that he looked back on the whole incident with a sense of humor, while others said he was simply whistling in the dark.
    The former was closest to the truth. He had survived much devastation in his long life, and Rolf continued to appreciate the twilight of his years. He preferred to listen to those who said he had done West Seattleites a favor. He had only hurried the project along.
    Now retired, Rolf returned to Norway for