Eight hours before the Dali container ship knocked down the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the ship’s captain spoke with its chief engineer. The vessel, berthed at the Port of Baltimore on March 25, 2024, had just experienced two blackouts, and the captain wanted the engineer to comprehensively complete an incident report for the ship’s office.

“For now, put the data reporting date as the twenty-eighth,” the captain told the engineer.

March 28, however, was three days after the incident.

Filing a written report days after an incident is permitted; the U.S. Coast Guard allows five days for a ship to report a marine casualty.

But the Department of Justice alleged in its lawsuit last year that the Dali did not notify the Coast Guard immediately after addressing the safety concerns — violating federal regulations.

A Coast Guard spokesperson declined to say whether immediate contact was made, saying the agency is “conducting a thorough review of all events preceding this incident.”

Some experts say the crew acted appropriately by creating a comprehensive report that it would later file. Others, however, say evidence shows that an important safety step was skipped prior to the Dali’s fateful departure from Baltimore.

A transcript released in April by the National Transportation Safety Board, first reported by The Baltimore Banner, details the hectic few minutes within the Dali’s command center before it crashed into the Key Bridge. But the recently released NTSB documents also shed light on the previous afternoon, 10 hours prior, when the ship twice lost power at the Seagirt Marine Terminal.

Alarms sounded intermittently for more than 30 minutes beginning at 2:20 p.m. “Something is missing,” one crew member said in Hindi. “Look there — close to that,” another said.

At one point, the alarms ceased, and it was quiet enough for a recording to pick up the sound of a utensil stirring coffee in a ceramic cup. Then, the sirens picked back up.

At 5:49 p.m., the captain, known as the master, instructed the chief engineer to fill out an “incident report,” and that he wanted the engineer to do so because the “incident was related to the engine room.”

“The Master stressed that he wanted that information as soon as possible but the report itself could be submitted at a later date,” the NTSB’s summary transcript stated. The NTSB has not made available the incident report itself.

Whether the Dali’s crew and, by extension, its Singaporean owner and operator — Grace Ocean Pte. Ltd. and Synergy Marine Private Limited — followed safety protocol is likely part of the board’s ongoing investigation into the disaster.

When a ship experiences a serious problem, such as a power loss, the captain is often instructed to first inform the operator, former NTSB senior marine investigator Michael Kucharski said. The operator, via a local agent, can then contact appropriate authorities.

“Somebody should have notified the Coast Guard,” Kucharski, who worked for years as a captain on large vessels, said in an interview.

It’s not clear whether immediately reporting the blackouts, if that did not occur, would have prevented the calamity.

Thomas Roth-Roffy, another former NTSB investigator, cautioned in an interview that there is not enough information to know whether the in-port blackouts were related to the failures immediately before the bridge collapse.

The Dali left Baltimore around 12:30 a.m. on March 26 but suddenly lost power just four minutes before crashing into the Key Bridge, killing six construction workers who had been filling potholes.

A dozen members of the Dali crew remain in the Baltimore area — “marooned” as one of their attorneys described in a recent legal filing — while the federal investigations continue. The captain, identified in filings as Chandrashekar Sabhapathy, was deposed by the federal government Feb. 17 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

The resulting 352-page transcript is almost entirely redacted.

Attorneys are battling over whether those depositions should be shielded from public view.

Synergy Marine spokesperson Darrell Wilson said it would be “inappropriate” for the operator to comment on the events leading to the collapse. Sabhapathy’s attorneys did not reply to requests for comment.

Reporting the in-port blackouts could have prompted a Coast Guard inspection, slowing the ship’s schedule, experts say. Shipping is a deadline-driven industry and crews are under immense pressure to meet schedules.

The Dali’s voyage was expected to take a week longer than usual even before it left Baltimore. To avoid piracy near the Suez Canal, the ship planned to take the long way to Sri Lanka, sailing south of Africa.

Sal Mercogliano, who hosts the YouTube show “What’s Going On With Shipping?” said he doesn’t consider the crew’s actions to be “nefarious.” Instead, the captain likely thought there would be no problem getting out of port.

“No one thinks that’s going to happen,” he said of the bridge strike. Mercogliano said the crew may have intended to get out of the port, document the incident and have the ship assessed in Asia.

Adam Vokac, a former marine engineer who now heads the trade’s union, described the thought of a delayed report as a “huge red flag.”

“That’s intentionally not alerting the authorities when they’re supposed to,” said Vokac, president of the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association. “It’s a way to bury it.”

Lawsuits against the ship’s owner and operator continue, and Maryland recently beefed up its complaint to allege that an integral part of the ship’s anchor had been inoperable for weeks, delaying its emergency deployment just before the collision.

It took about two minutes for the anchor to be released — a last-ditch effort to slow the 100,000-ton vessel — after orders from the ship’s Maryland-based pilot.

“That’s unheard of,” Kucharski said, noting it should merely take seconds.

Although the pilot card, filled out by the captain ahead of the Dali’s voyage, indicates that the anchors were in fine working order, the state’s lawsuit alleges that deploying the anchor in its “unseaworthy condition” was a “two-man job.” Only one person was stationed by the anchor. One crew member told the NTSB a week after the collapse that a second person would have made a difference.

Instead, as the ship headed toward the bridge, a crew member told the captain, “Sir, I cannot lower alone here, sir,” per the NTSB’s transcript. When the crew member continued to have issues, the captain asked, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Crew members shouted for the anchor to be let down more than a dozen times in 90 seconds. The anchor was finally deployed only 15 seconds before the collapse.

Would a quicker anchor deployment have mattered? No chance, said Mercogliano. Said Kucharski: “Under the right conditions, yes.”

Perhaps the most important factor in the cause of the Dali’s four blackouts in the 10 hours before the bridge strike: the overall state of the shipping industry, Vokac said.

He said foreign crew members often are treated poorly and urged to take risks in the name of global supply chain expediency.

“No one in the world cares because the stuff just shows up,” he said. “It’s frightening.”