MV Summit Venture

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "MV Summit Venture" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The MV Summit Venture was a bulk carrier^[1] which collided with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in 1980, causing a partial collapse of the bridge which killed 35 people.^[2]

The ship was repaired and returned to service and later resold twice. It sank off the Vietnamese coast in 2010 under the name of Jian Mao 9.^[2]

The Summit Venture was built in 1976 by Oshima Shipbuilding Co. of Nagasaki, Japan. It was 609 feet (186 m) long, had a breadth of 85.5 feet (26.1 m), deadweight tonnage of 33,912, gross tonnage of 19,735, and a net tonnage of 13,948. It was registered in Liberia.^[3]

Summit Venture was involved in a fatal collision with the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay on May 9, 1980. While negotiating a required turn in the narrow channel during a storm, the radar failed, and the freighter struck one of the piers on the southbound span of the bridge. A 1,400 feet (430 m) section of the steel cantilever highway bridge collapsed, causing a Greyhound bus, a truck, and six other vehicles to fall 165 feet (50 m) into the bay. Thirty-five people died.

That day the pilot of Summit Venture was John E. Lerro. He was cleared of wrongdoing by both a state grand jury and a Coast Guard investigation. In 2016, the book titled Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay's Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down shed new light on what transpired on the day of the accident. Although Capt. Lerro resumed his shipping duties soon afterward, he was forced to retire months later by the onset of multiple sclerosis,^[4] dying from complications caused by the disease on August 31, 2002, at the age of 59.

Wesley MacIntire was the only person who survived the fall. His truck fell off the bridge but bounced off the bow of Summit Venture before falling into Tampa Bay.^[5] He was pulled from the water by the ship's crew. Physically, MacIntire only suffered from a cut on the head and water in his lungs.^[6] He sued the company that owned the ship and settled for $175,000 in 1984.^[7] He died in 1989 of bone cancer at the age of 65, always regretting being the sole survivor among those who fell.^[8] Each year he drove to the bridge on the accident's anniversary and saluted those who did not survive.^[6]

A new bridge was completed in 1987 to replace the old one. Several safeguards were included in the design to prevent a repeat occurrence of the Summit Venture incident, such as the installation of massive concrete bumpers or "dolphins" around the main span's piers to mitigate collisions.

Summit Venture was repaired and continued service under the same name. It went to Tampa for the last time in September 1990 to be inspected by the US Coast Guard. It was sold by its original owner Hercules Carriers from Monrovia, Liberia to Endeavor Shipping, a Greek company, in November 1993 being rechristened to Sailor I which mostly worked along the US West Coast. It was sold again in May 2004 to Frontier Shipping Inc from Singapore. After being sold it was renamed to KS Harmony and flew a Panamanian flag servicing the Caribbean Sea.^[9] It sank off the Vietnamese coast in 2010 under the name of Jian Mao 9; all 26 crew members on board were rescued by container ship Nyk Aquarius. The events that led to it sinking were never made public.^[10]