By the time the ships’ pilots realized they were on a crash course, it was too late. The fog was just beginning to lift on the Houston Ship Channel midday March 22 as a bulk carrier and a fuel barge found themselves three-quarters of a mile apart. For five minutes, they exchanged radio messages as they tried slowing down, speeding up and reversing while nearing a collision that closed one of the world’s busiest waterways for three days, according to U.S. Coast Guard recordings and radar data obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act. “I can put it down to a dead slow, but that still ain’t gonna stop,” the freighter’s pilot said, according to the recordings. The crash caused 4,000 barrels of fuel oil to spill and disrupted about $1.5 billion in commerce in the U.S.’s largest export gateway. As authorities work to determine the cause […]