English: At 2:38 a.m. on June 11, 1978, the freighter CHAVEZ rams the old West Seattle Bridge over the Duwamish West Waterway, thereby closing it to automobile traffic for the next six years. Leading to the construction of a new high bridge. The Chavez was 550 feet long and carrying 20,000 tons of gypsum under the command of 80-year-old Puget Sound Pilot Rolf Neslund (1897-1980) and its master, Gojko Gospodnetic, when, just before dawn, it struck the east end of the bridge. A Coast Guard board of inquiry found both officers negligent. Neslund retired two weeks after the accident. Gospodnetic, a Yugoslav national, was fired. See Seattle City Archives website for the story of how some West Seattleites threatened to secede from the city to get the bridge built.