All pilots are "harbor pilots". Crew members who control the ship outside of port are just called crew members (captain, first mate, 2nd Officer, that kind of thing), never pilot.
In California, at least, that's not strictly true. They get paid quite handsomely ($400–500k as of a decade ago) to avoid hitting stuff in specific waterways around the Bay Area.
There used to be two really tall redwoods in the beast bay that were used as Navigation Trees to avoid a submerged rock in SF bay, that later had to be blown up after the trees were felled.
I put in the quotes because the person asking the question picked the exact phrasing, which as we both pointed out isn't correct. They're just pilots. The normal crew driving the boat are crew, not pilots.
I don't think that's true. The Suez Canal famously requires pilots, but isn't a harbour (I guess you could argue it functions as one). I've heard of pilots for the Great Barrier Reef which is even more not a harbour.
I don’t know Japanese and havent studied this so hopefully someone can correct me as well. But I dont think it would be right to translate this to the modern meaning of a ship pilot. It more loosely translated to “navigator”.
There are some seemingly good details here[0].
> In Early Modern Japanese there was a word 按針 anjin, literally “searching needle,” which referred to the process of using a compass. At the time, this was the main way in which ships were navigated and so, by extension, the word was applied not just to ship navigation, but also to ship navigators
It goes into more detail about things as well but that is the part that stuck out to me the most.
Apparently for you at the moment, any mention of a product on the market is a flag for a marketing AI. I suppose this comment too is just what a marketing AI would say.
The incident has some similarities ti the Cosco-Busan. It hit the base of the bridge piers and bounced off. The bridge wasn’t damaged.
That one was due to pilot error. The point is the pilot was still onboard but he was impaired by medication, the captain and mates kind of engaged in dereliction of duties contributing to the accident.
Obviously it’ll be a while before we know what happened in Baltimore.
It's very typical for pilots to be required for all entrance and egress from harbors, much more than the initial pushaway and turning but for quite a long distance through the channel.
Pilots always, for most harbours - they are extremely well versed on local tides and currents and essential for many river mouths and locations with large tidal swings.
Tugs - quite often, but not always - depends on the currents, ship weight, and time of day.
Depends on the navigational requirements. Indirect towing using tugs as an extended rudder are sometimes used. Although I think it is more common in Europe which has a more modern tug fleet.
Were there tug boats helping with the exit?
I have often felt that the harbor protocols were overkill, but this is one of the times they could have helped.