You seem to need to attack my opinion because it differs from your own and you are making many assumptions about me and you really have no idea, you're an internet right-fighter sorry. The Passengers on the Costa Concordia during the grounding of that vessel stated that the officers & crew never took charge and organized an evacuation of the ship during the emergency and that they were left to fend for themselves. The crew defaulted to the best they could do which was nothing because they were not proficient in drills, were poorly lead and clearly the company lacked a culture of safety. The officers & crew were poorly supported regardless of their professionalism and certification and personal standards as you profess the industry maintains.
Ship collision,,I just don't get it
- Thread starter Sphubby
- Start date
You should read some NTSB/USCG reports on vessel collisions/losses - all fully licensed Master/mariners/engineers, driving a ship in poor condition, with unknown status of cargo (was everything properly secured?), into extremis. Unfortunately, hands-off approaches by companies, drives for profits, and poor leadership/culture shipboard and in the company all contribute to civilian maritime disasters (and numerous close calls).
Over time, shipboard manning has gone down. A super-tanker can sail with like 15 people on a 400,000t vessel. That's just crazy... Reduced manning (which is argued to be OK due to automation and IS OK...as long as nothing breaks!) brings the crew closer to suffering the effects of fatigue (less backup from your equally-tired shipmate). Law requires a person stationed as lookout at all times, but its well known by folks at-sea that ships don't always do that, or the guy on the bridge is asleep, or in this case perhaps, a language difficulty (Chinese crew talking with Iranian crew, I believe) results in misunderstanding.
Earlier comments are germane - these ships are very slow to respond (unlike cars), only operate in one plane (unlike planes, pardon the pun!) and one can easily lock onto something else of concern and miss the (seemingly obvious) threat elsewhere; even seasoned mariners fall prey to this, especially if fatigued. This is what happened on USS FITZGERALD (another good read, from the USN) and happens in many maritime accidents. Radars can also miss things, lights can be confusing (they shouldn't be, but if the ships are close to shore with cities in the background, its ridiculously hard to differentiate what you see on the screen with what's on the water), mechanical malfunctions can occur at the worst moment, all these things can compound to result in this type of disaster.
I've no doubt safety culture, as a whole, has risen over time. But not in all companies and not on all ships - keeping a strong safety culture and ship (or similarly complex piece of gear) in good condition is like balancing on the tip of a bamboo pole in a windstorm - takes lots of focus, attention, energy, and commitment. USCG found quite a few ships terribly out-of-code a few years ago - they're required to be in-code by ABS (or similar) and USCG, they all know this, but the companies and crew allowed it to happen.
