Ferries and passenger shipping

[kladner]

Scapegoats don't really answer. No offense intended. I think it has more to do with arrogance and sloppiness. "We are the Empire. Get out of OUR way."

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

Scapegoats don't really answer. No offense intended. I think it has more to do with arrogance and sloppiness. "We are the Empire. Get out of OUR way."

That's just spouting slogans. In the January incident, the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam ran aground. Hardly a case of "Get out of OUR way." Its captain was relieved of command on March 1.

This Ars Technica article points out that it can be a matter of the bridge crew simply losing "situational awareness" -- losing track of what's going on around them. WRT the Fitgerald collision,

One of the symptoms of that "flawed teamwork" was that the bridge and CIC (Combat Information Center) watch teams had lost their picture of what was going on around them. "Clearly at some point, the bridge team lost situational awareness," Adm. Bill Moran, the deputy chief of naval operations, told reporters on August 17.

The author continues:

I have some personal experience in losing the bubble. In 1987, I was on my first major deployment aboard the USS Iowa and standing one of my first night bridge watches of the deployment. We just happened to be traversing one of the most heavily trafficked stretches of water in the world—the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Iowa had a decidedly low-tech bridge. The helmsman steered the ship from within an 18-inch armored "citadel" at the center of the bridge. There was a single radar repeater on the bridge to track other shipping traffic, and a backlit board marked with grease pencil listed other vessels being tracked visually or by radar, either by name or by a letter designator.

I was trying to keep track of every fishing boat and merchant ship in my head with well over 40 visual contacts bobbing around us as we steamed east. When the captain came onto the bridge and began to interrogate me about what each contact was, I choked about halfway through the report. He took me to the bridge wing to chew me out and kicked me off the watch team for the night. I spent the rest of the watch standing there, face burning with shame.

At least I knew when I had lost the bubble. Collisions happen because watch crews don't realize what they don't know.

And in the case of the USS McCain, the steering failed. And the other ship may have been on autopilot. On page 2 of the article it says

Based on the course followed by the ship, several sources Ars has conferred with suggest it's highly likely that the ship was on auto-pilot at the time of the collision, en route to pick up a pilot to bring the ship to an oil-handling terminal or to an anchorage to await unloading. The crew may have not even been paying attention when the McCain -- which, based on the point of collision, would have had the right of way -- passed in front of the ship.

[kladner]

I stand corrected.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

And in the case of the USS McCain, the steering failed. And the other ship may have been on autopilot.

As I understand it, people are still searching for the missing crew members on that one, hoping they may yet be found.
Official determination of the cause is not the first priority right now.

[Nick]

In the first storm of the year in Western Europe, Noah's Ark breaks loose from its moorings at Urk.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuYvFXN1qpQ

[kladner]

Does that "ark" have a steel barge for a hull? The images that include the bow kind of look that way. It also seems that he came up with some ancient plate glass for windows.

A little searching turns up that there is a core of steel barges.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by kladner

Does that "ark" have a steel barge for a hull? The images that include the bow kind of look that way. It also seems that he came up with some ancient plate glass for windows.

A little searching turns up that there is a core of steel barges.

Yes, you can also see it on the harbour master's photo of the mooring post that the ark ripped out of the dockside:
https://twitter.com/HavenmeesterUrk/...66210227490816

No-one was hurt, but about 10 sailinig boats were damaged, with 2 probably a complete write-off. Cleary the high sides of the ark caught the stormy wind badly!

[kladner]

I consider a structure built on modern flotation to be cheating when it comes to legendary vessels.

[Nick]

Rescuers are searching for a ferry with an estimated 50 people on board after it went missing in the Kiribati Islands.
The MV Butiraoi departed from Nonouti island on 18 January on a voyage that was expected to last two days.
But it was reported missing on Thursday night and officials from New Zealand and Fiji are now working to find it.

Press article: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42840074

[kladner]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/...054739541.html
The article states 209 known dead. Estimates of the number of passengers on board have climbed to as many as 400, or more. The boat was rated for 100 passengers.

Hopes of finding more survivors were virtually nil and Magufuli said he expected the death toll to rise.

"[It] is obvious that more bodies are trapped in the capsized vessel," Tanzanian newspaper The Citizen quoted the president as saying.

"Reports I receive show that even the cargo was far more than the 25 tonnes allowed."

[Nick]

A cruise ship caught in a storm off the Norwegian coast experienced engine problems due to low oil levels, according to Norwegian authorities.

Press article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47727267

For decades, good military communications equipment has incorporated a "protective shutdown override" button, to keep it working even at the risk of internal damage, in situations where your life depends on it.
The full investigation will take some time but perhaps this concept in security engineering should receive more attention in the passenger shipping world too.