Costa Concordia Trial

[j.sabourn]

Myself I would prefer a man on the wheel in any close quarter situation, and is the expected thing to do as has always been so. However on long river transits where ship is on the same heading for a long time it is quite common to put the ship into automatic. I said in a previous post if the master was questioning the competency of the helmsman, he should have taken over the steering himself. This business about every man and his dog repeating the helm orders before the wheelman reacts is a stupid way to go. Whoever is conning the ship should be the only person corresponding with the helmsman. It must only be on a passenger ship where this happens, as on a normal cargo vessel you would not have that many people on the Bridge. Probably the master and the helmsman. I can just imagine 2 or 3 watchkeepers on the bridge repeating the orders of whoever has the con, Steady as she goes, Steady as she goes, Steady as she goes, and then the Helmsman gets his bit in Steady as she goes. Tripe and rubbish. Cheers John Sabourn

[j.sabourn]

Ref. to above , in all the years I did offshore I think I could count on one hand the number of times I have seen a helmsman apart from the officer of the watch on the wheel. Even on the smaller vessels with no automatic, there was just not the manpower to have a man at the wheel and the OOW did it. When you see pictures of Structures and vessels under tow nowadays, on long seagoing passages, there is nobody on the wheel, that would be a luxury to have that sort of manpower on todays working vessels. Steering is on automatic. The efficiency and general usage of such is far advanced of what it was in the 70s. When people here discuss fires and other disasters on ships and how they were trained to react, this is of the old school where you had the men to do it and also probably the intelligence as seamen. Today or when I left in 2002 it was a different world I certainly don't think it was for the better. It has been a well thought out procedure by possibly hired accountants to keep costings down., We have been left with a practically non existant MN just to appease those who probably have the ears of government. As a maritime nation we may well live to regret it. John Sabourn

[Malcolm S]

Terry, "Would I have turned to port?" Hard to say but easy to answer in hind sight. However, and I think my bridge team would back me up on this, whenever the opportunity arose I followed company directives and got as close as I could but always had in mind the state of the tide, wind and water depth. Engines were always on bridge control and pitch reduced accordingly, Echo sounder was on and the forward seeking sonar was on (Seldom reliable though!), that was my job. If I could not or would not go closer and time was on our side we put down the Zodiacs and sent the passengers out in those. The ship was a delight to handle. The job was challenging but enjoyable and seeing the delight on guest faces and pictures taken was reward enough.
I even got all guests out of their beds at 0200 one morning to see a polar bear swimming alongside (it was still daylight).

In spite of this, all large vessels (cargo pax or tanker) are a different proposition, they have tracks to follow and a schedule to maintain and now the Master is more than a seaman he is a CEO with huge management and budgets to satisfy, the fun has gone out of the job and he should stick to the plan and not play at being a cruise director. PR is one thing but safety is paramount. Its a hard enough job without paranoia in the office. I hope the Italian courts do justice and even better discourage the 'cowboys' still at sea.
Malcolm

[Captain Kong]

In ESSO after the Penlee/Union Star Disaster all our courses had to keep No Less than Four miles from the nearest Grounding line.
Obviously different in confined waters.
Brian.

[John Arton]

In all the arguments about the helmsman etc. we are losing sight of one major point that led to the tragedy.
For whatever reason the captain decided to take his ship dangerously close to a rocky shoreline. In doing this he failed to check that he had the largest scale chart available for the area. In this day of modern electronic charts it is just a matter of a quick email to your chart supplier and hey presto you have the largest scale chart available on your ECDIS. By studying this largest scale chart he would have seen the rock that they eventually struck and have been able to steer a course to avoid it.
Ask yourself this, you are bound for, lets say Southampton, coming up from the South. Do you get the Isle of Wight and Southampton approach's chart prior to arrival, or do you just use the English channel and approach's chart to get from deep sea to the pilot boarding position and thence your berth. I think not.
Not having the largest scale chart on board for the area you are navigating in goes against all rules and regulations as well as the ordinary practise of good seamanship. It is not as if the area was strange to this Captain as he had previously done the route many times before so there is no excuse, in my mind, in not having the largest scale chart (paper or electronic) on board. Having this on board would have alerted him to the dangers of the outlying rocks and enabled him to sail a safe course to avoid them. So to me it comes down to the plain simple fact that he took his ship into an area without having the full knowledge of that area that he was intending to navigate in.
rgds
JA

[cappy]

In all the arguments about the helmsman etc. we are losing sight of one major point that led to the tragedy.
For whatever reason the captain decided to take his ship dangerously close to a rocky shoreline. In doing this he failed to check that he had the largest scale chart available for the area. In this day of modern electronic charts it is just a matter of a quick email to your chart supplier and hey presto you have the largest scale chart available on your ECDIS. By studying this largest scale chart he would have seen the rock that they eventually struck and have been able to steer a course to avoid it.
Ask yourself this, you are bound for, lets say Southampton, coming up from the South. Do you get the Isle of Wight and Southampton approach's chart prior to arrival, or do you just use the English channel and approach's chart to get from deep sea to the pilot boarding position and thence your berth. I think not.
Not having the largest scale chart on board for the area you are navigating in goes against all rules and regulations as well as the ordinary practise of good seamanship. It is not as if the area was strange to this Captain as he had previously done the route many times before so there is no excuse, in my mind, in not having the largest scale chart (paper or electronic) on board. Having this on board would have alerted him to the dangers of the outlying rocks and enabled him to sail a safe course to avoid them. So to me it comes down to the plain simple fact that he took his ship into an area without having the full knowledge of that area that he was intending to navigate in.
rgds
JA

john I think his mind was on navigating elsewhere and it shows what sort of man he was ie falling into a lifeboat and blaming the man at the wheel but this aura seems to be in so many things now ie mps child protectors newspaper moguls and many more of this ilk .....where have all our good men gone.......there are some .yes but they are very very hard to find regards cappy ps 5 or 6 bulkers lying offthe tyne on mon nice to see

[John Arton]

Cappy
Off thread but are they full of the pellets for the bio-fuel terminal, on fire again recently. Saw the fire engines charging in there again the other day, seems that they are having minor fires there on a regular basis either in the storage shed or the conveyor system. Either that or foreign coal imports...how sad.
rgds
JA

[robpage]

is that Coals to Newcastle then ?