The pressures of command these days

[John Arton]

This is a fabulous letter written by a well respected retired American ship's Master to the head of the NTSB investigating the El Faro disaster.
In it he points out the abject failure of the ISM code with respect to reporting of dangerous ship board conditions and the ineffectiveness of some ABS Surveyor's. He also goes on to talk about pressures to maintain schedules and fatigue. It is an excellent insight into the pressure that todays Master face (some of which I also had experience of) to maintain schedules etc. and all of this in addition to the day to day running of your vessel, keeping owners/charter's/crew and cargo safe and happy.
El Faro - An Open Letter To Investigators – gCaptain
rgds
JA

[Captain Kong]

I too have had cause to complain to management about the ship not being seaworthy and totally ignored as "It is OK"
It seems that if Safety costs money, Forget it.
Brian

[Ivan Cloherty]

I read the letter in full and it was explicit and candid, I think most of us seafarers know that ABS was/is a lax Classification Society and a favourite with Greeks and FOC's for that very reason. I must say that working as Marine Supt for a British Company I never had any trouble in getting the owners to pay for repairs or comply with safety issues and in fact I instituted many safety courses for Deck and engine personnel and had the full support of company directors (non seafarers), all ships were under Lloyds Classification (LR). A lot of people are under the impression that LR and other classification societies are god and what they say goes, alas this is not true as all Classification societies(CS) are employed and paid by owners to supply certain services, their decisions both safety and technical can be questioned by the owners, and owners can request the CS to issue a temporary certificated to reach the next port, or the next scheduled drydocking, which may be some months away, it is up to the Supt (deck or engine) to ensure that no safety issues are breached, in the old days most supts were ex seafarers and understood the concerns of those who sailed under their care, alas this is not true today as most supts especially in the USA are and latterly in the UK are graduate engineer with no sea experience and certainly no idea of what a Master's or deck officers duty entails, nor what an actual seagoing engineers entail, mother nature has a way of throwing a spanner in the works of well planned maintenance schedules, a factor an experienced ex seafarer can understand, but something a graduate engineer may not. Today most companies are run by accountants who are only interested in the bottom line and have no front line experience whether it be shipping/construction/other. When I took over as mar supt of a Swiss shipping company I stopped two of their ships leaving port until certain repairs and LSA requirements had been updated, I will give you one guess who the Classification Society was, that's right ABS, I was threatened with the sack by the company, I had only been in the job a month, so I told them go ahead, but their ships still wouldn't sail, we had a rocky relationship for a few months, but as things settled down we started to understand each other better and I had the full support of the actual owner rather than is non seafaring directors/accountants and I arranged for the owner for all the desk bound staff to have some actual time on a ship whilst it was in a European port, I went with them and arranged for them to do the Portage Bills in the Captain's cabin as they were always complaining were late and should be easy to do, once I got them settled in, I took the Master ashore for a meal and drink, returning a few hours later and Portage Bill still not completed, as the accountant said he kept getting interupted by Customs, Agents, Immigration, stevedores, and others, the Masters on all ships never got another complaint from head office

[Alan Hill]

John,

Thanks for the link it was really interesting although not (unfortunately) surprising.

These days we seem to be very good at generating a plethora of regulation and paperwork to little practical effect.

I put this down to the fact that we are governed largely by pen pushers who've never had a practical job in their lives and are adept at nothing save keeping themselves out of the firing line.

Rant over !!