Automated ships

[Colin Wood]

In view of recent collisions where US navy ships are not using AIS how are automated ships going to identify naval ships steaming secretly. At least with some crew you can keep a lookout and at least report nearby ships. Whether a man in an office will accept such info is doubtful.

[John Arton]

Colin
With in two years NYK are going to trial crewless ship's on the far East to USA route useing one of their existing container vessels, equipped to be operated remotely.
Rgds J.A.

[j.sabourn]

In a small corner of today's paper under the title Fleet commander fired is a small article that says the commander of the US 7th. Fleet will be removed after a series of warship accidents in the Pacific this year. And that the move follows four navy accidents. 7 sailors died in June and on Monday 10 others are missing in the collision off Singapore. Where are the other two missing accidents were there no loss of life and so not reported by the media? JWS

[Ivan Cloherty]

I Where are the other two missing accidents were there no loss of life and so not reported by the media? JWS

Both were in Japanese waters, one a collision with a fishing boat and the other a grounding, guess the crews are spending too much time in the Saki bars with the delightful maidens, smoking pot etc

[happy daze john in oz]

Off the West coast USA has been experimenting with crewless ships for a number of years now.

[j.sabourn]

There used to be a well known saying at sea. When someone said in a derisory manner Seaman !!! I’ve s**t better, the retort used to be, then s**t a few more , were short handed. That would be very true today and makes me feel cold at the possible consequences of crewless ships. JS.

[robpage]

Piracy and hi-jacking comes to mind , power failure too , I see modern ships as undermanned , so automatic I see a potential for disaster , how about entry to The Solent and the computer reboots

[j.sabourn]

I see also the cost of running computerised ships far in excess of manned ones. What is the, If any Advantages of having. What excuse are they giving, . Before it was the cost of crews for the demanning. We used to laugh and deride ships of the likes of Russia who maintained their usual manning, when we were running around with a crew of 10. They had a normal crew of 30. Today they have a big merchant fleet and plenty of well trained seamen , we have zilch, who was right ? The same applies to China. Apart from anything else thy have kept people employed and in the work force. People may argue that their shipping is nationalised and so affordable , whereas as ours can only have the excuse we made a few more people rich at the expense of others. So we as usual do the whole circle and come back to the instigator which is politics pure and simple. JS

[vic mcclymont]

Not Maritime, pertinent to the postings.
A few (good) the Americans decided to install computerised switchboards.
The system was designed to have fall back in an emergency, in the event of a failure in one the next one in line took the capacity.
The first switchboard detected a problem with its circuits, announced to the others that it was having problems and shutdown, the other switchboards misinterpreted the signal and mistook the message as a signal to shutdown. Result the whole western seaboard of the USA was without telephones for a number of hours.
Vic

[robpage]

I am on the latest available broadband from Virgin Media aiming at 200 MPs so it's got all the latest fibre optic and high speed equipment I would think I get one shut down failure at least every third day so if that's the most advanced technology wasn't Hurstwood shipowners buy