Historic schooner sunk by container ship...

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oldharry said:
Frank Holden said:
I'm inclined to agree with you. Clearly the MV expected Elbe to swing to port, and pass him stbd to stbd, so started a turn to port. Elbes sudden swing to starboard would have taken him completely by surprise. Im not entirely convinced that Elbe couldnt have swung 10 or 15 degrees to port. They might have lost some paint and woodwork maybe even a spar or two, but better than being t-boned? I do wonder if they even heard the double 5 on the MVs bridge, but a couple of blasts from the MV would have made his intentions clear.
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The key lesson, I feel, is to keep on your toes in these sorts of waters. I speak as one who has already dropped a clanger this season due to being a tad too laid back.

I agree with FrankHolden it looks like only one bloke will be losing his ticket here. He needed to start the process of bearing away the instant he got back near the tiller. Wasting time sounding his hooter sealed it, there was nowhere for the steamer to go. Heading into the wind looked like an instinctive last minute job to minimise the impact, rather than a serious attempt to tack round.

Looks to me like the sort mental miasma that can descend if you get fixated with the idea that rules give you rights and overlook what they are for.
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Frank Holden said:
I stand corrected.... I was more concerned with watching the bearing of the ship...which is what he should have been doing.

In doing so I failed to notice him amongst that seething mass of humanity.....not unlike rush hour on the Budge Budge ferry....

Rule number one when conning a ship is to maintain spatial awareness..... he appears to have none.

Having been somewhere up frd 'talking to the ladies' he comes scampering aft... observes the ship for a few seconds.... sounds 2x5... and then can be seen pushing the tiller to port to bring her bow to starboard.... so no sign of anyone misunderstanding his helm order....

I don't know the local rules for the Elbe but based on the port rules I do know I doubt very much that the master and pilot on the ship will have their certificates dealt with. The person allegedly in charge of 'Elbe 5' on the other hand.............
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Your prejudice is showing - having had one set of false assumptions exposed as nonsense you replace it with another that are equally prejudiced.

What is without doubt is that the Schooner was stand on vessel so the responsibility was on the ship to keep clear - and that the ship did have room to turn as it did. only too late. All it needed was for the ship to take that same action BEFORE getting 5 from the schooner and everything would have been fine. Had he even given the sound signal required by the rules that might have been enough. In both points the ship is definitely to blame.

Not saying the schooner is blameless - I would love to know why he didn't/couldn't turn to port. But there must have been a reason for trying to tack rather than bearing away.
 
bedouin said:
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Not saying the schooner is blameless - I would love to know why he didn't/couldn't turn to port. But there must have been a reason for trying to tack rather than bearing away.
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Operating beyond the capability of his crew and vessel in the conditions of the day.

The box boat is operating in a narrow channel, keeping right as required.
The Schooner is required not to impede.
The Schooner appears to be beating. Normal good seamanship would be to time tacking to avoid tacking into a collision situation.
I'm not sure how long the schooner had been on that tack? Can't have been very long as there isn't much water outside the channel.
So a short but unknown time before the start of the video clip, the schooner alters course into conflict with the box boat.
 
I've read that the schooner skipper was an 84 year old Master Mariner who finished his career as a senior river pilot on the Elbe.

I think I'm going to wait until the authorities publish the outcome of their investigations.
I really can't see what the appeal is of speculating about these things when so little is really known about the circumstances.
 
lw395 said:
Operating beyond the capability of his crew and vessel in the conditions of the day.

The box boat is operating in a narrow channel, keeping right as required.
The Schooner is required not to impede.
The Schooner appears to be beating. Normal good seamanship would be to time tacking to avoid tacking into a collision situation.
I'm not sure how long the schooner had been on that tack? Can't have been very long as there isn't much water outside the channel.
So a short but unknown time before the start of the video clip, the schooner alters course into conflict with the box boat.
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I don't understand all the prejudice against the schooner - you are making a load of unfounded assumptions based on no evidence to try to demonstrate that the schooner was in the wrong.

If the ship had seen the schooner, it clearly expected it to pass green to green but for some reason the schooner couldn't. Possibly because the ship was so close to the outside of the channel there wasn't space.
 
I think this applies:

"Section 25 Right of way of ships in a fairway
(1) In derogation of the provisions of Rules 9(b) to (d), 15, and 18(a) to (c) of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972, as amended, the regulations contained in the following paragraphs shall apply to vessels navigating in a fairway.
(2) A vessel proceeding along the course of the fairway channel, irrespective of whether or not she can safely navigate only within the fairway channel, shall have the right of way over vessels:

1. entering that fairway,
2. crossing that fairway,
3. making turns in that fairway,
4. leaving their anchoring or mooring grounds."

Which I would paraphrase as - no buggering around in front of big ships. However there are a lot of words and I am not totally sure this has application in that part of the Elbe, but I think so.

From:

German Traffic Regulations for Navigable Maritime Waterways
 
bedouin said:
Your prejudice is showing - having had one set of false assumptions exposed as nonsense you replace it with another that are equally prejudiced.

What is without doubt is that the Schooner was stand on vessel so the responsibility was on the ship to keep clear - and that the ship did have room to turn as it did. only too late. All it needed was for the ship to take that same action BEFORE getting 5 from the schooner and everything would have been fine. Had he even given the sound signal required by the rules that might have been enough. In both points the ship is definitely to blame.

Not saying the schooner is blameless - I would love to know why he didn't/couldn't turn to port. But there must have been a reason for trying to tack rather than bearing away.
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Whatever......
This - below- is where it all happened... bottom rightish in the pics below... commercial waterway... 2 cables wide at that point.... by inspection of the chart the schooner could not have been on that tack for very long before that vid commences... so they had tacked across the bow of what was a hampered ship... hampered in as much as she had no water under her starboard bow...
Person allegedly in charge of the schooner had zero spatial awareness... was somewhere on stbd quarter when the ship was brought to his attention... ( it was probably out of sight behind Luehesand before he tacked .... ) and the presence of the ship seems to have been unknown to him ( obscured by all those day trippers ?) prior to his appearance in the vid... he then appears to panic

Whatever... I'm done....

PS try reading up on how the rules apply in rivers and stuff... there's a good chap...
 

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Frank Holden said:
Whatever......
This - below- is where it all happened... bottom rightish in the pics below... commercial waterway... 2 cables wide at that point.... by inspection of the chart the schooner could not have been on that tack for very long before that vid commences... so they had tacked across the bow of what was a hampered ship... hampered in as much as she had no water under her starboard bow...
Person allegedly in charge of the schooner had zero spatial awareness... was somewhere on stbd quarter when the ship was brought to his attention... ( it was probably out of sight behind Luehesand before he tacked .... ) and the presence of the ship seems to have been unknown to him ( obscured by all those day trippers ?) prior to his appearance in the vid... he then appears to panic

Whatever... I'm done....

PS try reading up on how the rules apply in rivers and stuff... there's a good chap...
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Lots of heat and more prejudice.

Just answer one simple question - which vessel was give way vessel?
 
bedouin said:
Lots of heat and more prejudice.

Just answer one simple question - which vessel was give way vessel?
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See post 88.

I think a lot of folk assumed it would be the sailing boat and it looks like they were right.
It's difficult to imagine how you could operate a narrow channel, with two way sea traffic, if they had to concede to crossing ferries or small boats.
 
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doug748 said:
I think this applies:

"Section 25 Right of way of ships in a fairway
(1) In derogation of the provisions of Rules 9(b) to (d), 15, and 18(a) to (c) of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972, as amended, the regulations contained in the following paragraphs shall apply to vessels navigating in a fairway.
(2) A vessel proceeding along the course of the fairway channel, irrespective of whether or not she can safely navigate only within the fairway channel, shall have the right of way over vessels:

1. entering that fairway,
2. crossing that fairway,
3. making turns in that fairway,
4. leaving their anchoring or mooring grounds."

Which I would paraphrase as - no buggering around in front of big ships. However there are a lot of words and I am not totally sure this has application in that part of the Elbe, but I think so.

From:

German Traffic Regulations for Navigable Maritime Waterways
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That all may or may not be true (except your paraphrasing isn't very helpful)

However, which was the big ship here? Or were they both big ships under the rules?
 
john_morris_uk said:
That all may or may not be true (except your paraphrasing isn't very helpful)

However, which was the big ship here? Or were they both big ships under the rules?
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I don't think you need to be a master mariner to figure it out.

I'm sorry my paraphrasing is not to your taste but if the helm of that sailing boat had brought it to mind he may have kept his boots dry.
 
Collision avoidance is just that whoever was 'stand on' under the rules. The over riding requirement to try to avoid collision whatever the rules say. The ship, seeing the schooner coming up on his stbd bow, started to turn to port to give it more room. Absolutely correct given the relative positions of the two vessels.

Turning to Stbd across the oncoming ships bows, particularly when it is clear the ship is already taking avoiding action turning to port? Bad call I would say, born out by the result.
 
doug748 said:
I don't think you need to be a master mariner to figure it out.

I'm sorry my paraphrasing is not to your taste but if the helm of that sailing boat had brought it to mind he may have kept his boots dry.
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But I think you’re still stuck on the idea that the sailing vessel isn’t a big ship. It was a large vessel in a narrow channel and yours and others assumptions that the big ship has rights because it’s ‘obviously a large vessel in a restricted or narrow channel’ isn’t necessarily true.

I’m certainly NOT saying that the schooner was blameless, but the schooner wasn’t the give way vessel in the automatic way some people are suggesting.
 
john_morris_uk said:
But I think you’re still stuck on the idea that the sailing vessel isn’t a big ship. It was a large vessel in a narrow channel and yours and others assumptions that the big ship has rights because it’s ‘obviously a large vessel in a restricted or narrow channel’ isn’t necessarily true.

I’m certainly NOT saying that the schooner was blameless, but the schooner wasn’t the give way vessel in the automatic way some people are suggesting.
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AS I understand it, the schooner was not operating in the narrow channel, it was operating outside the channel until very shortly before impact. The box boat was going up the edge of the buoyed channel IAW the rules.
The german rule:
2) A vessel proceeding along the course of the fairway channel, irrespective of whether or not she can safely navigate only within the fairway channel, shall have the right of way over vessels:

1. entering that fairway,.....

would appear to explicitly state the same as my interpretation of the normal 'shall not impede....'
 
john_morris_uk said:
Run that one past me in a little more detail. What rule says this and how does it apply in these circumstances?
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Rule 9
Narrow channels
(a). A vessel proceeding along the course of a narrow channel or fairway shall keep as near to the outer limit of the
channel or fairway which lies on her starboard side as is safe and practicable.
(b). A vessel of less than 20 metres in length or a sailing vessel shall not impede the passage of a vessel which can
safely navigate only within a narrow channel or fairway.

It is clearly a narrow channel.
The box boat can only safely stick to the channel, OK, maybe it could survive straying a few metres outside, but that would be an odd interpretation.
The schooner was sailing.

It's really not that complicated.
 
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