How did this happen? Ferry vs Container ship

tudorsailor

tudorsailor

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In todays papers are photos of a ferry that hit a container ship that was at anchor.

Firstly how did they manage not to see the ship ahead?

Secondly would the container ship really be at anchor 30Km north of Corsica when the depth is more than 100m?

TudorSailor
 
The container ship's anchors don't look to be deployed. I think you would see the chain if they were.
 
It's easily done if no one is on the bridge/no on on the bridge looks out of the windows for 10/15 minutes. There can't be any other explanation can there?
 
I would like to know why the AIS alarm or Radar wasn't going off. The more worrying thing is there is all this talk of having unmanned ships traversing the seas, if we can't get manned ships to obey colregs how will having unmanned ships possibly increase safety?
 
Vessels routinely anchor in up to 100m of water. Seen them in a number of places around the Med.

Try a look at Marine Traffic. Around Gib and the bank of the N coast of Morocco. :encouragement:
 
Seven Spades said:
.... how will having unmanned ships possibly increase safety?
Click to expand...

First of all you remove human beings from the equation, then you have multiple systems and different levels of redundancy and maybe even three brains who all vote to verify that the risk needs to be avoided and agree the strategy. All done a lot more efficiently than human beings.
 
tudorsailor said:
View attachment 73497

In todays papers are photos of a ferry that hit a container ship that was at anchor.

Firstly how did they manage not to see the ship ahead?

Secondly would the container ship really be at anchor 30Km north of Corsica when the depth is more than 100m?

TudorSailor
Click to expand...

It is perhaps an unusual spot to anchor in the open sea but there is a shallow spot - a sand bank - where the depth is less than 50m.
 
Doesn't give the box boat much of a chance against an Exocet type thing actually wanting to hit it, does it ?

I've spent many an anxious night at small boat anchorages doing ' anchor watch ' in case some buffoon dragged onto us, but being rammed by a ship with no look-out was I thought a Cross - Channel hazard; I remember seeing a small coaster going north across the shipping lanes, I could see through both bridge doors, there was no-one there.
 
Two or three years ago we crossed the NE end of ushant tss which has a dog leg. We saw a large container ship leave the tss on the dog leg with an obviouse but slight zig zagging course , it had to be the autohelm hunting for a course. It came to a halt after some 12miles. However I had picked it up on ais just before it left the tss watching CPA's . The information its ais transponder was putting out was it was," not under command". I kept a close eye on it for a long while it eventually switched to anchored. To be honest Im surprised there are not more collisions.
 
Seven Spades said:
I would like to know why the AIS alarm or Radar wasn't going off. The more worrying thing is there is all this talk of having unmanned ships traversing the seas, if we can't get manned ships to obey colregs how will having unmanned ships possibly increase safety?
Click to expand...

Surely this is a prime example in favour of autonomous unmanned vessels? :p

Pete
 
fergie_mac66 said:
Two or three years ago we crossed the NE end of ushant tss which has a dog leg. We saw a large container ship leave the tss on the dog leg with an obviouse but slight zig zagging course , it had to be the autohelm hunting for a course. It came to a halt after some 12miles. However I had picked it up on ais just before it left the tss watching CPA's . The information its ais transponder was putting out was it was," not under command". I kept a close eye on it for a long while it eventually switched to anchored. To be honest Im surprised there are not more collisions.
Click to expand...

On the other hand,

my sole experience of ' ship handling ' was a 38 metre 280 ton hotel barge on the Burgundy canals and river Saone - the wheel had 33 turns lock to lock so as to have a mechanical ( hand not power ) advantage if moving the rudder in silt.

The engine did 88 RPM driving a big 3 blade prop with ferocious stern throw if even thinking about using reverse; the normal practice on entering locks was for the foredeck hand to drop a looped line over a shoreside bollard and surge the line, astern gear was of no use except to add to the confusion; if they ( usually me ) missed it would be curtains, the barge already had a new bow after the last time, before I joined.

The barge drew 1 metre with a flat bottom.

A friendly rival barge was unusual in being twin-screw, which would have been spiffing except one engine was always u/s - I can't imagine what a pig she must have been to handle, but we could always tell if she was just ahead by the fresh red paint on the lock gates...

Our job handled like a Tesco trolley on ice, so I do have a lot of sympathy for ship drivers; only if they're actually trying though, not in their cabin researching the latest Playboy or Space Invaders. :rolleyes:
 
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