newtothis
Well-known member
And for sailing forums:
Excoriate, Deviate, Bloviate. Those can be done in any order to the same effect.
Excoriate, Deviate, Bloviate. Those can be done in any order to the same effect.
How does a tanker run aground on a reef
- Thread starter Wansworth
- Start date
Pirx
Active member
Pirx
Active member
Kukri, sorry, I apologise, I was being mean.
Bajansailor
Well-known member
And I very much doubt that you will find wonderful notes like this on electronic charts now.........(?).
Kukri
Well-known member
In the same vein, I recall that the chart of Hecla Cove has the legend: “Surveyed by Commander W. Parry, RN, and the boats of HMS Hecla, 1827”. He was Acting Hydrographer Royal at the time. I suppose he reported to himself when he got home.
Kukri
Well-known member
Pirx, same to you; I was being grumpy.
Resolution
Well-known member
cherod
N/A
I see Mahebourgh etc are all clealy marked on Google Maps , for those who do not trust 200 yesr old charts , i have not checked Navionics
LittleSister
Well-known member
I'm certainly no expert in these things, but can't think of an equipment failure that would lead to a ship diverting from its course and then continuing on a steady course for a few hours without anybody being able to change it or stop the ship. For the radio equipment to fail at exactly the same time might be inevitable in an infinite number of universes, but is most unlikely in our world alone.
The highly plausible sounding suggestion of a diversion closer to the island to allow the crew to get a mobile signal has also been aired in the local Mauritius press and international maritime press.
That still doesn't explain, though, how the ship came to actually hit the island's reef, only how they came to be closer to it than they would otherwise have been.
We await the conclusions of the official investigation, but I for one will be surprised if crew drunk and/or asleep didn't feature in it.
I don't doubt that being crew of such a ship is a tough gig, especially at the moment, but that doesn't seem to me to excuse a failure to actually do the job, if that's what happened.
Wansworth
Well-known member
The cruise ship that ran aground off a med island had indeed been erroneously directed too close so thecaptain could toot his friends on the island or some such trivial matter,but the diversion was miscalculated and the ship suffered total loss and unfortunatly loss of life of passengers and crew.
Kukri
Well-known member
Dealing with the loss of the “Costa Concordia”, she was making a manoeuvre known in cruise ships as a “flyby”. These are planned in advance and in the case of P&O Cruises their Fleet Instructions used to include detailed instructions for carrying out “flybys” using radar parallel indexing with escape routes should anything go wrong during the flyby. I don’t know if they still do.
Costa Crociere didn’t have such standing orders and in the case of the Costa Concordia Captain Schettino doesn’t seem to have made use of radar.
Here’s something I wrote at the time:
Costa Crociere didn’t have such standing orders and in the case of the Costa Concordia Captain Schettino doesn’t seem to have made use of radar.
Here’s something I wrote at the time:
Kukri
Well-known member
We aren’t really concerned with the crew as a whole. What the engine room staff, the galley staff, the off watch deck crew and the ETO were doing is neither here nor there. We are only concerned with what a maximum of four people were doing - the Master, in agreeing a deviation to close Mauritius, the Second Officer as the Navigating Officer in drawing up a plan for the deviation and submitting it to the Master for approval, the Officer of the watch in carrying it out and if present (during darkness - she is reported to have grounded at around 16.00 GMT, so 21.00 local time) the lookout. It seems reasonable to assume that a lookout will have been in the wheelhouse. Whether the OOW was the C/O or the 3/O will depend on when the ship’s clocks were last altered as she made Westing. At 21.00 ship’s time it would normally be the 3/O, with the C/O from 4 to 8, but we are told that the C/O has been detained for questioning, along with the Master.
This was a big ship, owned by a Japanese company and on long term time charter to Mitsui OSK; it’s reasonable to assume that her on board procedures will have been in line with Japanese and international standards and indeed her port state control record and comments by her regular pilots tell us that they were.
Her crew were mostly Filipino but her Master was Indian and her Chief Officer was Sri Lankan. I would expect them both to have UK Certificates of Competence.
So the sort of thing - drunkenness, fatigue, etc - that regularly causes the groundings of short handed Eastern European manned (but, sadly, often British owned) coasters round the coasts of the UK can be discounted.
We are left with what seems much the most probable explanation - loss of situational awareness by the Officer of the Watch. The coast line appears low lying so there would be few visual indicators of position, and the coast line would not return a good radar echo. GPS would operate normally, though.
At this point a question occurs - did the ship download the dongle for the largest scale charts for the area of the Mauritius coast that she was planning to close? If we assume that the ship was closing the coast to get a cellphone signal - something that is very commonly done, but not usually with the owners’ or managers’ approval - then the cost of the large scale BA charts for somewhere where the ship wasn’t meant to be would show up in the ship’s accounts and the superintendent might have had a small sense of humour failure. (The charts are pre-loaded; you buy the dongle for each chart and download that over satellite).
Just possibly, the 2/O might have decided not to spend the money, but to rely on the large scale charts. I don’t know this - I am speculating.
At all events, there clearly was a loss of situational awareness on the part of the OOW, and it is said that he did not respond to a VHF call from shore. The most likely explanation is that he was distracted, but we don’t know what distracted him. The commonest cause of distraction of the OOW is paperwork; in the old days, the 2/O was always doing paper chart corrections, the C/O was and is preoccupied with cargo issues and the 3/O was free of such distractions.
We cannot rule out the possibility that the OOW was himself on the phone home, which would certainly be a distraction and would stop him answering the VHF, but most ships ban phones from the wheelhouse, for obvious reasons.
I don’t know.
I don’t think we need to assume that the ship’s crew were all engaged in a drunken party, just because one man had a birthday. On ships which are not actually “dry”, drink is carefully rationed and accounted for - typically three small bottles a day and return the empties before getting new ones. I expect the cook made a cake and if as many Filipino manned ships have, there was a band, they may have played something. But a drunken riot is outside my experience of Filipino manning (British, less so - I recall cocktails being mixed in a bucket on a bulk carrier after a few days at anchor off Japan when boredom had truly set in. But that was forty years ago).
So that is my guess.
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Kukri
Well-known member
The Wakashio will certainly have had at least two, more probably three, interswitched type approved ECDIS systems running BA charts.
Two if she still carried paper; three if not.
Stemar
Well-known member
An armchair Admiral writes...
So, they didn't download the detail charts for "interview without coffee" reasons - entirely plausible - and the wide are charts which is all they needed until the decision to approach land didn't show the reef, again, entirely plausible, not the first time that's put a boat on the rocks.
I know just enough about how charts and scaling works to know how little I know, but it does seem to me that it shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to design charts to show all depths less than, say, 20m, at all scales, even if we show a 20m reef as a mile wide at the smallest scale, getting more accurate as you zoom in. Can anyone with real knowledge tell me why this can't be done? Sure there's a cost implication, but the cost of putting a ship on unmarked rocks seems to me to have certain cost implications too.
So, they didn't download the detail charts for "interview without coffee" reasons - entirely plausible - and the wide are charts which is all they needed until the decision to approach land didn't show the reef, again, entirely plausible, not the first time that's put a boat on the rocks.
I know just enough about how charts and scaling works to know how little I know, but it does seem to me that it shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to design charts to show all depths less than, say, 20m, at all scales, even if we show a 20m reef as a mile wide at the smallest scale, getting more accurate as you zoom in. Can anyone with real knowledge tell me why this can't be done? Sure there's a cost implication, but the cost of putting a ship on unmarked rocks seems to me to have certain cost implications too.
Kukri
Well-known member
(I’m guessing; I don’t know that).
Above my pay grade, but the UK Hydrographic Office is expected to turn a profit! I was involved with the UKHO a bit, more than twenty years ago, and they were very well aware that the full horrors of the digital revolution were about to smash their business model into smithereens, and were working on it, but I am not in touch with them now.
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emandvee44
Well-known member
Got this from Lloyd's List but it does not make much sense.
M.
M.
emandvee44
Well-known member
The grounding occurred only a mile or so from the actual shoreline, where there are lots of houses and therefore lights. (sunset was at 1749LT, ship grounded, reportedly at 1925, but we do not know if that was 'ship's time' or LT ) The radar would have easily picked up the actual shoreline profile, but probably not the reef, although perhaps the surf line.
Good visibility at the time and OOW height of eye 35m or so.
I am pretty sure that had I been on the bridge heading straight towards said lights I would have altered course long before a mile off.
M.
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Kukri
Well-known member
Could be an engine stop? From the time taken, and guessing wildly, maybe a liner change - they have got a lot more common with low sulphur heavy fuels since January.
emandvee44
Well-known member
I wonder if the court appearance and statements of the Master and Chief Officer are in the public domain?
Just checked - next court appearance scheduled for 25/08
M.
Kukri
Well-known member
I think they soon will be, given the level of public interest. As a very young lawyer I worked on the Amoco Cadiz case (I had stepped ashore from the tug PACIFIC not long before) and just about anything that happened in the French investigation was in the public domain within hours.
Thanks for the accurate timings - looks like the Mate’s watch.
