Interim MAIB Report Salong/Immaculate

If anyone else missed the reporting earlier in the trial you might be wondering like me what the defence is… and why he’s even giving evidence.

Here is what was said last week: “Motin's defence said he was aware he was on collision course with the Stena Immaculate via radar when it was nine nautical miles away (16km) and had visual sight of it from three nautical miles (5.5km).

The court previously heard he told police he had tried to take manual control of the ship's steering when it was one mile (1.6km) away from the Stena Immaculate, but the autopilot did not disengage.” (from BBC article on 21st)
 
dunedin said:
Not knowing how ships horns work, can the watch keeper on an anchored ship create a five hoots sound signal instantly?
Might waken up a sleeping watch keeper on the incoming ship, or perhaps at least the crew on the anchored ship.
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On the anchored vessel they would have had a panel that has all the common sound signals listed and a push of a button would activate that sound signal, including on a timer if required to repeat. It would be very irregular for the horn to be not available on a Stena vessel at anchor.
 
RunAgroundHard said:
On the anchored vessel they would have had a panel that has all the common sound signals listed and a push of a button would activate that sound signal, including on a timer if required to repeat. It would be very irregular for the horn to be not available on a Stena vessel at anchor.
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So they don’t need to awaken the stokers and get up steam for the whistle then :-)
 
Mark-1 said:
Trial:


North Sea ship crash captain switched off alarm system
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It is not that unusual to silence alarms on a bridge. Modern vessels have alarm management systems and very likely both vessels would have had these systems installed. All alarms are logged by the system and remain on log and can't be deleted. They will typically show as red, yellow or blue, depending on the alarm criticality. Silencing an alarm is a key part of command and control to ensure that focus is maintained when an emergency is underway. It is also part of routine alarm management. However, safety critical alarms, are supposed to be managed is a special way, as they are part of the controls for avoiding "major accident hazard". Usually a safety critical arm has to be addressed immediately, but of not necessarily addressed immediately, one type of solution, is to control the risk via risk assessment, PTW and additional features e..g. back up firedamp electrical failure, no spare part, ban all hot work, raise PTW, until pump fixed. A navigation alarm such as AIS can still be silences as competency of the watch is supposed to deal with that alarm by fallowing IRPCS, for example. The point is silencing an alarm is not a neglect act per se, but it could be.
 
dunedin said:
So they don’t need to awaken the stokers and get up steam for the whistle then :-)
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Ha ha! Possibly an electric alarm, but equally could be a compressed air alarm, and definitely classes as "safety critical" and therefore subject to enhanced controls around maintenance and availability.
 
RunAgroundHard said:
It is not that unusual to silence alarms on a bridge. Modern vessels have alarm management systems and very likely both vessels would have had these systems installed. All alarms are logged by the system and remain on log and can't be deleted. They will typically show as red, yellow or blue, depending on the alarm criticality. Silencing an alarm is a key part of command and control to ensure that focus is maintained when an emergency is underway. It is also part of routine alarm management. However, safety critical alarms, are supposed to be managed is a special way, as they are part of the controls for avoiding "major accident hazard". Usually a safety critical arm has to be addressed immediately, but of not necessarily addressed immediately, one type of solution, is to control the risk via risk assessment, PTW and additional features e..g. back up firedamp electrical failure, no spare part, ban all hot work, raise PTW, until pump fixed. A navigation alarm such as AIS can still be silences as competency of the watch is supposed to deal with that alarm by fallowing IRPCS, for example. The point is silencing an alarm is not a neglect act per se, but it could be.
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I think that there is a difference between cancelling an activated alarm and de-activating the entire system as, it seems, happened on Solong. Quote from the above linked article: "...
Prosecutor Tom Little KC asked Motin why the Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System (BNWAS) had been deactivated and if it posed a "significant risk" to the crew.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, the captain admitted it was a risk and said when he was alone sometimes the BNWAS was turned on and other times it was not...."
 
No surprises there then. What did surprise me is that the defence offered very little evidence and called no witnesses. Why plead not guilty then fail to offer a defence?
 
Biggles Wader said:
No surprises there then. What did surprise me is that the defence offered very little evidence and called no witnesses. Why plead not guilty then fail to offer a defence?
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It’s the crown’s job to prove their case, beyond reasonable doubt. With no one else on the bridge at the time to witness the actions it might have seemed there was a chance that “nobody can be sure” would win. The jury took 8 hours of deliberations to reach a verdict, so whilst from our point of view it seemed clear cut, either the coffee was very good in the jury room or there was at least a discussion happening about whether the crown had made its case or the defendant (who did give evidence on his own behalf) had managed to plant seeds of doubt.
 
ylop said:
It’s the crown’s job to prove their case, beyond reasonable doubt. With no one else on the bridge at the time to witness the actions it might have seemed there was a chance that “nobody can be sure” would win. The jury took 8 hours of deliberations to reach a verdict, so whilst from our point of view it seemed clear cut, either the coffee was very good in the jury room or there was at least a discussion happening about whether the crown had made its case or the defendant (who did give evidence on his own behalf) had managed to plant seeds of doubt.
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I can't fault your explanation, but if the Captain wasn't guilty, who was?
 
penberth3 said:
I can't fault your explanation, but if the Captain wasn't guilty, who was?
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Very occasionally there are things that are just accidents, not criminal acts or even criminally negligent acts.

From the outsiders point of view it never really looked like this would be one of them, but under our legal system the captain had the right to argue that it was.
 
penberth3 said:
I can't fault your explanation, but if the Captain wasn't guilty, who was?
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Well he was guilty so don’t let the following explanation distract from that. His gross negligence caused the collision which resulted in the death.

However your question is based on the wrong premise - that someone must be guilty. The defence he seemed to run was that he had not been (grossly) negligent, with an added suggestion that the autopilot had not disengaged. If you should ever find yourself accused of manslaughter “it wasn’t me, it was him” is a possible defence but I’d guess for gross negligence manslaughter it’s much more common to say “yes I was in control, yes something went wrong, but judging on the circumstances that were apparent at the time I may even have been slightly negligent but I was not grossly negligent.” The law makes a distinction between accidents, even those with some element of blame, and criminal levels of foreseeable risk.

If you were facing several years in a British prison before deportation to Russia, I wonder if there would be much incentive for pleading guilty! Roll the dice because it’s always possible the crown drop the ball, or you manage to convince three out of the twelve jurors that there was a gap in their case.
 
The fatigue science behind this is sobering.

The report describes a captain who was sole watchkeeper and had turned off the bridge alarm system — apparently because of repeated spurious ECDIS alerts. That's textbook alarm fatigue: when systems cry wolf often enough, the human response is to silence them. And then the one time it matters, there's nothing.

But the deeper issue is what sleep deprivation does to decision-making in the first place. There's a solid body of research showing that after 17 hours awake, cognitive impairment is equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05% — the legal drink-drive limit in most countries. After 24 hours, it rises to 0.10%. At that level, you're not making sound judgements about which alarms to disable and which to heed.

What strikes me about this case is that it was a professionally crewed vessel with proper equipment. Recreational sailors doing overnight passages are dealing with the same fatigue biology but with fewer resources — smaller crews, no relief watch, and often no formal watchkeeping protocol at all.

A recent open-access review paper pulls together the fatigue research specifically in the context of sailing — worth a read if this topic interests you: galvanicworks.com/research/
 
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