The Most Dangerous Place on a Ship?

Stemar

Stemar

Well-Known Member
Joined
12 Sep 2001
Messages
25,589
Location
Home - Southampton, Boat - Gosport
Visit site
According to QI, it's the lifeboats. Apparently more people are killed and injured in lifeboat exercises than any other activity and over a 10 year period, on British & Australian ships, lifeboats didn't save a single life.

Supplementary fact(?) from the same source: Lifejackets on airliners haven't saved a single life. In an exercise with a simulated crash landing on water, only about 40 people even got their LJ and, of those, only 3 had put them on properly. According to safety experts, unless you've got a lot of warning, stuff the LJ, just GTFO

Plausible, but are they true?
 
Looking at recent ship accidents...
an LJ would not have made much difference.

However, if the Costa Condordia had not managed to beach.. it might have been very different.
 
Stemar said:
According to QI, it's the lifeboats. Apparently more people are killed and injured in lifeboat exercises than any other activity and over a 10 year period, on British & Australian ships, lifeboats didn't save a single life.
Click to expand...

Little wonder. Have you seen how they launch them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9AmvrTeoXU
Industry legend is that more people have been killed in lifeboat drills than have been saved by them.
 
I presume that it is a psychological hangover from the Titanic, when shortage of lifeboats was the cause of many deaths. People on ships, whether passengers or crew, want to feel that if a disaster struck they would have a chance of surviving.

I have always found the lifejacket demo on planes embarrassing, but now that they mostly do it on videos it does at least have some entertainment value. I confess that when travelling by train and they call out a request that we should read the safety instructions, I feel compelled to add "and your lifejacket will be found under your seat".
 
Minn said:
True, I think, but free fall lifeboats are very very much safer.
Click to expand...

Except at drills...
Australia.. some years ago.... foreign ship...foreign crew.
Engineer in boat.... AMSA surveyor makes hand motions suggesting 'turn the wheel thingo'... engineer turns wheel thingo... AMSA surveyor makes more hand motions ... engineer thinks... must mean other wheel thimgumee.... boat drops, engineer unsecured... engineer very badly injured.. spine etc...

AMSA stopped showing much of an interest ... ie any interest... in free fall lifeboats after that.. in the report surveyor came up smelling of roses ... engineer branded a fool....

The fact that he was Bulgarian and all instructions in the boat were in Danish did not help...
 
I've heard it said that passengers who inflate their LJs inside the aircraft are far less likely to escape.

As to lifeboats, its far safer if you can evacuate on to a floating platform of some kind. Serious fires on ships for example mean that most passengers can and have been safely evacuated. Skippers know that they will almost certainly have casualties and fatalities if they have to evacuate, and most of those will occur in the process of loading and launching the lifeboats.

Perhaps aircraft should be fitted with lifeboats as well? If they can be free fall launched, which will hit the water first? The plane or the Lifeboat.... then there could be the catastrophic scenario of the passengers all escaping only to have the plane crash on them. Cant win I suppose.
 
Old Harry ( the genuine original one )

there are a few answers to that;

for a start if one is in an aircraft say going cross-Channel that is one of the few times a manual not auto lifejacket is a good idea - an auto may well trap one as the aircfraft sinks on ditching.

Some airliners have liferafts stowed in the wings but I'm not sure which, it seems an old fashioned idea now accountants not flying in them hold the purse strings.

In WWII Uffa Fox designed a lifeboat to drop from aircraft, complete with sailing rig and instructions.

I don't know about the new P-8 Poseidons but the Nimrods used to carry big liferafts to drop.
 
Last edited:
It was also Uffa Fox that said something along the lines of a man's boat length should match his age. That's a lot of 70 to 80 foot boats just from this forum!
 
This is all about passengers but what about crew?
Wires and ropes maim and kill plenty, and all ships have them. Somebody got crushed to death on the Woolwich Ferry, a mooring line went in the rotating propellor. (One of the new ferries bears his name in memoriam).

Someone got half their brain turned into jam by a shackle catapulted into his head, when a tow line parted. (I know him, and after months as a vegetable, the other half booted up and now he is alive and kicking although not working.)

Deckie on a trawler is still right up near the top of the dangerous job charts.

Ships offer almost unlimited potential for ruining your day, even tied to the wall!
 
A chap was very badly hurt with ' life changing injuries ' on the old Cowes chain ferry while we were there but didn't see the accident happen - I believe yotties gave generously to the appeal, for what that's worth - it made me sick just to hear what had happened to the poor bloke, I'd chatted with him an hour before - I hope he has not been forgotten, I never learned his name.
 
As far as aircraft are concerned, the bigger the less chance of getting away with it. Notable exceptions, like on the Hudson, or down in shallow water.
When we used to cross the Channel, we wore our LJs and kept the LR on the back seat, not in the bagage compartment. That was a low wing, even less chance in a high wing.

Though I did like the bloke who ditched his little wooden single seater in the Channel, He sat on it until a ship came to help, and they even winched it on deck to take home. No LJ needed.
 
Stemar said:
Supplementary fact(?) from the same source: Lifejackets on airliners haven't saved a single life. ... Plausible, but are they true?
Click to expand...

The lifejackets-in-airliners claim is often made, but I am assured that it's not true. Here, for example, is the plane Captain Sullenburger landed on the Hudson River:

fPhKN.jpg


When Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked, ran out of fuel and landed on water by the Comoros Island, at least some of the survivors probably owed their lives to lifejackets. Unfortunately a lot of the non-survivors owed their deaths to lifejackets as they inflated them early and couldn't get out of the cabin.

Survivors ALM Flight 980 spent up to three hours in the water. As with Sully passengers, it can't be proved that the lifejackets saved any lives, but it seems likely.

Of course that's not many, and it has been argued that if lifejackets were simply omitted the weight saving and higher climb rates possible would have saved more lives than lifejackets have. But then, can you see any airline not simply making up the weight with more passengers and cargo?
 
oldharry said:
I've heard it said that passengers who inflate their LJs inside the aircraft are far less likely to escape.
.
Click to expand...

Billy Connolly always said that he would put his LJ on, wherever the plane crashed, because when they dug him up in 1000 years time, the future Tony Robinson would go on TV & tell people that this proved that there was a river there long ago. They would then start constructing computer pictures of harbours & boats & the viewing audience would all go " Aye, that is amazing!!!"
 
oldharry said:
I've heard it said that passengers who inflate their LJs inside the aircraft are far less likely to escape.

As to lifeboats, its far safer if you can evacuate on to a floating platform of some kind. Serious fires on ships for example mean that most passengers can and have been safely evacuated. Skippers know that they will almost certainly have casualties and fatalities if they have to evacuate, and most of those will occur in the process of loading and launching the lifeboats.

Perhaps aircraft should be fitted with lifeboats as well? If they can be free fall launched, which will hit the water first? The plane or the Lifeboat.... then there could be the catastrophic scenario of the passengers all escaping only to have the plane crash on them. Cant win I suppose.
Click to expand...

Every single safety briefing I've heard on an aircraft (and I've heard quite a lot) has emphasized that you DO NOT inflate your lifejacket until out of the aircraft. I am something of a connoisseur of safety briefings! The best I've seen so far is the Air New Zealand one, using Lord of the Rings imagery.
 
JumbleDuck said:
The lifejackets-in-airliners claim is often made, but I am assured that it's not true. Here, for example, is the plane Captain Sullenburger landed on the Hudson River:

fPhKN.jpg


When Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked, ran out of fuel and landed on water by the Comoros Island, at least some of the survivors probably owed their lives to lifejackets. Unfortunately a lot of the non-survivors owed their deaths to lifejackets as they inflated them early and couldn't get out of the cabin.

Survivors ALM Flight 980 spent up to three hours in the water. As with Sully passengers, it can't be proved that the lifejackets saved any lives, but it seems likely.

Of course that's not many, and it has been argued that if lifejackets were simply omitted the weight saving and higher climb rates possible would have saved more lives than lifejackets have. But then, can you see any airline not simply making up the weight with more passengers and cargo?
Click to expand...

Like so many businesses, ' this place would run so smoothly if it weren't for these godamn customers clogging up the works ! '
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top