ot: so how do a merchant ship and destroyer have a collision?
 

pilot error or what?

Well, I always wonder the same thing, in the middle of nowhere two giant boats crash. Wonder if there was any people looking???

I've been wondering the same thing. Plenty of radar, electronics.

i know this is serious as it seems lives have been lost
 

but you'd think modern ships would have radar collision avoidance systems. or maybe in a great big ocean "mostly" no need.

Two ships in the night?

I am not a sailor or an expert in any way in the ways of the sea.

however.

Seems like some kind of gross negligence.

I read that the destroyer was stationary, so the freighter hit it.

Coincidentally, a Nantucket high-speed ferry went up on a jetty in Hyannis harbor last night. Talk about embarassing. No word yet if the captain's name is Hazelwood.

They weren't in the middle of the ocean, they were off of Japan in an area that is relatively busy. Encounters between naval vessels and merchant ships are difficult because of a completely different manner of training and approach on each vessel. Quite frankly, when I was at sea I did everything I could to avoid naval vessels as they were completely unpredictable.

In this case, there are some conflicting issues. While the merchant ship was using AIS (Automatic Indentification System) the naval vessel was not. Rumor had it that the AIS track showed the Crystal turning to port well before the collision for navigation purposes. In general, the vessel on the other's starboard side in a crossing situation is supposed to maintain course and speed while the other vessel is required to take action to avoid collision. The rules also require that in general a vessel should avoid turns to port.

My guess is that the destroyer missed the boxboat's subtle turn to port, and did not act in the risk of collision. The box boat probably went hard to starboard when it was realized she was in extremis, hence the damage to her starboard bow.

On a US. ship there are a slew of folks with different jobs on the bridge, plus others in the CIC all of whom have various duties. A merchant ship in those waters would typically have an officer (probably the Second Mate) a helmsman and a lookout on watch. If the officer was relying too heavily on his ECDIS (electronic charting system) and its use of AIS to display traffic, he could have missed the destroyer, even though it would have been a good target on the radar. All merchant vessels carry a collision avoidance equipped radar that will track targets and determine closest point of approach (CPA). To attain the rank of Second Mate, you need several years of sea time and a degree from a maritime college. Training has been standardized worldwide by a UN Convention.

Meanwhile on the naval ship there may very well have been a junior officer with far less maritime related training and experience. The navy has a much different mission.

The media has been reporting that the container ship displaced (weighed) 29,000 tons. This is incorrect, the vessel has 29,000 gross tons, which is a volume. The container ship had a max. Deadweight of nearly 40,000 tonnes which is a reflection of how much it can carry. The vessel probably displaced somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 tonnes (half a load) at the time of the collision, v. The destroyer's 8,300, which says to me it was a glancing blow. If the ship had truly t- boned that little navy boat the damage would have been far worse.

I could go on. And on. But that's enough for now.

CaptStash....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40314128

This link shows a very erratic course taken by the freighter. Looks like they may have made an initial course deviation that took them towards an island, reversed course to find the channel, then veered to get back on their originally intended course.

I suspect that if the US ship was stopped, the decision to do so while broadside to an erratically approaching craft was a poor one and will likely cost the commander his career.

Thanks for posting that. It's one weird track. It will be interesting to learn what the heck was going on. In most collisions, both ships are at fault. I still doubt (hope?) that the destroyer wasn't stopped. That would be just plain nuts. All merchant ships are also required to carry a Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) like an airplane's black box. It will have voice, ECDIS, GPS and radar data. With any luck that will be retrieved and reveal a lot.

CaptStash....

A few years ago we had an large ship strike the Oakland/SF Bay bridge, something very stationary and in every nav chart plotter/chart for over 80 years. End result was pilot error-.

Exxon Valdez syndrome...

Well the USN does, called bridge crew and lookouts plus radar. BUT ships did not turn all that well and takes miles to stop. I wonder if it was rules of the road confusion or steering casualty. CO of USN ship in trouble regardless along with OOD, bridge crew, etc.

Guessing the captain need to work on his resume and buy some civilian clothes.

1) You have no clue what caused the Exxon Valdez disaster. Hazelwood's error was in not being on the bridge. It wasn't even remotely alcohol related.

2) The pilot error you are referring to was the on the Costco Busan, which was a container ship. There was a lot more going on there than the pilot who was taking unreported prescriptions.

It's easy to blame people for mistakes when you don't understand how things work. Ships are complicated, slow, ponderous beasts that don't handle even remotely like a motorboat on a lake. The causes of this collision will become known in due time, but guessing that someone was either asleep or incompetent is unfair and premature.

CaptStash....

He will have to wait until he gets out of the hospital. Medevaced off the ship and currently in stable condition.

Wishing for the impossible for the 7 missing sailors.

Thanks for this thread. With respect for this unfolding situation, I've always been captivated by how ships work.

I found The Ships of Port Revel a very interesting read. Not just because I'm a John McPhee fan.

amazing that I gained a far greater understanding about this incident here than reading the Wall Street Journal.

Yup, the USN will let him retire but retire he will.

Not so sure. I suspect he was asleep in his cabin when this happened, which would account for his injuries. I'm not ready to throw anyone under the bus on this one yet. The box boat's weird track has me completely stumped.

I am also afraid that the missing sailors are trapped in the damaged / flooded areas. Not a good prognosis. Fingers crossed for a good outcome.

CaptStash....

Hazelwood wasn't given a breathalyzer test, but he had consumed several drinks prior to the grounding...

was he legally drunk...maybe yes, maybe no.

http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/index....=facts.details

Unklnown, but it likely had very little if anything to do with why the vessel grounded. It was a long, complicated and discouraging error chain that allowed the incident. I personally know a couple of the players, and blame the culture at Exxon shipping more than anything else. A poorly trained mate was at the con on a new ship he didn't fully understand, and he refused to accept input from a more qualified licensed officer who was sailing in an unlicensed rank. And so it goes.

CaptStash....

From a liability perspective you might be right. From a PR vantage, I dunno...

RE: M/V Costco Busan (I had previous forgotten the type of vessel but dealt with the 50k+ gallons of fuel released into the bay)
Both prescriptions drugs and the pilots medical conditions were not disclosed on his annual forms to the USCG as required and did play a part in his conviction. But what remains is the multiple human errors including the lack of understanding of the vessel's electronic charting system and the meaning of the 2 red triangles (red buoys) marking the towers that he struck. He made the decision to leave port in thick fog (less than 1/2 nautical mi visibility) with no forward lookout posted-several other large commercial vessel pilots chose not to leave port that morning. He also claimed the radar was unreliable but it was in fact reading correctly. He failed to review the ships paper charts when he doubted the electronic systems. He gave the commands which led to the collision of the tower.
As the pilot of one of the 1st emergency responders on scene my point was it was human error and have since corrected my previous statement to give a long drawn out explanation instead of a quick read. :beer:

Agreed. He was actually the only pilot I ever had a serious problem with. I had it o
ut with him when he put my 190,000 ton ship in a close quarters situation docking at Benicia because he wanted to got to dinner with the pilot of the ship behind us. Needless to say, I was not his biggest fan.

CaptStash....



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Yes, hope against hope for the missing shipmates...as for being asleep, I've seen more than one CO be removed for cause even tho he wasn't on the bridge. This sounds really wonky, hope he survives to hear 'captain's on the bridge' again.

Allright skipper...you need to tell us(me) of your sea borne resume, 'my 190,000 ton'...gads, I thought a CV was big but a 'measly 100,000 tons.

This was already a plot twist in a James Bond Film. Some evil media conglomerate wanted improved ratings , so manipulated the GPS tracking so both ships thought they were elsewhere but actually sent on a collusion course by the evil news conglomerate to get ratings.

Stage two is getting a war. What's up with North Korea?

Uncommon carriers is a great McPhee book, I really like his books.

Thank you for the great information. If you feel up to it it would be great if you could update us some if you learn anything interesting. I am personally really interested in complicated control systems and how things can go wrong. It is unfortunate that the news tends to cover these things so superficially.

It sounds like you have experience in these matters. Does the navy have a investigation arm that recommends changes to protocols and/or equipment when these things happen? Would it's findings be public? Does commercial shipping have something like the NTSB?

Someone or some people should be sent to Levenworth breaking big rocks into little rocks, I doubt we will ever know the whole truth...

I suspect we will as long as the data from the merchant vessel's VDR is preserved, which is likely as their P & I Club (liability insurer) is teh Japan Club, with an inception date of 02 June 2017. You can bet they were aboard and downloading the data - if it hadn't already been done remotely from ashore, as soon as the vessel took her pilot.

CaptStash....

You crack me up Peter. Twenty-five years on merchant vessels, after being edumicated at Cal Berkeley then California Maritime - all of it except cadet shipping on tankers. The last seven years were as Master (captain to youse there landlubbers) on ships ranging in size from 91,0000 tonnes deadweight to 191,000 tonnes. Add twenty or thirty thousand tonnes to get displacement for them when they were fully loaded. Most of my time as Master was spent on the U.S. West Coast in the Valdez trade, although I did spend some time in the Gulf of Mexico when I relieved Duke (another stellar Paceline member) on the 91,000 tonne Panamx tanker. I got to take her through the canal and back to the U.S. West Coast. I also made a few trips back and forth to the far east and Singapore.

These days I, like Duke, am an industry sponsored tanker safety smartypants conducting safety inspections as required by the oil companies for the ships to be employed.

Plus I kill it on Talk Like a Pirate Day and have been known to swear like a merchant seaman when required.

CaptStash....

its the important things! :beer:

seriously...have really enjoyed your commentary and have learned tonnes! still, hard to understand how a big ole boat could run into another big ole boat. Don't they still have guys out there with binoculars scanning the horizons?

I don't know squat about maneuvering big ships. I had trouble with my 32 foot Sea Ray but I can swear like a merchant seaman or a Marine NCO for that matter.

I lose my voice by the end of talk like a Pirate Day and my wife wants to strangle me.
Here is a good pirate link:http://talklikeapirate.com/wordpress...ked-questions/


But seriously, CaptStash I've learned a lot from your comments and can't even imagine being in command of vessels that big !

I'm just saddened to hear that 7 men lost their lives in the accident.

For those of us not used to looking at maritime maps, what's the approximate scale of that last map which shows the detail of the erratic course of the container ship? Google Maps suggests it's perhaps 20-25 miles from Minamiizu to Toshima.

I would expect there is a defined shipping lane between the two land masses (and I am assuming that there are laws against large commercial ships operating outside of defined shipping lanes in order to protect the costal water small boat traffic). It looks like something happened where the freighter turned sharply off track (the initial abrupt brief deviation of track to the right), then followed an incorrect course, likely taking it out of the shipping lane. When it realized the error (and its associated dangers and liabilities) it reversed course to get back to where it should have been then turned again to follow its originally planned course. It seems likely that this latter maneuver was when the collision occurred but I'm just speculating.

Bodies found inside the ship.

Arg...I, too, can swear like a sailor, just ask my grand daughters..thanks..:)

Found the Fitz sailors, BTW-too bad..all onboard.