COLUMN | Regulations versus reality: North Sea collision highlights importance of an extra pair of eyes on the bridge [Grey Power]

With commendable speed, the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch has published its interim findings into the March 10 collision between the containership Solong and the tanker Stena Immaculate, which was at anchor off the mouth of the Humber.

There were no surprises in this report, and the final document, which may well be delayed by the criminal charges against the master of the containership, will probably take many months to see the light of day.

The Russian master, charged with manslaughter and negligence, remains in custody against a trial that is not expected until early next year. One of the crew of his ship remains missing and is presumed to have died.

One fact that did emerge was that the containership was travelling at speed, in visibility that ranged, at the time, of between 0.25 of a nautical mile and two miles and that there was no “dedicated” lookout on the bridge.

The master was keeping the watch, having taken over from the second mate a couple of hours before the vessel crashed into the anchored tanker.

The ship was on its normal route between the Forth and Rotterdam, just one of many hardworking feeders running between the principal European ports and the secondary havens.

To those who may have been brought up in an era of more generous manning, it might seem surprising that first of all, the master of a sizeable ship was required to undertake routine watchkeeping duties. It might also appear strange that a ship would be navigated in fog at high speed without additional eyes being available, clearly in breach of the regulations.

Did we not have endless debates about one-man bridge operation (OMBO) many years ago, and was not this practice outlawed as unsafe, after conclusive trials?

The latest accident in the North Sea is regrettably just one of many that demonstrate, time and time again, that much modern practice effectively treats the regulations with complete disdain.

OMBO is quite normal, evidenced both by collisions and grounding that have occurred with a lone watchkeeper, invariably distracted or asleep, in the comfortable, climate controlled wheelhouse, usually with the nuisance of installed watch alarms turned off.

And on many of these hard-worked ships there is not the manpower available for the additional dedicated lookout prescribed after dark or in conditions of reduced visibility. In theory, such ought to be possible – hence the minimum manpower requirement – but in practice, the extra eyes are either closed, or doing other tasks regarded as more important.

There are minimum rest hours to be considered and we all know how diligently these are complied with, but that is an issue for another day.

As for speeding in poor visibility, that too can be experienced quite routinely as fog is no longer considered a reasonable reason for a late arrival on a container terminal. Why else would the bridge of a modern ship be equipped with the very best navigation and communication equipment, if not to render the old handicaps of poor visibility of no consequence?

A master of a feeder ship, indeed any hard-driving vessel, would not remain a master for long by arriving late too often and causing all sorts of inconveniences to the terminal.

The issue of distraction, with watchkeepers expected to do a lot more than keeping a navigational watch, as the term was traditionally employed, is also relevant to any consideration of safety.

The watchkeeping master of a ship, when not handling the vessel in and out of port, will be expected to be doing rather more than navigation as the hours progress, with a heavy “paperwork” workload, which must be done before arrival, on these short sea passages.

And any bridge watchkeeper these days will have the additional delights of endless alarms sounding, as many emanating from the unmanned machinery spaces, have conveniently migrated to the bridge.

The regrettable reality of maritime operations today is not that such an accident happens, but that it does not happen more often. Some might argue that the whole logistics chain is too taut; that there is inadequate manpower for the job in hand, or perhaps that the regulations are no longer fit for purpose.

Book review: C/O Cunard House, 88 Leadenhall Street, London EC3

It might appear to be almost as remote from modern seafaring as life aboard sailing ships, but there is no shortage of books of reminiscences about the “golden age” of seafaring, which began in the 1950s and ended abruptly with containerisation.

But it is always people who served as officers we read about, the life of ratings who they sailed with being ignored, or rather glossed over. “C/O Cunard House, 88 Leadenhall Street, London EC3” is the unusual title of a rather different book that traces the life of a young rating aboard the ships of the Port Line in the 1950s and 60s.

The title is the address of the company and where all the mail to those aboard the thirty-odd ships of the fleet would be addressed. It is a delightful book about somebody who was able to recollect the life lived as a member of the large crews carried on these commonwealth cargo liners on their voyages to the other side of the earth.

He writes, from the perspective of a rating, of the ships, the masters, mates and boatswains who peopled them.

A “company man” who stayed with the ships of the Port Line, rather than live the life of the peripatetic sailor, the author Bill Ferguson, who has a good eye and an excellent memory, takes us around the ports of Australia and New Zealand over the years, presenting the reader with a glimpse of what life was like in a simpler, less industrialised maritime world, when seafaring was a lot of fun.

Author: Bill Ferguson

Available from Whittles Publishing

Web: www.whittlespublishing.com