It was a horrible situation, but ENTIRELY avoidable.
In the author's defense, he was writing for the audience of Vanity Fair.
I’ve dealt with class society inspections along with Coast Guard inspections on US an foreign flagged vessels operating in US waters.
I am starting to see that, especially after having been in a small sailboat on a big ocean.
Many, many years ago I did some maritime inspections for the Feds - I focused on the radio equipment. Back then, it was LW, CW and HF voice under SOLAS. It's satellite now. I haven't been on a ship in 30 years, but recall the whole inspection process and differences between US and SOLAS inspections. EPIRBs were a particular problem back then.
Yeah, similar decisions and a chain of relatively innocuous events can lead to a major oh s*** moment
Maybe "don't blame the captain" didn't convey the point I was trying to make. He obviously didn't intend to sink the ship and kill everyone on board, but I can empathize with what he went through.. getting the weather reports, thinking he was making responsible decisions, and also knowing that there is a chance that if he misses his schedule he'll be out of a job
Maybe the author was successful in generating sympathy for the captain. That said: the captain clearly failed to take the actions necessary to preserve crew, ship, and cargo. What you call "a calculated risk" was a guess based on old data when new data was available. That was followed by failing to maintain awareness of the storm position and intensity. I've watched the professionals who got it done. They don't wait for someone to tell them the right thing to do, they just do it. I understand some folks can't understand command responsibility in this world where everyone gets a participation prize. Finally, if he feared for his job then he really wasn't acting as captain and should not have accepted the position. Hey, it's okay to be first mate if you can't handle the responsibility.
I didn't find the captain to be a particularly sympathetic character, even in the Vanity Fair version.
Nor did I but you and I both know the responsibility of command.
In this case I was one of the passengers. But I watched the captain make the decision to delay our departure even though it meant that one of the other passengers threw a tantrum. "I have to be home on (a certain day)!!" After a bit of this, the captain pretty much told him, no he didn't have to be home on any particular day. I told the captain that I totally supported his safety-based decision, and that I could wait as long a he thought was appropriate. After all, it was a 4-day crossing in the Southern Ocean.Nice to hear you've been pursuing that pastime.
That's the part I didn't understand. Initially it looked like they were pouring over charts and really trying to come up with a solid strategy. But then once they made their first 10* turn to the right the captain went to bed and basically said F* it. That's the part that had me puzzled.. why he was using the ancient BVS data instead of the more recent data.. or even what their own barometer was showing?? Maybe you are right, maybe he shouldn't have been in charge. The fact that he had to call the shore people and basically ask for permission to use the distress button was odd to me, also the part about asking for permission to take a southerly routing.. I would hope the person in charge also knows when to say no and make that call
His character seemed to shift in the article. I chocked that up to the whole chain of command thing.. when the S* hits the fan it's his job to seem confident and unwavered. I read a submarine story somewhere where they were getting depth charged, people are panicking, and the commanding officer sat down with a book. The idea was to seem calm and collected.. I think it was either the Chief of the Boat or the XO that gave him a nudge that the book was upside down
It's one thing to remain calm and not panic. However, the captain in the story seemed pretty disengaged from the problem, and unwilling to go on to plan B, C, D, or E.
I know nothing first-hand, but it's my understanding that, just like cockpit resource management in airplanes, modern ship crews are taught something similar. I have no idea if the old ways of doing things are giving way to the new, where the captain is supposed to seriously consider observations and suggestions by the crew, and the crew is supposed to speak up with concerns.
My perspective is a little different. Once they were taking green water over the bow the cargo was in peril. Action was required at that point. No action was taken.
Regulation is not always a good thing....
He wouldn’t know.
The idea that the standards are higher for US Flag has become a bit of a fallacy.
It really is a classic error chain. Like the NTSB said, the decision to leave port and attempt the voyage was not in itself an unsound decision. But they (particularly the master and chief mate) were making one bad decision after the other.
No disagreement. Laws and regulations are a two-edged sword and can do as much damage as they do good.
The failure to protect the cargo certainly caught my eye. It seemed like the cargo wasn’t a consideration, the important thing was the schedule. I’ve seen the same thing in offshore supply. I’m sure fuel cost is a major concern. How many containers have to be lost to equal the cost of a day’s worth of fuel? I’m thinking that number is less than five and might be just one depending on what’s in the container.
