[QUOTE=Traitor Yankee;136639]Personally I lean towards the capt simply getting overwhelmed in the face of disaster. He didn’t trust any of his crew much before hand I would wager, and micromanaged them. The only real training some of them might have had at that job was to call the old man. I’ve seen it first hand in our industry.
He might have be totally consumed with trying to correct the list with ballast, only to realize too late that he couldn’t save the ship, and the crew he had trained to call him had sat on their hands waiting for orders. In the end he decided to save his own skin.
Then again, that all is exactly what this post is about, speculation based on experience.
And yes, I know I don’t have any shoes old enough for my “experience” to matter, before anyone points it out.[/QUOTE]
That sounds reasonable. On the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise one of the oddities of the accident was the concept of a negative report. The system was set up so that if the ferry was not ready in some way for sea a crewmember would report. If no report was made it was assumed that the ferry was in fact ready. When the bosun fell asleep it was assumed that his station, the bow door was secured. That’s the kind of detail (the negative report) that seems easy to overlook if you don’ t know what you’re looking for. Enough small latent errors add up.
As far as you observation about the industry , senior officers wanting to micromanage etc, that’s been my experience as well. That’s is one of the things that aggravated me the most over the years. Senior officers need to keep junior officers on the steep part of the learning curve as much as possible. The captains I enjoyed sailing with the most were the ones that kept me throttled right at the edge of too much.
It never should have happened, experts say.“Most of us are astonished with the technology and the implementation of the rules that it would happen,” said Ron Campana, an experienced captain and safety consultant. “The technology and the equipment is there to prevent this, and on top of that, you have the U.S. Coast Guard monitoring — it just doesn’t make sense.” .
“I still cannot believe the tugboat captain took no evasive action. He had to have seen (?) the ship at some point,” said Geoff Webster, a marine safety expert who reviewed a short accident video taken by a witness.
.
These quotes regarding to Summer Wind / Miss Susan incident are an example of experts that don’t understand that it is impossible to recreate Moby Dick based on a report of the sinking of the Pequot. ( Ship sunk by a whale? Sure, hear’s what happened; Call me Ishmael…) The exact sequence of events can’t be known and understood until they are known but there is nothing astonishing about that.
I would think a safety expert, if he wanted to shed any light on the subject would not say they are astonished but, if you want to stick with the puzzle analogy, would say something along the lines of; We don’t know what happened, this sort of thing is very rare but in this case the cause can not be determined because we need a few more pieces of the puzzle before we can see the full picture.
If you get pressed you could say it may have been some combination of loss of situational awareness, cognitive capture or some other handy buzz words. This accident is serious but is certainly not some extremely rare type.
You’d think that someone that is being quoted on the basis of his maritime expertise would have a better answer then it completely stumps him.
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;136663]The exact sequence of events can’t be known and understood until they are known but there is nothing astonishing about that.
I would think a safety expert, if he wanted to shed any light on the subject would not say they are astonished but, if you want to stick with the puzzle analogy, would say something along the lines of; We don’t know what happened, this sort of thing is very rare but in this case the cause can not be determined because we need a few more pieces of the puzzle before we can see the full picture.
If you get pressed you could say it may have been some combination of loss of situational awareness, cognitive capture or some other handy buzz words. This accident is serious but is certainly not some extremely rare type.
You’d think that someone that is being quoted on the basis of his maritime expertise would have a better answer then it completely stumps him.[/QUOTE]
I agree that the mainstream media has a tendency to make up facts in the pursuit of a story and the comments of supposed “maritime accident experts” notwithstanding, we gCaptain forum members sit with the ability to gather real facts in marine incidents as they become known and by using our combined professional experiences be able to fairly accurately stitch those together into a well woven fabric. In each of the major marine casualties which have occurred in the past two years how have we as a combined group been inaccurate or where have we filled in the gaps with “made up” facts to fit the scenario we postulate? I say that we haven’t done that at all and our combined record is very good all in all.
As in the KULLUK grounding, I believe that the thread here going at the time was being read by reporters at the Anchorage Daily News and that the gCaptain forum was a source of information they used in their reporting. It felt gratifying to have a hand in getting the story straight for once.
Take the E.V. again, the Reef Pass Theroy, what are the odds that someone would try take a tanker through there and add to that the chances they wouldn’t make it. Maybe generously one in a thousand ? What are the chances the E.V. hit Blight Reef becasue of a weird unforseen chain of unlikely events? Maybe 99%? That’s hindsight of course but for a while each theory was running about neck and neck.
People tend to judge by how coherent a narrative is rather then it’s probability. It’s a cognitive error, everyone does it.
…not to get all scientific or philosophical about the issue, but if we don’t spend our times speculating on, or analyzing, marine incidents, just what are we going to do here on the gCaptain forums. It would be reduced to weekly answering people asking “How can I join the Merchant Marine, I hear they make a lot of money and get a lot of vacation time?”
I think most of us know the difference between speculation, and fact/experience based analysis and take it for what it is.
[QUOTE=LI_Domer;136772]…not to get all scientific or philosophical about the issue, but if we don’t spend our times speculating on, or analyzing, marine incidents, just what are we going to do here on the gCaptain forums. It would be reduced to weekly answering people asking “How can I join the Merchant Marine, I hear they make a lot of money and get a lot of vacation time?”
I think most of us know the difference between speculation, and fact/experience based analysis and take it for what it is.[/QUOTE]
Not saying it shouldn’t be done. Not saying gcaptain forum isn’t an good source on these things.
I don’t get information at sea divided into facts and speculations, I have to sort through sometimes contradictory information. In my view it worth while thinking about how to approach problems. YMMV
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;136775]Not saying it shouldn’t be done. Not saying gcaptain forum isn’t an good source on these things.
I don’t get information at sea divided into facts and speculations, I have to sort through sometimes contradictory information. In my view it worth while thinking about how to approach problems. [/QUOTE]
I honestly still don’t get your point. Are you speaking about our discussions here on gCaptain or the mainstream media? If the media is what you are referring to then fine, no argument from me but if the former then I have a pointy stick at the ready.
[QUOTE=c.captain;136777]I honestly still don’t get your point. Are you speaking about our discussions here on gCaptain or the mainstream media? If the media is what you are referring to then fine, no argument from me but if the former then I have a pointy stick at the ready.[/QUOTE]
Obviously a professional mariners forum is going to have more technical expertise then the public. But as far as bias go. Anyone that has been in an emergency knows that things are not nearly as cut in dried when you are in the middle of things. Doesn’t matter, this forum or anywhere, things get reduced to a bare set of facts, things are simplified, the background noise, chaos and the uncertainty is gone. And not just emergencies, things don’t get done right on a day to day basis on all vessels.
It’'s difficult to appreciate how complex and chaotic things can get and how much plain old luck has to do with outcomes.