USS Fitzgerald collides with ACX Crystal off coast of Japan

The watertight hatches are dogged from the upper compartment, these dogs are dogging pins with a nut, basically, it is bolted down, the hatches have a scuttle in the middle that can be opened from the top or bottom to allow passage, once the hatch is secured, it cannot be opened from below. Under normal underway conditions, all the watertight hatches and doors are open and only closed when conditions change to warrant closure, such as, fire, battle readiness, and collision.

This vertical access is an escape trunk, much as you describe it (although itā€™s a ladder, not a stairwell). It is not the usual access in/out of the engineering spaces.

Access to and escape from hull spaces of merchant ships as per IMO/SOLAS are simple. Same principles should be used by any Navy. The non-military principles are:

Cargo spaces have separate, weather tight hatches on comings on the weather deck for cargo and crew. Crew uses vertical ladders. Access is only from open weather decks. It is very safe and simple, if the hatches are weather tight. Before closing hatches check for stow-a-ways, etc. That hatches are weather tight are easily checked by hose tests.
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Engine spaces are protected by a coaming with doors above weather deck. Engine crew members take a ladder up to the door. A second escape from the engine room is a vertical ladder in a trunk with a door at the bottom and a hatch on the open deck. Of course there are other ways in/out of the E.R. via doors in the deck house and the funnel for normal use. All accesses are gas tight to enable fire fighting.

Hull accommodation spaces have enclosed stairwell trunks with doors at every deck level as main access/escape. The stairwell starts inside a protected superstructure or a deckhouse. Vertical/sloping ladder in an enclosed trunk is the second escape from such hull space. Watertight doors are not recognized as regulatory escapes from hull spaces.

Above simple principles could easily be applied by Navies. I know they are not. The people involved are not very bright and more interested in shiny uniforms.

It is allowable to have watertight doors in the bulkhead as access between watertight compartments.

I think it was already pointed out earlier in the thread (canā€™t search effectively with mobile browser) that the DDGs donā€™t have watertight doors on main bulkheads below the damage control deck. As far as I know, this is pretty standard for military vessels (navy, cg etc.) - if you have watertight doors, you have to assume they are open at all times when doing the stability calculations.

If you are replying to me, I was talking about on merchant ships, not Navy. I have edited my comment to try to make that more clear.

Ok. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I guess what Heiwa was referring to is that while itā€™s allowed to have watertight doors in commercial ships, they donā€™t count as escape routes. However, SOLAS allows using watertight doors even in passenger ships in way of escape routes from below bulkhead deck as long as there is at least one route independent of watertight doors. On the other hand, for cargo ships it requires to have two widely-separated escape routes (stairwell and a stairwell/trunk) from accommodation spaces below the lowest open deck, but does not make reference to watertight doors.

What I feel that, that as capable as Arleigh Burke class seems to be, (to a simple merchant mariner) they are essentially flawed.

Navies, of whatever flag, are always under financial constraints. this leads the to cram as much as possible into the smallest platform.

The cheapest part of the ship is the hull. Compared to engines, weapons. sensors etc it is dirt cheap.

To build a hull say 50 foot longer would cost little, have no impact on speed but offer more compartmenatisalation
as well as livability for the crew.

The USN are acknowledging they are too short by the installation
of stern flaps:

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Navy to commission new destroyer USS Rafael Peralta

The Navy will commission the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Rafael Peralta in a ceremony this morning at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.

Navy to commission new destroyer USS Rafael Peralta

The Navy will commission the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Rafael Peralta in a ceremony this morning at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.The Peralta will be the 64th Arleigh Burke-class ship to enter service with the U.S. Navy. It will have the newest version of the AEGIS Weapons System that, combined with the AN/SPY-1D radar, can track and engage aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles simultaneously .DDG-115 F-111 or 3 we now have 64 of these destroyers.
Iā€™m a squid, but Iā€™ll add a semper fi to both of these American heroes.
Go Navy!

I referred to merchant ships in international trades subject to IMO/SOLAS rules and ITF requirements for crew accommodation.

Ships in national trade are built according national rules, which can differ considerably from SOLAS.

Military and coast guard ships are not built as per SOLAS. You can do whatever you like, e.g. fit flush hatches in decks without coamings and use them as escape routes. I wonder what ITF would say about USN accommodations.

Watertight doors are evidently only fitted in watertight bulkheads of the hull.

Passengers are today accommodated in deckhouses and thus not exposed to watertight doors.

Large numbers of crew are on the other hand accommodated in the hull, often below waterline, and may be exposed to watertight doors, if fitted.

Such watertight doors are not permitted by SOLAS unless an exemption certificate is issued and particular instructions issued how to use them, e.g. to always be closed at sea.

Many maritime administrations do not follow the IMO rules and permit watertight doors everywhere with catastrophic results! M/S Costa Concordia suffered a hull leakage incident, up-flooding some compartments causing total black out but floated safely 2012. However, when the crew abandoned ship, watertight doors were opened by them producing progressive flooding of intact compartments ā€¦ so the ship lost stability ā€¦ capsized ā€¦ and sank hours after the incident took place. To cover up the defect it was decided to blame the Master alone for everything. I assume the Fitz commander will be treated the same. Just blame the senior officer on the ship.

It could be added that all compartments on different decks should be isolated from one another by fire doors, so that fire smoke in one compartment shall not spread to other compartments. Such doors can easily be closed by remote control. I have no idea how you remotely close a hatch in a deck.

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What is the nature of this alternate reality which you inhabit?

There are pharmaceuticals available that may help you ā€¦ unless misuse of meds is one of the reasons you post such amazing stuff.

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Well, I just recommend to keep watertight doors closed at sea. All the time. And do not open them during a serious abandon ship order!

Fire doors can be left open as they are easy to close remotely, if your ship is on fire.

Weathertight doors you close in severe weather to avoid green water wet your accommodations.

You donā€™t need any meds to understand it.

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Wow. Iā€™m going to need a second or third cup of coffee this morning to figure out how these last several posts in any ways has anything to do with the collision at sea Iā€™m trying to keep abreast of in case thereā€™s a substantial update.

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Nothing particularly substantial but this is an interesting echo of the Navy apologists who are perhaps now beginning to wonder just how broken their system might be.

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Can you provide a citation to that effect? Otherwise I call bullshit.

Consider the source ā€¦ itā€™s not worth the troll food.

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Read this article this morning. The guy writing it is backing off the one way blame game but still making the assumption that since the Crystal was in auto pilot, no one was on the bridge. He has a lot of knowledge of SOP on a navy destroyer, but limited knowledge on Merchant bridge ops in my opinion.

Thanks for asking. The SOLAS rules are quite clear but IMO discusses them and issues Guidelines how to interpret them all the time. See http://heiwaco.com/news86.htm how I see it!

What is no clear to me is how a collision producing underwater, small, structural damages and up-flooding of one accommodation/equipment compartment well ahead of the Fitz four engine rooms could cause complete black-out and loss of power on the ship. We are told the warship has no watertight doors in the bulkheads, so how could sea water progressively flood the engine rooms?

That Fitz crew members drowned in the up-flooded compartment is probably due to defective escape arrangements. They were trapped and couldnā€™t get up/out in the dark.

But I agree, last time I crept through destroyers in dry dock was 1970. Do they have bilge pumps or is pumping by hand by sailors?

I notice that the author of that article is STILL talking about the AXC Crystal being on autopilot (true) WITH NOBODY ON THE BRIDGE!!!
He doesnā€™t even qualify it as a possibility, but as a proven certainty, based on an article in the VERY reliable tabloid, the Daily Mail which quotes another VERY knowledgeable expert on how Merchant ships are operated:

What is the chances that the bridge was unmanned? Close to Zero, unless you think that thousands of Merchant ships habitually sail around the world ā€œon autopilot with only a dog on the bridgeā€

Sorry to say, but racial prejudice MAY also be behind so many appearing to believe so.
Since this vessel was manned by Filipinos they must be less qualified and less conscientious than say Americans, or West Europeans.

Some members of the media and the general public seams to believe that East Europeans, Chinese and others, are also somehow in this category and behave like a bundle of ā€œcowboysā€ on the high seas, which can be written down to lack of knowledge I presume. (That there are also a few Mariners that still think so is more worrisome)

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If a dog can be trained to fetch beer from a refrigerator why canā€™t it be taught to disengage an autopilot? Why arenā€™t these canine nav watch officers held to STCW standards? It appears they arenā€™t getting much more nav watch training than the navy guys.

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