The marine industry from time to time gets some confusing messages.
An incident on a feeder ship, master and two mates on departure the master sailed with one mate forward, Bosun aft and one mate off duty and asleep.
The small conventional tug was girded with one fatality and the master was charged with manslaughter by not having an officer present aft.
During my time as master with no tugs on a feeder ship I sailed with just me on the bridge wing and no one in the bridge.
One mate and two seamen forward, Bosun and one aft. One mate in his bunk, two engineers engine room and a cook in the galley.
The bridge wing controls had a pitch control, joystick and push buttons for bow thruster. In bright sunlight it was hard to see what settings it was on. There were no alarms fitted and it was difficult to hear anything in the bridge.
Management did consider reducing the manning further by supplying prepared meals
Swiss cheese model might be useful in this case.
Exactly same in my time on coasters . 3 years with me and master 6/6 , cpp fited + bowthruster no ARPA /ECDIS /AIS and a truckload less regulations with no ISM/SMS yet but I saw master prepping for that new thing which was to revolutionalise everything and make SOPs safer. Less alarms at that time so one had to watch and understand what one was doing .
Now the saturation of various alarms requires aditional chapter in SMS called bridge alarms management systems . ( not talking about e/r alarm panel ) what gives an extra noise during UMS.
How one can monitor performance of the ECDIS w/o in depth study of 750-800 pages manual and tetsing with thousands of clicks each function available I simply can not imagine.
And with such a number of other smart gadgets ( each fm 100-700 pages ) user manual it takes time to get savvy with all of that. Otherwise one monitors nothing having no idea how it works , one is a mere spectator . The pundits tell you not to rely on single source of information , verify this or that .This is crazy . When you add to it a mobile ph preocupation the picture looks gloomy while the traffic gets thicker and faster with less room around.
Fits like a glove .
Nice find. Presumably the guy in the gilet and baseball cap, using the handheld radio is the pilot? Who I wonder is the guy in the greenish baseball cap is.
The other pilot. One for docking, one for the transit outbound.
not sure if it has changed - but always had a ton of respect for the docking masters in NYH - growing up pushing barges around with underpowered tugs, doing tons of ship assist work, tons of time on the local waters/docks. Great training for the docking master work.
Always respected the Sandy Hook guys, but a large part of their work is not really that challenging. Don’t get me wrong they are a talented group - but spend a bunch of time running Ambrose channel and upper bay.
Good lord whatever you do don’t let them hear you say that. They think they’re right up there with the Houston pilots in terms of difficulty and skill.
well none of us get paid for 99% of the time when it is routine. we get those big bucks for the 1% when it goes to hell. Sure they get their share of those.
You’re absolutely right.
But running Ambrose Channel is like the first simulation freshman at school try to tackle. There’s a reason they start there 
let me test my memory - 2,000 ft channel 2 turns ( actually more like 1 slow one) -
Sounds about right. Don’t forget the big bridge!
Thanks.
I don’t know what happened on that ship but I agree that we can be certain that was not the plan.
One question is why was the tug not utilized in a more effective manner? The assumption has been made here that it was a failure of decision making but it may have been a failure to fully comprehend what was happening.
It’s not uncommon that in the event of CPP pitch failure the unexpected behavior is initially attributed to other factors.
If that was the case then there would be an increasing mismatch between what was happening and what was expected. That could result in disorientation and confusion until it was too late.
Clearly, there was no risk analysis undertaken allied with the deadly assumption that everything and everyone would function as expected with an extremely short time frame between departure and allision.
Two Pilots, a Master, Officers, an inordinate number of deck crew, a 2800hp tug………and it hit the bridge.
Can You give source /link ??
Normal practice in New York - a sea pilot and a docking master
A docking Pilot plus a Bay Pilot. Two professionals with extensive experience.
I was a regular in New Jersey cont.terminals and am aware of their professionalism and experience but surely both were not in charge of this tragic undocking .Sea pilot was surely drinking coffee , munching on danish biscutis or enjoing late dinner or a plate of coldcuts or …talking on the mobile and even worse checking gCaptain forum and FB page. Just saying 
100 pct true - which is quite an inditement for a very well paid person - with a great deal of expertise standing on the bridge.