I don’t know about the question as to which captain deserves how much jail time. I mean the book Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky is over 400 pages, I quit after about page three.
My question how will punishment reduce incidents? Read the threads here, they are mostly “that guy was an idiot and I’m not” so no worries.
It probably won’t reduce the incidents JMHO. It may increase owner awareness if they were proven negligent, but maybe just business as usual. Unpredictable in this business, as is the weather. IMHO neither one should be arrested until the facts speak for themselves. Especially due to the weather they incurred, and other problems on board. The disparity in the reactions of officials is questionable.
Recall the loss of the Tanker Prestige. The first captain the owners hired said the ship was not seaworthy and quit. So the owners hired another captain who agreed to sail it.
The ship had been classed by ABS. The captain ended up going to jail and ABS was found not liable Some sort of ABS docs are for entertainment purposes only or some such legal dodge.
I dont know about box shipping but in the offshore game, you walk up the plank get the safe combo from the ex, the crew drop the lines and off you go, I hope its seaworthy…
Kinda different but similar. I was in Jax doing some upgrading many moons ago, in the mid 80’s. A company competing in the Puerto Rico box/barge trade (Not Crowley) was trying to get a Captain to sail in very bad weather. He refused, the company said if you won’t we will get someone else. So this replacement cowboy just cleared the jetties before the wire broke and the barge landed right in front of our hotel . Was interesting watching the recovery operations during our lunch hour. Interesting, uscg and their port captain were in the same hotel and ate in the same facility. Port captain offered me a job. Told him “No thanks” . Always wondered what happened to the cowboy and if I was gonna be his “Potential” replacement. Believe the same company owned the “Gulf Majesty” which did not do too well on her last voyage.
Box boats are very difficult to maintain coating on hatch lids at sea. If the vessel is on a trade where a lot of reefers are carried the decks are continually wet with condensate. Salted wet hides are corrosion superchargers. The gear boxes are the last items loaded from the quay and are on top of the stack and can’t be accessed. The lashing points are subject to continuous mechanical abrasion with lashing bars and rigging screws being fitted, removed and dropped.
No worries, just waterblast, renew hull coatings, replace lipp seals on the shaft with new on different landings, check rudder clearances and a bit of engine work and she’s good to go for another 5 years.
After all with only 277 metres of ship to prepare and paint and lashing gear to maintain with 5 men to do it, what could possibly go wrong?
Jailing the owners is the only thing that would increase owner awareness.
Agree, but good luck with that.
We could start with making the companies pay to clean everything up like we do with out companies.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authorities (AMSA) will inspect container vessels after they arrive in Australian port, since “improper stacking and securing of cargo, as well as poor maintenance of securing equipment” are likely to have been contributing factors to recent incidents:
Often containers break away at the very extreme positions of the ship, aft and less in the forward part of the ship. In the middle it is much more uncommon to loose containers although the MSC Zoe managed to do that.
The pitch accelerations are considerable as can be seen on the graph. At AP =0 it is 5.7 m/sec² and at 277 it is 7 m/sec². Probably less aft because of the weight of the machinery in the engine room. All the accelerations work together and put torque on the containers.
Apart from these forces there is the matter of vibrations which are perhaps underestimated in my opinion. They are caused by internal and external circumstances. Internal causes are for instance the vibrations generated by the propeller’s and engines. Externally from slamming, waves, larger than normal waves and groups of waves. These incentives will cause the hull vibration issue and even ship structural damage. A ship has also its own own natural frequency.
The excessive vibration may lead to structure fatigue failure, affect the shipping efficiency, human-being health, the service life of equipment and the loss of containers. Well know is that a ship can ‘shudder’ rather violently under certain circumstances probably caused by some kind of resonance.
It has happened again:
https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/watch-vessel-uni-florida-arrives-in-uae-with-toppled-containers/#:~:text=UNI%20FLORIDA%20is%20now%20moored,of%20the%20total%20containers%20transported.
Closed for drifting off topic. Mismatch between posts and thread title.
