Avoiding Navy Collisions: What Can Be Done?

I was talking about THE NAVY, not individual officers. As in, the institution has forgotten the importance of good seamanship in the modern age of electronic warfare.

Fair enough, pages 11 - 13. Sucks

From my reading it would appear that there were too many people with narrow responsibilitys concentrating on their tasks to the detriment of the overall picture.
The many years ago when I served the conning platform was occupied by the navigator with the commanding officer seated to his right. The officer of the watch assisted with physically fixing the vessel and collision avoidance and received reports from the lookouts stationed outside the bridge. There were two ratings,one handling external coms and one internal. The quartermaster and telegraphs men were in another compartment. The passage plan and collision avoidance tasks were mirrored by the blind pilotage team in the action information room.
Leaving Singapore at night on a merchant ship I had the mate, a helmsman and a lookout on the bridge , the pilot having left while the vessel was still within the anchorage area. The second mate would be forward and the third mate still making his way back to the bridge from seeing the pilot off.
My AIS was on. I was listening to traffic control, my deck lights that didn’t interfere with navigation lights or vision were on so other ships could see that I was a large container ship and immediately observe my aspect .
When viewed from astern a warship with only its navigation lights on, no AIS and having been designed to have a low radar signature could be mistaken for a small craft in poor visibility.

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I forgot to add that there was only one chair on the bridge and that was the CO’s.

Jones was also a merchant ship captain at one time.

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Earlier in this thread I got a bit of a bruising for suggesting that the complexity of the control systems on the bridge of the John S McCain was excessive, and resulted in the personnel being preoccupied with it. Well, as it turns out I was only echoing the findings of the US Navy investigation. It was also suggested by one contributor that “all the commercial vessels he had ever heard of had multiple control stations”. This raises an interesting point, and if anyone out there is looking for a subject for a Phd/MSc thesis, the human/machine interface on marine craft would be a good subject. Well, here’s a start.

I have sailed on many ships that only had a single point on the bridge for steering, and a telegraph for communicating with the engine room. These ranged from very large passenger ships to very small bulk carriers – not much can go wrong with that system. I have sailed on two offshore vessels which only had a single control station for both steering and engines facing forward, which created some interesting problems when trying to tie up to offshore installations; I have sailed on a ferry with Voith propulsion which had three control stations for heading, speed and direction, which might not be the same as the heading, all of them active at once (the system I liked best) and I have sailed on many offshore vessels with multiple steering positions and a couple of engine controls. All the steering was active all the time and the engine controls usually required some sort of action to change stations. One thing all the steering systems had in common was being disabled when the autopilot was engaged, in itself something of a problem because people forget they are in autopilot.

There are also ferries, and probably other vessels, which have complete control stations on the bridge wings, which I think require some sort of switch to engage them. These systems often have the unexpected result of making the captains of such craft feel that they are the only people who should operate them, not always very successfully. And finally on merchant ships no-one ever used to receive any guidance or training on these systems, although I believe that some organisations may now provide simulator training.

The US Navy have an on-going technical investigation which I would have thought might carry out a historical review and they have a recommendation in the long report: “No 6. Share lessons learned and operational guidance from the on-going technical review of USS John S. McCain systems and procedures.” The one thing all the systems I have described have in common is that they are all made up of wheels, switches, levers, buttons and dials and doubtless the Navy will take all this into account. They have already determined that for steering many ships habitually use the “manual back-up system”, which is the steering wheel, as the John S McCain was on the fateful morning, because they have problems with the on-screen systems.

Having more than one control station does not make a system overly complex. Think about it. You could have many simple control stations, or you could have just one highly complex control station. One doesn’t result in or exclude the other.

No, that’s not what you said at all. You were incredulous that there was more than one steering station and, gasp, that control could be switched between them. That’s not the slightest bit “complex” and it’s on basically every commercial vessel in existence today.

In case you forgot what you said, here it is:

There is two different things being discussed, the complexity of the system and the complexity of the human/system interface. From the point of view of the user the wheel of a ship and the wheel of a car look similar and in some sense the are equally simple. But the steering stand of a ship is much more complex, relativity speaking from the users point of view.

“Complexity” was never mentioned before. He was all incredulous that a ship could have more than one steering station that control switches between, he made no mention of complexity and you can have very simple systems that include switching stations.

Complexity was not specifically mentioned but that’s what is being discussed. It was said “(after all, a wheel’s a wheel)”.

This thinking follows James Reason to focus on the human/system interface.

This is one of the failures, that of the bridge team’s failure to catch this error. When the steering control was lost someone “should have” realized that there was a 99.9% chance that it was the human making the mistake, not a equipment failure.

I believe that is is Gryhpe’s web site: Ships and Oil.

If it wasn’t specifically mentioned how does anyone know it is what’s being discussed (until 30 posts later when the topic is brought up)?

Whether or not the steering system was overly complicated is completely aside from fact that the steering is able to be transferred between stations.

Of course the Navy is looking at the systems and interfaces, they’re obligated to look at all possible causes and see if maybe there’s something that can be streamlined or changed to try and make sure this doesn’t happen again.

But the specific thing that they failed to do isn’t complex at all. On the screen it has a section dedicated to steering control, it has a readout that says “Steering Control: Helm” or where ever steering control is. All stations who can accept steering control have this readout so it is never ambiguous where steering is.

Sure if you dive into it I’m sure there are things that could be streamlined on the screen, personally I’m not sure I’d change anything major. But the issue at hand is that they accidentally transferred steering, then had NO IDEA where it went. Despite having it on the screen AND having a button that’s entire purpose is GIVE ME STEERING CONTROL RIGHT NOW. They self-induced a steering casualty by not knowing how to operate the system, of which this particular part is not very complicated.

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That seems rather foolproof.

That’s very scary.

I don’t want to belabor this but as I understand it the helmsman was controlling the wheel and the engine control. The CO wanted to split control and give engine control to the lee helmsman,

In error both the helm and the throttle control was shifted to the lee helm. Presumably the helmsman then discovered he no longer had helm control and assumed the steering had failed.

Did the helmsman give up control or did the lee helm take it? Same thing with after steering? the bridge had to wait for after steering to me manned IIRC.

I don’t want to belabor this but as I understand it the helmsman was controlling the wheel and the engine control.

Correct, as they were overtaking vessels(including the one they collided with), the CO and OOD noticed that the helmsman was having trouble keeping up with both rudder and engine orders, so he ordered the duties split between Helm and Lee Helm(not unusual in high-traffic or high maneuvering areas).

In error both the helm and the throttle control was shifted to the lee helm. Presumably the helmsman then discovered he no longer had helm control and assumed the steering had failed.

Mostly correct. The mode they had put the steering into(incorrectly as the report states, as the CO had an incorrect assumption about how the modes worked) took out a step in the transferring of control. The Lee Helm requested - and got - control of the steering and the PORT shaft only. Starboard shaft control remained with the helmsman. This is how they compounded their problem, the port shaft slowed as ordered bu the starboard shaft remained at 20 knots.

Did the helmsman give up control or did the lee helm take it? Same thing with after steering? the bridge had to wait for after steering to me manned IIRC.

Lee Helm requested it. They were a backup configuration that allows certain stations(lee helm being one of them) to take steering by request, because the configuration is for backup operations. Even this shouldn’t have been a problem, since Helm and Lee Helm stand next to each other, and their screens are just two screens side by side on the same console. I don’t know how they didn’t realize steering control had moved less then a yard away. Instead of realizing this mistake, they called away a loss of steering casualty.

This is also when they started to try to slow the ship, but due to the throttles not being ganged they only slowed their port shaft, further increasing their port turn(they had been keeping 1-4 degrees of right rudder to maintain course, and the rudders go midships when you transfer control).

After Steering wasn’t manned initially, no. This is one of the things that got the CO fired, as if he had set the Sea and Anchor detail(which he delayed setting), aft steering would have already been manned and could have taken over in seconds. As it was, aft steering manned up and took control of steering just fine. Then the Helmsman hit the “GIVE ME STEERING RIGHT NOW” button and was given steering control. This is when the ping-pong happened, with both aft steering and the bridge bouncing control of steering between themselves. Why they didn’t just talk to each other on the net, I don’t know. A simple “I have steering control don’t touch it,” would have done the job.

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Might be a combination of confusion and anxiety got them in a loop, the same way a person repeatedly checks the same pocket for lost keys. Needed a fresh set of eyes, someone that understood the system, didn’t know the steps that got them there and wasn’t assuming that the system was malfunctioning.

If Sea and Anchor Detail was set, then more experienced people should have been on Helm and Lee Helm, so initial problem might never have occurred, i.e. Helmsman having problem with steering and throttles. Or they would have been split when Detail manned. And HSO would have been manned.

Decision to delay setting Sea and Anchor Detail set the stage for this whole sequence.

How come nobody is asking why the helmsman was having difficulty keeping up with all of the helm and throttle commands? What was he being asked to do? I can picture him being told to keep the speed at 20kts and him continuously bumping throttles up and down… is that what they do? Would love to read a VDR transcript…