Collision?
How come?
All I can say is that I followed the terminology in the report.
I have to admit that in a full naval and maritime career and yachting life I never once heard the term âallisionâ until I happened upon this forum and started chatting. I had to look it up. I simply suggest we simple Aussies donât need or understand the term. There may be legal technicalities but they donât seem to bother the officials producing reports like this. Our vernacular might be âprangâ, âbingleâ, or âwhoopsieâ, all of which mean much the same.
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I am not complainimng you have used this terminology . I am a bit surprised it was used by authors . There was some discussion here on allision/collision isue when Stena tanker was hit by a feeder a while ago . The link provided explains the differences . And as to âsimple Ausies â after following for some years AMSA web links stay assured one can quickly be converted from having such opinion and use âcomplicated Ausies â term instead. 
Cheers
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Allisions is hitting a fixed object like a pier or bridge. Collision is between two vessels at least that the way it is defined in admiralty court
This is the dictionary definition of collide: to come together with solid or direct impact
Thatâs what happened when Maersk Shekou struck the Leeuwin. The distinction between collision and allision is a legal matter and is not relevant for the purposes of an accident report.
the verb would be to allide with
Is that what he is alluding to?
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I never heard the term until I moved to the office and had to deal with insurance companies and adjusters.
If youâre a captain and make a landing and a fifty-year old rotten snaggletooth piling finally snaps after a thousand other boats battered it already, you just file a report to the home office.
But the next day the office gets a nasty-gram from the dock owner serving notice that your negligent captain smashed a brand new piling from sheer incompetence and will you be sending the $20,000 by check or wire?
Thatâs when the port captain starts reading âallisionâ in emails from adjusters and P&I clubs and surveyors and lawyers. The normal deck officer may go a lifetime without hearing it because they donât pay the bill.
In the same vein are âmaximum medical cureâ and âblue cardâ.
BTW the word is not in the Scrabble dictionary but Alliakâan Inuit sledgeâis.
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Difference in legal context is the âOregon Rule.â In an allision, the (moving) vessel is presumed to be at fault. There is no such presumption in a collision. See The Oregon, 158 U.S. 186 (1895).
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Therefore surely the final report would not change even by an iota if it was named allision instead of collision.
In the case of Stena Immaculate there was a barrage of news ,articles , OPPINIONS originating from US ( Including Crowley statements ) describing the incident as allision .
Somehow You have not objected then . Did not see any quotes fm dictionaries then.
Happy we agree at least, that irrespective the name used in the investigation report the result of itâs findings would not be affected.
How about agreeing on the following . Collision in a maritime sense is when COLREGS must kick in, in order to establish the degree of fault/blame and allision is when COLREGS can rest unperturbed .
Cheers.
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You are correct. I did alot of dock damage representing the ship and or P&I club.
lots of rotten wood fender piles. I prevailed so many times against the port of San Francisco that when i would go out on a claim, they sent down a city attorney along with the wharfinger to survey the damage.
i used to spray paint the tops of the pilings with the pile number for location purposes and take a picture
also so they couldnât report the same pile damage a month later, which happened quite a few times
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Nobody should object to the terms allision or allide on the basis of the dictionary because itâs a technically correct legal term. Depending on the context the reason to avoid is because readers might be unfamiliar.
Anyway, âcollisionâ also works, in fact Farwellâs Rules of the Nautical Road uses collision for ships underway striking either moored or anchored ships
Likely the reason Farwellâs uses collision here is because the intended readership is mariners, who may not be familiar with allision.
How common is the verb allide?
Fewer than 0.01occurrences per million words in modern written English
There was a thread here on the Stena Immaculate and the Solong report: . This is from the report: âAt 0947, Solong collided with the anchored Stena Immaculateâs port sideâ
In the report the word âcollisionâ is used 7 times, âcollideâ once and âallisionâ not at all.
It is evident , that Maritime Executive Editors are really stuborn people insisting on use of the â allision â word while talking about this incident.
Most probably they have not read the stats provided on gCaptain forum by one of the very respected participants.
One may think , their only purpose is to mislead and create confussion among the readers who have absolutely no idea what allision is.
But I have also done some stats and out of 5 really THICK publications , written by respected authorities on the issue of COLREG , after running search app on their pdf versions I have found an absolute ZERO â allisionâ appearences.
SOURCE:
Cheers
Thereâs no dispute as to the meaning of âallisionâ in a legal context.
Words however can change meaning depending on context. The question is what does âcollisionâ mean?
Depending on context "collision may include striking a fixed object (for example an anchored or moored ship) or not.
Edit: or in this case striking a bridge abutment: Richardson v. Harmon, 222 U.S. 96 (1911)
The steam barge Crete, while proceeding up the Maumee River from Lake Erie, collided with the abutment of a railway drawbridge, resulting in great damage to both barge and bridge.
No cause for conCERN for Large Hadron Colliders, I trust!
Allision
Baltimoreâs Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in March when the container ship Dali ran into it, causing the death of six construction workers, the destruction of a portion of Interstate 695, and a months-long halt to port operations. News sources referred to the event as a collision but maritime publications mostly used allision instead. The difference is this: allision occurs when a ship runs into a stationary object, while collision, according to some traditional definitions, refers only to contact between two moving objects. (As recently as 2015 the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage insisted that âonly two objects in motion can collide.â) However, collision and collide are commonly used to refer to such matters as a ship striking a bridge, or any object striking a stationary object, and we consider the use of collision in this context appropriate and correct.
From here: Allision - Word of the Year 2024 | Polarization | Merriam-Webster
If two moving objects bang together, thatâs a collision. If we zoom out far enough, everything is moving, so Iâm sticking with collision. Using the term âallisionâ just reveals the speaker or writer to be a word jerk. Heck, my computer doesnât even like me to type it.
If we zoom in close enough in the case of collision of two objects momentum is preserved.
And irrespective how thinly some may slice it , it is still baloney.
In every day language the meaning of words is determined by usage, thatâs where dictionaries get definitions, from the way words are used in the wild.
For example literally can literally mean not literally.
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