We have video of the collision.
Commercial shipping uses pilots with local knowledge in pilotage waters in my time in the navy pilots were only used on three occasions, Suez Canal (back before it shut in the 6 day war)â Panama Canal and once in Japan. The Japanese pilot was making a dogs breakfast out of it in high winds and the commanding officer took over and berthed the ship safely.
The passage plan in a notebook form was written in a form that made it possible for the navigator to remain at the centreline repeater with details of lights, clearing bearings, wheel over and distance to run. The passage plan was on the chart for the OOW and followed by the CIC, in other words there would be 2 seperate teams monitoring the navigation and collision avoidance.
That was then and now we have ECDIS displaying the chart with passage plan and AIS on it and there may have been a radar overlay.
What possible excuse could there be.
Thereâs a better version of it included in the video reconstruction put out by the accident board and linked here earlier.
They were training on using visual navigation, in preparation for a situation of total âsilenceâ and/or instrument black out. Obviously they didnât have enough knowledge and experience to carry it out safely.
They should have had someone watching the electronic sources to alert them if anything went wrong.
Hjeltefjorden is considered as a simple part of the coastal route to navigate, since it is wide and among the longest stretches on a single course. The HI had just come through Steinsundet, which is a lot more difficult navigation wise.
Of course the problem here was not navigation, but understanding the traffic picture and lack of situation awareness, which is why the backup should kicked in early enough to avoid the collision, if there were any(??)
On the MTBs we regularly conducted Navex in much more difficult areas and at much higher speed. On the open bridge we had a chart in a plastic shield, folded to the where only the relevant area was visible, with the old Decca radar display in the chart room below and a âblowpipeâ for communication between the two. On the bridge would be Commander and myself as Coxswain on the wheel, with the 2nd in command and a Radar plotter keeping an eye on things from below, ready to let us know if we headed into danger.
During ABC exercise I would be left alone on the bridge as the âsacrificial lambâ to get us out of the contaminated zone, while the boat was shut in, except air supply to the engines.
Not directly comparable of course, but the same Navy, the same coastal waters and far less people and equipment to keep watch by.
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So far I have only read the article, it will take me a while to get round to reading the report.
Lack of experience, lack of training, confirmation bias, ultimately the helmsman saw the ship but though the officers knew what they were doing and didnât say anything.
Back to the article on BRM. Completely failed here apparently for many of the usual reasons.
BRM gets much more complex the more people are involved.
Sum it up, 7 knot bridge team on a 17 knot ship in confined waters with heavy traffic, what could possibly go wrong?
The BRM on the tanker had a few issues.
One little question comes to mind. How many deck lights did the Tanker have on?
Just the focsle? Or the whole dam deck?
Having all the lights on sure as hell didnât help. An experienced observer would have clued in . The officers on the HI were not very experienced and made a fundamental blunder partly because the couldnât see the nav lights.
Sheer laziness on the tanker.
Ditch the map itâs ruining your brain?
WTF. Ok I get it they were fanning about practicing bearings and doing things visually nobody checking the radar. Piss poor I agree.
Clearly nobody was actually keeping a watch while training was being conducted.
I admit itâs been several decades. Even so back in the day as a 3rd Mate. Keeping a accurate plots on charts, radars and visual look out. Was routine practice.
Use everything to keep SA.
I was just trying making the point that to navigate visually better to stay on the center line. I shouldnât have dragged that old post into this thread.
According to the report a watch was being kept on the radar and the AIS of the tanker was seen but there was a failure to resolve the mismatch between the OOD and the radar watch.
I agree
From the little I have read. The critical missing piece. Nobody on the center line of the Bridge literally or figuratively.
The center line becomes much more important to your perspective the further forward you are.
Navy ships typically have the Bridge well forward.
Just the helmsman evidently, also he was the only one that noticed that the tanker was SBDR
Yep.
And he wasnât talking.
Fundamental failure of BRM in its most simple form. It never occurred to the helm to speak up. If he or she had said something the critical error may have been caught in time.
Never mind the check lists or fancy terminology. I donât know how many times my Ass has been saved by a QM or just anyone saying this looks or sounds odd.
Questions I have asked many times.
Have you ever had any BRM training?
Did anything look strange?
Would you feel comfortable speaking up?
I canât count how many times I have heard.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes
Followed by
âI thought he knew what he was doingâ or something similar.
I pretty much expect to hear it.
I do not agree. The report clearly states that the reason the lights were on was that the crew was working on the deck. Normal procedure when leaving or entering port.
I have looked at the photos at the report of the Sola TS leaving port and frankly it looks like ,as they say, lights of the train in the tunnel.
Very big issue is, as the report states, that STARBOARD LOOKOUT was unmanned! There was nobody on the lookout during the 15 minutes prior to the collision. Why that lookout could not wait those 15 minutes and eat AFTER the watch?! Was he that hungry?
Another issue is that the 4 of the 7 bridge crewmembers had problems with eyesight and according to doctors were UNFIT for bridge duty. Report seems to imply that those who had problems with eyesight were those who were the lookouts.
From the report. OOWT did not understand Norwegian, so did not listen to radio. OOW did not listen to radio because was busy training OOWT. OOWT was training leading the ship safely. So they missed out information about Sola TS leaving port, as well as first conversation between Sola TS and VTS about HI.
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Where did you get that? Hilarious metaphor. You may not be able to see what it is, but surely it ainât good news.
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Still working my way through the report, possibly one of the longest and most thoughtful Iâve read in a long time.
Trying to explain the incomprehensible.
The lights were not all on.
Initially on departure all the aft facing lights were turned off. Leaving all the forward facing lights on.
After turning the bridge front and Samson post lights midship were turned of
Leaving just the forward focal flood lights.
Like a lot of modern ships the sidelights are kind of close to the accommodation lights but after ship had turned this shouldnât have been a issue.,
Not uncommon for a ship to have minimal working flood lights on for a short while after departure. Should have been easily recognized.
The report is Attempting to explain why not. Clearly the TS was not recognized as a ship. The failure to recognize the ship is a fact.
Limited experience. Possibly a small factor. Yet the original OOW had more experience than a graduate of modern cadet programs. Quite a bit more.
The OOW on duty not quite as much but still at least equivalent to a graduate of a cadet program.
At this point I am thinking ECDIS aided collision. Possibly AIS aided.
Itâs almost as if the officers donât know how to keep a look out. Or more importantly keep up to date SI on the vessels position.
To miss identity the ship as a stationary terminal. The OOW clearly had no idea where he was and more importantly where he was going.
The standing order or navy directive are astonishing.
Parrallel Index not required if ECDIS in use with overlay if the radar and ECDIS coincide. The navy regs require a route corridor only.
So they were following the red line. On the ECDIS. Alarms off, relying on AIS. And ran into a f ing great tanker looking right at it without realizing it was there.
They were observing bearings with a pelourus and plotting them into the ECDIS. Confirmation of the red line. Without questioning why they were apparently passing so close to the terminal.
The report also suggest Norwegian civilians donât know or are no longer taught to take observations. Which is incomprehensible. The navy having much higher level of instruction and requirements for competence. Seriously?
What do they mean by pellourus?
I am quite surprised they donât have gyro repeaters on the bridge wings.
Particularly since risk of collision should be observed visually by compas bearings not by a pellourus
While I am not particularly surprised these guys donât know the difference. I would have thought even the average Norwegian civilian would.
Operating at night. No moon light, No systemic radar plotting. In confined inshore pilotage waters. Without systemic parallel indexing or secondary position confirmation.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh. apparently some of them were diagnosed after the fact with some sight issues.
The OOD was stuck on an incorrect interpretation of what he was seeing. In order for an experienced mariner to shift understanding in a given situation a weak signal that something is wrong is sufficient.
The OOD evidently lacked sufficient experience to pick up on the relativity weak signals available. A strong message from either an inside or outside source would have sufficed.
The frigate crew that saw the AIS and helmsman didnât say anything because they figured the OOD knew what he was doing.
Itâs interesting that none of the VHF messages explicitly laid out the situation. For example the message from both the tanker and the VTS was alter course, not something along the lines of âthis is the tanker Solas ahead of youâ or the like. Same with the VTS, none of the messages were intended to change understanding.
In this case the VHF messages were weak, not strong with regards to changing the OODâs understanding.
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Still, too bad they left out some details in name of political correctness and in order to protect identities of those involved.
In particular I do not see in the report mention of :
- how many were males and females on the bridge.
- what was age of each of the crew member. They give only average age of the whole grup (22years old).
- how many foreigners/guests were on the bridge. Just only one OOWT ?
- which of those 7 people on the bridge were those 4 with eyesight problems. That is what duties did perform those with poor eyesight.
Even the authors of the report does not quite believe in what they wrote , in the respect as to what was going on the bridge , since one of the recommendations they have made is to install video cameras on the bridge.
That makes perfect sense, so long as you presume that the OOW tried to resolve the situation visually, which he clearly did. Trouble is, that wasnât his job. He was supposed to keep an eye on things, including the various navigation aids, to make sure things didnât get out of hand. Somehow he got so engrossed in the training task that he forgot all about that, and I feel like thatâs a glaring hole in the report.
That is rather interesting. I always give relative bearing and range when clarifying traffic situations, as in âIâm the red hulled workboat eight cables off your starboard bow.â I wonder if that habit is a carryover from the days before AIS? The Rhine skippers donât even give their name these days, relying on ATIS / AIS overlay to light up the talker.
Itâs pretty clear that the Solaâs bridge team expected the HI to check them out on AIS, which would be the only logical course of action. If someone gets on the horn sounding extremely concerned about a crossing situation, VTS gets in the mix telling you to do something immediately to avoid collision, what are you going to do? Figure out who youâre talking to, or assume itâs one of those guys over there?
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A pelorus is the term used to mean the centreline gyrocompass repeater at the conning position in navy speak.
In square riggers a fitting was placed on the port and starboard rails and the pelorus, basically a gimballed azimuth ring was shipped into the fitting to take a relative bearing and the true bearing being obtained using the standard compass and corrections.
The last one I saw was fitted to a small Norwegian coastal ship where the single gyro repeater was fitted at the steering station.
On older merchant ships you would have a standard compass on the Monkey Island and a steering compass in front of the steering position, Bearings were taken from the Standard compass.by climbing up top with the pelorus
The bearing(s) could be communicated to the bridge via a âblowpipeâ, or more likely by climbing down and plotting the bearings yourself
Later the steering compass was replaced with a periscope and fittings at each bridge wing to install the palorus for relative bearings:
On a 1938 built ship ship with no working radar operating on the Australia coast and to islands in the South Pacific I installed electric tape in the windows (green on Stbd./red on Port side)
When you leaned against the flinders bar on the steering compass that gave 45 degr. bearings. Sighting via the bridge wing door coamings gave the 90 degr. bearing.
Simple when using 4-point bearings. Sailing up and down the Great Barrier Reef route this saved a lot of climbing up and down to the Monkey Island,
In close quarter navigation it was just to count seconds, or a stop watch to determine the time between the two. Applying the estimated speed you would find your distance off whatever was the target.
Further away would require the use of a cooking timer, or a watch, but then only counting minutes.
PS> Not recommended for modern day navigation, nor likely to be a known method for many these days.
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Is Gender relevant? I donât think so. Scandinavians are generally much more integrated. So possibly a mix.
The OOWT was a English speaking officer from an allied navy. Probably the American.,
He did not understand the communication in Norwegian.
The Norwegian OOW would have.
The language of communication has been noted in the report. As a contributing factor.
I donât think itâs a lack of belief. Rather an inability to resolve conflicting recollections. Which is why they recommend a VDR with voice and video.
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As far as conflicting recollections go I like this footnote.
At 04:00:11, the OOW on HNoMS Helge Ingstad replied: âNo, then we will sail too
close to eh⊠blokkene/bĂ„keneâ. 15
15 The exact word that is spoken is unclear and the OOW cannot explain it in retrospect, but the phrase is related to the illuminated âobjectâ.
Scandinavians were integrated. But was the guest integrated? It would be easy to imagine scenario where the OOW is âintegrated femaleâ, and OOWT is an male accustomed to all male crew. Just an pure guess.