look where the blame went in the DWH fiasco…
Look at the poor guys that continually loaded the wet nickel ore in Indonesia and then all hands lost ( several times)
http://gcaptain.com/bulk-trade-off-indonesia/#.VcCn5vnhcdU
[QUOTE=powerabout;166576]look where the blame went in the DWH fiasco…
Look at the poor guys that continually loaded the wet nickel ore in Indonesia and then all hands lost ( several times)
http://gcaptain.com/bulk-trade-off-indonesia/#.VcCn5vnhcdU[/QUOTE]
This is a good example. If the master refuses to sail the chances of him facing a shit storm from shoreside are 100%. His life is going to be made miserable and he may lose his job. On the other hand if he sails he has what? A 1 in 1000 chance of having problems? Human nature being what it is; a little wishful thinking and you’re on your way out to sea.
maybe when we have a problem we should call Greenpeace so you can say hey boss, ship blocked in port
This link came to my attention today. I don’t really know who this guy is (Cartner)but he has a lot of initials after his name for what that is worth.
Apparently the “changing nature” of ship ownership I was trying to describe above has a name, “financialization”.
There are a few good quotes from the short video and in the transcript below it. For example:
[I]Shipping is “in play” like any other entity and at the mercy of any buyout artist coming along. Shipping however cannot emphasize short-term quarterly results and cannot be run by accountants. We have too much experience in the past with that kind of thinking. Hence, in the medium term shipping is not going to be treated well by financialization.
This means that in the past shipping was treated differently. Shipping in the past was a relationship market for financing. Banks with which an owner had a relationship – sometimes for many decades – backed the owner in good times and bad. The banks knew that shipping always got better and many specialized in it. Financialization tends not to foster relationship banking. In that sense shipping is hurt by financialization. [/I]
This approach does not seem limited to the maritime industry but our business sure seems more sensitive to the negatives of that approach to ownership. While I may feel I understand [U]why[/U] pea brains are owning / running shipping companies it does not advance KC’s original thought about how things formerly under actual control of ship’s crews no longer seem to be.
Should people who profess to be ship management ashore also be required to have a “ship managers” certificate? The prerequisite for which would be an advanced merchant mariners license and x years of sea time? Is that aiming too low? Would that help anything or just make it worse?
No, I think as long as ownership remains investment funds and merger & acquisition play things and as long as those owners take quarterly long views only as opposed to taking longer term looks we are stuck with financial types pulling strings that they don’t even understand what they are connected to.
Enough of the screed on ship ownership. What should professional mariners do when coming up against control limits KC brought up?
Make more use of the various SMS observation reporting mechanisms? Begin and continue more frank conversations about ship management with shore staff? Just ask “why” more often? By time you get to a standoff over whether to sail into a storm or not the doubt is probably coming from the crews understanding of the material condition of their ship and that didn’t deteriorate overnight. More like the result of a long series of decisions about deferred maintenance, ignorant changes, inability to retain good crew, etc. Seems to me if they don’t get continual push back on questionable decisions we may be setting ourselves up for the big standoff scenario which we all know who wins those. Not talking about taking an aggressive confrontational stance but providing a sliding scale of response to these sorts of (to us) incomprehensible decisions / edicts. Some of them remind me of the Woody Allen movie Bananas were the crazy dictator wakes up one morning to declare “today everyone will wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes”. Ever get some of those in the morning mail from the home office? My favorite response to those? “Yes, Repeat No”.
There are multiple factors that have converged. Definitely financial, but also technical and cultural.
Steamships of the early 1900’s were considered cutting-edge technical marvels. They required specialized skills to operate. I don’t imagine that custom officals in Bombay (Mumbai) would mess much with British ship officers on a UK flagged ship. What’s it like for crews from undeveloped nations today faced with Port State Control?