Indeed. Thus, when the AIBN report on the Helge Ingstad accident mentions the enormous “damages received by the frigate”, it is funny in a quaint kind of way, and easy enough to understand.
However, when the same mistake is made by someone who grew up with damage in the colloquial sense as a mass noun, I don’t see how it comes about. Maybe they read some fancy language they didn’t quite understand, and wanted to emulate the style? But then what kind of person would want to make their text hard to read? NTSB report writers, maybe?
That’s probably what was going on here. On the previous watch the relief captain made spelling errors in the log and the captain was busy pointing out all his errors when they hit the bridge.
Why is it 90% of engineers spell “gauges” as “guages”? Is it an in-club thing, like deck officers always careful to point out it’s “clinometer” and not “inclinometer”?