Tanker Sola and Norwegian navy frigate Helga Ingstad collide off Norway

The most obvious cause is: lack of effective use of AIS.

Hubris, no AIS, high speed down a narrow fjord with traffic, at night, after exercises. Fatigue, inexperience, lack of training. Change of watch, unexpected, confusing situation.

Thatā€™s laying the groundwork for specific errors and lack of time, ability and skill to recover from those errors, common errors that we all make but normally catch before they lead to an incident.

When I studied marine accident investigations 40 years ago (at Rotterdam to become an average adjuster), I was told there was only one proximate cause of any incident. I investigated 100+ incidents at Rā€™dam and it was always only one proximate cause. I never had any problems with that. If I were investigating this HI collision with Sola TS, I would conclude the that the proximate cause was a crew member on HI turning port in front of Sola TS.

Maybe the cause was a loose left-hand (anti-clockwise) thread metric wingnut!

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No! Heavy weather, i.e. a big wave, bla, bla, is a good cause. Crew negligence is another good cause. Hidden defects not known in spite of due diligence done are also good causes. But in the HI case somebody, a cadet?, turned port in lieu of starboard and caused a collision. No big deal. Happens all the time. No ship sank due to it. But why did the HI sinks hours later? We donā€™t know. It is like Costa Concordia 2012 . http://heiwaco.com/news8.htm . The ship, CC, contacted a rock below water and capsized 2 hrs 47 minutes later so 32 persons drowned. The CC bridge was fully manned, a turn was done and - BANG - a contact occurred. It has happened to my ships a couple of times. In the CC case, the ship survived the contact, etc, etc, but capsized later.
What was the proximate cause of the capsize? Well, during evacuation of CC some watertight doors were opened, by mistake, and they couldnā€™t be closed later due lack of power. Progressive flooding occurred and CC lost stability and capsized and sank. Poor Master/Captain. A friend of mine. It was his fault. He spends 16 years in jail today and must pay plenty fines when getting out, etc. Of course his life is destroyed. But he just followed orders and ISM.
I wonder what will happen to the person on the HI bridge that made a wrong turn? And the boss? He is His Royal Majesty the King of Norway. He must react! His ship was destroyed ā€¦ by mistake.

It is hard to understand how this particular stretch of the route should be a challenge for any navigator.

Hjeltefjorden is among the easiest stretches of the Norwegian coast to navigate. It is relatively wide, with deep water and no obstructions, or shallows, except close to land.
It is also one of the longest stretches on a straight course anywhere along the inshore route.

Admittedly it has more traffic than along most of the coast, especially of large vessels, but it is not exactly ā€œdense trafficā€ by comparison to many places in the world.
When southbound there are not much crossing traffic after passing Fedje.

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Because of hindsight bias the correct explanation will sound implausible.

Understanding the El Faro required believing that an experenced ship captain would not understand the basics of hurricane avoidance.

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  1. Sola TS alongside Sture terminal, SilverFrida and Vestbris in sight,
  2. Sola TS maneuvering outbound, deck lights on,
  3. Sola TS En Route, deck lights off, navigation lights buried by incoming traffic,
    Seigrunn in sight,
  4. Sola TS gaining speed and approaching incoming traffic,
  5. Sola TS navigation lights getting brighter,
  6. Sola TS in close quarterā€¦
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Apparently HI was not heading for Haakonsvern naval Base but was due to participate in NATO standing fleet together with vessels from other NATO nations:

The other vessels took the direct open water route to their next meeting point in Dundee, Scotland.
HI choose to take the inshore route from Stad to ??? ā€œto maintain coastal navigation competenceā€:
https://www.t-a.no/nyheter/2018/12/07/Ulykkesfregatten-var-pƄ-vei-til-Skottland-18029031.ece

The question is; why Costa Crociere paid off 1 million euros ($1.3 million) plea bargain to avoid letting you to know the answer ? Engineering of consent is the art of manipulating peopleā€¦:partying_face:

What is the source of this image??

Unless it is proven wilful criminal neglect not much above demotion or dismissal from the navy is likely to happen to anybody on the bridge, the Commander of HI, or their superiors ashore.
As to the King, he is oblige to keep his though to himself and donā€™t get involved in any controversy. (Just like you wouldnā€™t want the Swedish King to get involved, or commenting on your conspiracy theories)

It was the Owners of CC that paid to get free. The poor Master/Captain was just left on his own. He couldnā€™t pay anyone. I offered him refuge in France but Francesco believed in Italian justice. Poor sod. Now he is in jail until 2033.

I observed the video a few times and made the drawings myself. Nothing scientific. It is just to show how Sola TS deck lights could have been linked to Sture terminal and navigation lights buried by incoming traffic, so be difficult to distinguish by eyesight aloneā€¦

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Please, donā€™t exaggerate. It, topic, HI/Sola TS, was a stupid accident by a young, not trained person on the bridge of HI messing it up. Accidents happen. It is not criminal to make a mistake.
And please - I am not in the conspiracy theory business. I am in the safety at sea biz - http://heiwaco.com

At step #3 you state ā€œdeck lights offā€. Do you have source that they actually did so? Or just assume they turned them off as good practice states. I think I have read somewhere that they kept sailing with deck lights on.

AIBN report states that ā€œThe tankerā€™s use of deck lights after departure also meant that the crew on ā€˜KNM Helge Ingstadā€™ were unable to spot the navigation lights on ā€˜Sola TSā€™.ā€

https://www.aibn.no/Marine/Investigations/18-968?iid=25573&pid=SHT-Report-Attachments.Native-InnerFile-File&attach=1

Having seen on sea cruise ships with decks lights on which looks like an Christmas tree I can say it awfully hard to spot on the navigating lights among maze of other lights.

Collision with a passing ship is low probability, high consequence event. I very strongly encourage the mates to keep a close visual watch on passing ships with close CPAs. The problem with the radar is the delay between when a ship turns and when it becomes apparent on radar. If a passing ship turns towards own ship I want to know ASAP

I also tell them to use target trails so not to miss targets but seeing that only takes a glance at the radar (trail but no vector)

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Normally, you only keep the deck lights shining forward for the crew safety when you maneuver. As soon as the lines are secured on the drums and the crew is safely back aft, you shut them off. Sometimes they keep a fade forecastle light shining forward when a standby anchor watch is kept, but only if it does not disturb the pilot vision. The tug was made fast aft, so there was probably some lights kept on shining aft.

As for cruise ships, the side deck lights gives her aspect. On a head-on situation, there are not so many lights to obscure the navigation ones, except for a broad glow.

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I believe that if you can do the job well in a squall, dense fog or a snow storm, you can certainly manage in perfect visibility. So keep your good instrument navigation (IFR) practice and expertise! I was also a visual but with the sudden astonishing increase of ships dimensions; I had no choice but to turn electronicā€¦

Ships have become so large, that it is quite impossible to judge the speed by eyesight alone. On approach, she seems almost stalled but actually still moving too fast ! On final approach, you can observe two vanishing points, one forward and one aft to the extent that the dock seems curved ! These behemoth requires electronics ā€¦

My point was about this specific incident.

The on-coming watch was told that the traffic was meeting three ships port to port. The oil terminal was to stbd.

The mystery is why didnā€™t the watch focus more attention on the oil terminal.

To stbd, according to the turn-over information there was no known threat. However passing ships port to port is a threat that does required significant attention from the watch.

Now of course we know there was no threat to port because we know they all passed safely.

To be clear Iā€™m not saying that a alert and experienced watch wouldnā€™t have noticed the tanker, just that, evidently, this watch missed it.