There is an old saying; " the more cooks in the kitchen the more spills there will be"
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An aircraft carrier can do >40 kts. If they don’t want to be caught they won’t be. Except by the missiles.
My ex made a day cruise with me on a CG icebreaker during my 2 wks of ADT. The previous summer she spent a week with me aboard my ship on the Lakes. Standing my afternoon BMOW, we were in the pilothouse and she looked around and asked what all the people were doing
I attempted to explain the roles of the weather and lee helm, lookout, messenger, OOD/JOOD, QMOW, and finally what my job entailed. “That seems like a lot of people, on your boat in the river it is you, the wheelsman, the watchman on the bow, and the Old Man.”
The CO of the cutter turned and explained gently that there was likely far more experience in the watch my Laker than he had on the whole bridge.
I mumbled about making a round and quickly exited.
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That is funny !
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The Navy uses a different system than the commercial side.
it’s analogous to building cars one at a time compared to using an assembly line. The assembly line process requires far more, but less skilled workers.
Similarly the Navy bridge team breaks the process down into smaller parts so that crew members with less training and experience can function as part of the team.
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In ships larger than a minesweeper warships that I served in the helm was not on the bridge. On a cruiser the helm was 4 decks below the bridge. We seldom took a pilot unless it was required by local authorities.
The bridge team consisted of the CO sitting in the only chair on the bridge, Navigating Officer, OOW, bosun’s mate, signalman, yeoman ( CPO of signal department) . Lookouts were outside the bridge. The CIC was manned as well.
The navigating officer had attended as a Lieutenant a year long course in navigation and ship handling. The last three weeks were practical, running through Scottish Locks at night. Hydrographers did the same practical with an emphasis on mine laying. Failure of the practical wiped out the year.
The captain of the destroyer used had nerves of steel and having sometimes having to recover from a situation was of necessity a superb ship handler. Marked for flag rank he normally did a stint as Captain of the Royal Yacht after.
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My father’s 180-foot (55 metre) LCS(L)3 in 1944 had an open bridge with a canvas canopy over it. But the helm was in an armored pillbox affair below it.
I remember reading an article in Proceedings (US Naval Institute journal) where the author, a USN LT, was on an exchange tour with the RN. He arrived as a “qualified” Surface Warfare Officer with a letter as OOD from his previous command. IIRC, the first thing his RN CO did was send him on a four month RN navigation course where he had to fully qualify to STCW level.
He quickly realized the USN did a rather poor job of training conning officers.
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A classmate sailed thru Chief Mate before joining the Navy (seeking a little more adventure than he was getting…) after OCS he was sent to the fleet as a SWO.
He was shocked by how they conned their vessels. He kept respectfully objecting to things he was seeing done on the bridge by other senior officers with regards to what he believed fell under safe navigation practices and adherence to the ROR and was told, essentially, to shut his mouth and mind his role and rank despite his vast knowledge over the PhysEd degree navigator and Poly Sci major XO. I recall he was bitter knowing that, despite his vocal concerns, his career would likely be sunk (along with theirs) due to their idiocy. They made it very clear they had no use for the knowledge of a professional mariner on their bridge.
As I’ve said in other forum threads — his experiences, along with things I had witnessed in the RECs made me stop dropping my jaw and drooling over Chief’s anchors and line officer rank the way the sea services would have you believe is necessary.
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The below links may be cosidered by some as off topic
but it is highly recommended that all participants of the discussion read the contents carefully before making any judgements and draw any conclusions or offer any learned advise .
Both links describe an " epic " collision between cont vesl Ever Smart and tanker Alexandra I . Each link presents a different view of what is relevant and what is not . It is eveident from comparison of the two ,that the view of the Honorable Judges is focused stricte on COLREGS and actions of both vessels relating to COLREGS with much less emphasis on technical abilities/ fitting of both vessels.
1.The ruling
Evergreen Marine (UK) Ltd v Nautical Challenge Ltd [2021] UKSC 6 (19 February 2021)
- MAIB report
MAIBInvReport-28_2015.pdf
Googling Ever Smart vs Alexandra 1 reveals a huge number of links -legal, P& I and scores of others as the case sent a powerful tremors across the nautical circles which by no means reverberate today.
Hope all interested will enjoy the linked material alowing them to have a new or may be refreshed view on the case at hand.
The manning on the bridge of a merchant ship and a war ship are apples and oranges for a reason.
The navigation watch on a merchant is 85 or so percent just navigation- get the ship from A to B without hitting anything
On a warship much of what is going on on bridge is training. And not just on drills. The bridge manning is set up to be ready to handle the many variables and threats of a combat situation. Items are broken down into smaller pieces and communications and command are quite formal. There is a redundancy in training to allow others to do the jobs of someone who might be incapacitated.
I have done both, they are different. Are the better sailors on the merchant- yes. Are the better warriors on the warship- yes.
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Yeah, but you’re not going to win the fight if you can’t get your ship to the fight
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Every OOW of a warship in the navy when I was one was expected to navigate a ship from A to B without hitting anything. You obtained the qualification before you specialized in anything else and until you specialized in a discipline as a lieutenant of several years experience. In combat you were employed in a support role to a specialist. The CIC where the CO commanded the ship from passed manoeuvring orders to the bridge in the form come left, come hard right and the action OOW passed these orders to the Helm as : Port 15 or Starboard 30 providing it was safe to do so. With ASW operations 2 or 3 ships could be manoeuvring within 1000 yards of each other and you had to be on your toes, especially at night with ships darkened.
All those doing it had the experience of countermanding an order from the CO and manoeuvring differently. We were often fully darkened patrolling the Malacca Strait during Confrontation.
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- navigation is job 1, just saying there are others. And by the way merchant ships hit stuff too sometimes.
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Just using the metric of crew size doesn’t make sense. There’s three people working at the shop where I have my tire work done. The pit crews at Indy car racing are much bigger and they only work on one car.
Different system.
What is the ratio %-wis?
There are a lot more merchant ships sailing the world’s ocean and narrow straits then there are Navy ships of any nationality in the water.
The merchant ships also sailes a lot more miles/year than navy ships, on average.
no argument - just sayin - they hit stuff too sometimes - this being human stuff is hard sometimes
If they can fight a war with subs, ships, missiles, drones, airplanes, and radio controlled Boston Whalers full of C4 attacking them and survive, one would assume they could avoid being taken out by the deadly cargo ship, but maybe not.
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Spit-balling here, but what about the former RN concept of “sailing masters” to do the navigation/piloting while the CO focus on fighting the ship?
A tad over the hill, but I would consider a warrant as a CWO2 or 3 (ok, 3) to do the nav and arrivals/departures or general watch keeping.
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Back in the day a great many RN officers served a stint as sailing master where they did as you described before sitting and passing the examination for Lieutenant. Captain James Cook was sailing master when he plotted the passage of the fleet to Quebec. Admiral Sir Alexander Ball was another who was a favorite of Lord Nelson.
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