My big takeaway from all of this is that, given the choice between driving your boat into a hurricane and doing something else, something else should be the default.
The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
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Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#12NTSB report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
It still boggles my mind how three different GPS position formats can be used. And then not used correctly by search crews, which then missed location by 23nm.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#13> She called Davidson on the house phone and told him that the hurricane was now a Category 3. He knew that already. She proposed the escape route to the south and a smooth sail on to San Juan. He rejected her suggestion.
I wonder if in the maritime world there is the equivalent of CRM (Cockpit Resource Management), as in aviation.
Too many lives were lost due to 1st officer never taking over command when the error in the commander's thinking had already become apparent or the entire aircraft was being flown, effectively, by a single infallible captain and not a team.
Lessons were learned decades ago and at least in a 1st world outfit I would like to believe that no 1st officer would hesitate to utter the words "I have control" when in such stress.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#14That was hard to read.
Lump in throat - but can't stop until the end - reading.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#15The article mentions that there are major merchant vessels sinking every two/three days! That seems huge. How many deaths per year does that amount to? We're lucky to be in tech I guess.
Never ever underestimate how lucky we are to be in tech.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#16Does anyone know if the investigators checked to see if the captain may have had reasons to sink the ship? Beyond that, given the captain's body was never recovered, were investigators able to confirm that communications were coming from the positions reported by the captain? RELATED: Here is the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation final report on El Faro[1] -- in which the investigators had stated that if D…
This seems unlikely given that the captain was looking for a new position as captain on one of his company's new LNG ships. You may find section 1.8.1 of the NTSB report[0] interesting; it goes into more detail about the crew than the report you linked. Maybe more relevantly, section 2.6 details his decision-making.
[0] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#17The article mentions that there are major merchant vessels sinking every two/three days! That seems huge. How many deaths per year does that amount to? We're lucky to be in tech I guess.
A recent (paywalled) article in the New Scientist stated that the fatal accident rate for ships' crews is twenty times that of the average British worker.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731623-300-ghost-sh...
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#18> She called Davidson on the house phone and told him that the hurricane was now a Category 3. He knew that already. She proposed the escape route to the south and a smooth sail on to San Juan. He rejected her suggestion. I wonder if in the maritime world there is the equivalent of CRM (Cockpit Resource Management), as in aviation. Too many lives were lost due to 1st officer never taking over command when the error i…
There is: bridge resource management. It actually grew out of CRM. Section 2.7 of the NTSB report (linked elsewhere in this thread) gives an overview of it and discusses how it played a role in this incident. It's an interesting read and seems to be relatively in-depth.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#19>Fisker-Andersen wrote, “Captain Mike, diversion request heads up through Old Bahama Channel understood and authorized. Thank you for the heads up. Kind regards."
I'm not quite following that sentence. The article makes a lot of the "authorized", saying that meant the captain was being ordered to go directly to San Juan and not use the Old Bahama Channel. However, it seems to say that the diversion into the channel was authorized.
Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades
#20The article mentions that there are major merchant vessels sinking every two/three days! That seems huge. How many deaths per year does that amount to? We're lucky to be in tech I guess.
Fermi estimate, about 120-180 sinkings a year * 30 crewmembers/ship * 0.75 chance of dying (I'm guessing some sink in port or are evacuated?) = 2700 deaths / year.