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The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

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Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#21

Post by clon »

aglionby wrote: post #18
clon wrote: post #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 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.

Learned something today, will research it. Thanks!

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#22

Post by aniro »

dwighttk wrote: post #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 w…

>Question I would like to transit the Old Bahama Channel on our return northbound leg to Jacksonville, Florida. This route adds an additional 160 nm to the route for a total of 1,261 nm. We will need to make around 21 knots for our scheduled 10/05 10:45 arrival time at Jacksonville pilot station.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#24

Post by hinkley »

jtwaleson wrote: post #10

The 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.

I wonder what’s the survival rate of crew on a merchant vessel that’s sinking?

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#25

Post by gsnedders »

mannykannot wrote: post #17
jtwaleson wrote: post #10

The 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...

How does the fatal accident rate for, e.g., professional drivers compare with the average worker? I imagine crewing a ship is more dangerous, but humans are famously bad at evaluating risk.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#26

Post by V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 »

aglionby wrote: post #16
V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 wrote: post #8

Does 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/...

Report clearly states he needed money and the captain though it was likely the company was going to screw him over based on verbal second-hand accounts of drinking under his watch.

Near the section you referenced it does state that the investigators checked the captain's most recent medical exam report.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#27

Post by bklyn11201 »

dwighttk wrote: post #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 w…

The difficulty of "authorized" was that a captain at sea should have full control to make safe navigational decisions without corporate, profit-minded authorization. Captain Mike's previous experience insinuated that a captain could override company orders but could expect to be quietly let go soon after.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#28

Post by chrisseaton »

lainga wrote: post #20
jtwaleson wrote: post #10

The 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.

Why do you think the chance of dying on a sinking ship would be so incredibly high?

0.75 chance of dying is what you had on the Titanic!

Your number has no relation to reality at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_2017

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#29

Post by bklyn11201 »

sdhgaiojfsa wrote: post #11

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.

Another conclusion was that a tiered subscription model that withholds life-saving information is a business I never want to be in. El Faro subscribed to the Bon Voyage System for weather updates, but they didn't subscribe to the routing guidance and always received six hour-old information. The stale data is a critical part of this story.

http://www.stormgeo.com/solutions/shipping/on-board-services...

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#30

Post by macintux »

bklyn11201 wrote: post #27
dwighttk wrote: post #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 w…

The difficulty of "authorized" was that a captain at sea should have full control to make safe navigational decisions without corporate, profit-minded authorization. Captain Mike's previous experience insinuated that a captain could override company orders but could expect to be quietly let go soon after.

Seems safe to assume those two tugboats cost a hell of a lot less than this accident and the wrongful death suits, not to mention the unnecessary fatalities.
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