Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 175 posts

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

#31

Post by lainga »

chrisseaton wrote: post #28
lainga wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is why I qualified it as a Fermi estimate. I was guessing randomly.

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

#32

Post by clon »

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…

Also from the world of aviation, seems the captain had developed a classic case of get-there-itis. The symptoms are there, the prognosis is never good.

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

#33

Post by thaumaturgy »

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…

FWIW, this scenario is what many people jump towards in missing-persons cases, and it so far has not been true even once in my experience. It does happen, but it's much rarer than a straightforward combination of bad circumstances and bad decisions.

Hell, at this point I've seen more murders and probable murders than people disappearing on purpose.

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

#34

Post by dwighttk »

aniro wrote: post #22
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.

oh, ok. So the presence of "authorized" in the response email brings up the question of routes in general being authorized by corporate. It isn't an order to go directly to San Juan.

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

#35

Post by aglionby »

clon wrote: post #21
aglionby wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The comments by the board members on pages 256-259 discuss this as well. The second statement is interesting in particular as it talks about the differences in crew hierarchy between aviation and maritime.

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

#36

Post by V2hLe0ThslzRaV2 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #33
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…

FWIW, this scenario is what many people jump towards in missing-persons cases, and it so far has not been true even once in my experience. It does happen, but it's much rarer than a straightforward combination of bad circumstances and bad decisions. Hell, at this point I've seen more murders and probable murders than people disappearing on purpose.

Likelihood is irrelevant -- what matters is if it was covered. For example, if he bought "How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found" on Amazon, was doing Google Searches for it, etc. -- seems not only worth further investigation.

Research shows that if for example during an interview his wife said it was possibly a suicide, that the odds are good it was: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-40199-7_...

Faked deaths happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faked_death

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

#37

Post by tptacek »

jonathanberger wrote: post #5
Luc wrote: post #4

I could tell from the title this was going to be written by William Langewiesche. He really knows how to spin a good yarn. All his articles and books seem to be movie-worthy. I'm not entirely convinced reality is that exciting, though.

If you like this article, I recommend finding his other pieces particularly about airplane crashes. He writes in a gripping manner and normally seems to have done pretty thorough background research, as well as personal experience.

He has a whole book on maritime incidents (culled from long-form narrative pieces he did at The Atlantic) --- The Outlaw Sea.

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

#38

Post by thaumaturgy »

dz0ny wrote: post #12
cesarb wrote: post #2

NTSB 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. https://i.imgur.com/nbwkCPY.png

Yeah, coordinates are a pain in the ass, and here they're even using the same coordinates, just with different formatting. There's also UTM, deg-dec-min, deg-min-sec, and you have some differences between WGS84 and NAD27, and every group has their own preferences for their own reasons.

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

#39

Post by fwip »

dz0ny wrote: post #12
cesarb wrote: post #2

NTSB 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. https://i.imgur.com/nbwkCPY.png

23 nanometers off, dang. If they'd only had a slightly wider field of view, they could have found those poor people. :(

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

#40

Post by fapjacks »

lainga wrote: post #31
chrisseaton wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is why I qualified it as a Fermi estimate. I was guessing randomly.

Fermi estimate or guessing randomly: Pick one. They are mutually exclusive.
Post reply on HN