Very Important Misconceptions of Merchant Shipping
Recreational boaters have a bunch of mis-conceptions that desperately need to be clarified. When you understand what the capabilities and short-comings of merchant ships you will be better able to handle the situations that you may encounter when meeting them in waters that you share with them. I hope this sheds some valuable light on the topics that both merchant mariners and recreational boaters are faced with.
Below are some common misconceptions of what merchant mariners will do. Although there are some exceptions to these statements, they are generally true.
IF THERE IS ANY ONE POINT I WANT TO MAKE IT IS THIS....
If there is a choice between running a ship on the rocks or running over a yacht, the yacht will be the looser 99 out of a hundred times (the only recent exception I know of is the super-tanker grounding near Tokyo the beginning of the summer 1997 by avoiding a fishing vessel), as the skin of the larger ships are up to three inches thick of high tensile steel and much thicker on the bow there is no contest when colliding with a yacht. When a tanker operator has a choice between a few million dollars (or a few hundred thousand dollars) of litigation as a result from a collision or several billion dollars of liability due to relatively new environmental laws from running a vessel aground and spilling oil and/or other dangerous cargoes not to mention tens of millions of dollars of damage to the ship and loss of many millions or a billion dollars worth of cargo.
I know most people will cringe at this fact, but the environmentalists have made the professional mariner's choice much easier to choose running over a yacht not obeying the rules with the possible loss of life rather than running a ship aground with the tremendous possibility environmental damage and a smaller possibility of loss of life all due to financial and disciplinary considerations as enacted by laws in the past several years.
Please don't misinterpret this as we are going out of our way to hit you. If there is a reasonable possibility to avoid collision we make every attempt at safely doing so, however, if we are limited to the two decisions above we will point our vessel towards the safe (deep) water, and hope that you have enough common sense to get out of the way while we are sounding the danger signal (five or more short blasts on the ship's whistle). See Part III on safely going out of a buoyed channel to avoid collision for more details.
Ships are massive and consequently have incredible amounts of inertia. It takes an huge amount of power to get them moving, to stop them, and to turn them. As vessels are generally under powered for their size, it makes them relatively slow to respond to a situation because they have to counteract the moment of inertia that has already been developed. This aspect will be discussed in detail in PART II of this series.
Most ships do not meet all safety standards as set forth by the IMO (International Maritime Organization) or the USCG (United States Coast Guard). Most shipping companies do the absolute minimum to pass the required inspections, as it costs money to bring ships up to inspection standards. Most inspectors do not know what they are looking for (other than what is on their check-off list), and many crews can doctor up a piece of equipment to look like it is working properly. So it may "pass" inspection, but in fact it would have failed had the inspecting agency known what to specifically look for.
Fortunately most of the ship's I have worked on, we specifically show the inspectors what the company wants us to hide. It is sheer stupidity on my part to go out to sea on a vessel that is not sea-worthy. I prefer safety over loosing my license when trying to cover something up when a critical component on the ship which may fail.
Even the most famous of all operational luxury passenger ships, the QE-2, didn't meet USCG inspection standards recently and was detained for nearly 10 days until they met inspection deficiencies, and she is a British Ship who has more strict standards than the United States does.
Many ships equipment's is old and marginal at best, and is subject to frequent failure. I personally have worked on a ship, where I have seen more modern equipment housed in the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.
Approximately 97 to 98% of all deep sea ship's carry a foreign flag in US waters. Even though international law requires them to speak English fluently, when in fact roughly 50% of the vessels that I have encountered have very little comprehension of the English language. They know enough to pass "red to red" or "green to green" and if it becomes more complicated that that they often don't understand you. Several major accidents have been caused due to lack of comprehension with the parties involved, as a result many lives that otherwise could have been saved have been and will be lost.
This problem will only get dramatically worse in domestic waters when the Farmers and other special interests repeal the Jones Act which currently requires US mariners & vessels to transport goods from one US port to another US port. The Jones Act is anti-NAFTA and anti-GATT and if special interest have their way, our waterways will become a lot less safe when most the tug and tows and inland commercial vessels will most likely become foreign flag not subject to US labor laws and training (not to mention loss of tax revenues).
A recent major accident that may have been avoided due to a language barrier problem was the Chinese registered bulker "Bright Star" that collided into the River Walk of New Orleans during early winter of 1996 injuring over a hundred people, and destroying several buildings. It easily could have killed over a hundred people had it collided with a casino boat that was moored right next to point of impact.
In summary, not all ships are handled the same way. Like in any profession, there are many that are very professional and courteous. However, there is a significant percentage who are not. Those are the ones you need to look out for since they won't be looking out for you. Assume that all ships are not courteous and professional unless they indicate otherwise. It is always best to choose the side of safety rather than to take what you believe is your right-of-way, only to find out that the ship either didn't see you, or assumes that you know the unwritten "Law of Gross Tonnages" (If he is bigger than you, stay out of his way).
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© 1997-2003 Jan K. Genemans |