The Can Opener

Near the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach ship pilots have to maneuver 1100 foot long container ships past a concrete structure they call "the can opener". That's according to a Wall Street Journal article "Giants of the Sea", subtitled; "Massive New Container Ships Carry Huge Loads but Docking Them Is Problematic for Pilots." The article is by Daniel Machalaba and Bruce Stanley and was appeared in the WSJ on 10 Oct 2006.

The article focus on the container ship CMA CGM Hugo , which is 1095 feet long and has a beam of 140 feet. This vessel also calls into San Francisco Bay and is almost 200 feet longer then the Cosco Busan.

Units of Measure

"Paul the pirate" is on a tanker, on the hook, in the ditch, in Beaumont, TX. I've sailed mostly on diesel so I was unaware that damaged boiler tubes and pipes are measured in SHIT-TONS

Tugboat under a closed bridge

Check out this series of photos of a tug and barge going under a bridge, sounds routine but the bridge was in the lowered position! - Safety tip, keep those watertight doors and hatches closed!

Seaman or glorified deck hand?

I picked up a book in a used book store some time ago, "Basic Seamanship and Navigation" by Edward A. Gibson,published in 1951. Mr Gibson served in both the merchant marines and in the Navy and is, according to the title page, Able Seaman, First Class Boatswains mate.

In the preface Mr. Gibson writes:

"It has become the fashion lately to consider a ship's deck force as not much better then a group of glorified ferryboat deck hands who need do nothing on a modern ship but lean over the side all day gazing at the view. The real seaman are supposed to have disappeared with the wind ships. Writers of sea stories to the contrary, however there is still a good deal a seaman must know before he rates the title."

Gibson then claims:

"If a man learns all the seamanship given here and he implements his knowledge by years of practical experience at sea he may some day have the pleasure of hearing an old-time boatswain grudgingly refer to him as a seaman. The writer is acquainted with an admiral who happens to be also a seaman. He know more then one boatswain's mate who can lay no valid claim whatsoever on the title"

and

"Now, the fact of the matter is, a seaman is a seaman whether he is on a battleship, a Luckenback ship, a yacht, or a fishing schooner."

Now, I don't think he should be knocking ferryboat deckhands that way. I once witnessed a ferryboat deck hand, on a St Lawrence River ferry, lasso a bollard with a mooring line as the ferry neared the pier. At the time - I was about eight, I though it was the most awesome thing I had seen a man do - ever.

Ice ships

John A Konrad kindly allowed me to post at gcaptain. The Sinking of the Alaska Ranger - Fishing Master vs Captain

Meanwhile I've been digging though some old photos.

Here is the Terry Fox, at night in the Chukchi Sea. This was the Fox's maiden voyage in 1983.

The Terry Fox again, with a tow line running across the ice to the NOAA Ship Surveryor, The ice was 8/8ths, 4-6 feet thick with 20 ft pressure ridges.
This is the view from the wheel house, crossing the Gulf of Alaska on a SeaLand (now Horizon Line) D-7 Container ship. These ships were built for Alaskan water with ice-strengthened hulls.

The Snowbird - Army FS

My first job on my license was for an outfit called Express Marine Transportation in Seattle Wa. I was the mate on the Snowbird, a small freighter that ran from Seattle to Alaska. We often would get a load of crab from either Akutan or Dutch Harbor and haul it back to Seattle. I couldn't find a photo at home so I looked on line. First photo I found was at the site EagleSpeak

Except for the life rafts and the boat this vessel looks very similar to the Snowbird

Blogger Eagle 1 writes:

Of the non-Coast Guard manned ships (of which there were man, but not much in the way of written history exists), one crewman serving in the Aleutians also gained some fame as a writer, Gore Vidal served, it seems, as first mate on an FS. The experience prompted the writing of his first book, Williwaw.

Well who of thunk it , me and Gore Vidal. I'm going to have to read Williwaw

Ship or a boat?

I have decided to settle this question once and for all. Many explanations of the difference between a ship and a boat focus on size or the ability to carry a boat on board. I find these explanations oversimplified. To solve this problem I propose that mariners use the same scoring method seen in some magazines to determine the answer to such questions as: Are you a romantic?

I propose the scoring system below. Take the quiz below and see if your vessel is rated correctly.

1. How do you get aboard the vessel?
a. Step carefully on the center line with both hand on the gunnel.
b. Step or jump across
c. A gangplank, stairs, or a ladder
d. The accommodation ladder.

2. How do you measure fuel?
a. Don't use fuel - low carbon foot print
b. read the gauge, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full
c. By gallons
d. Convert cubic meters to tons using temperature and density corrections.

3. What's for lunch?
a. Energy bar.
b. A sandwich and drink from the cooler/thermos
c. It depends on who did the shopping.
d. I don't know, what's on the menu?

4. What do you if you are at sea and forecast is for storm warnings?
a. Head for home
b. Head for port, or look for a good lee
c. Secure for heavy weather and plan to stay hove to
d. Check your weather program or weather routing service for optimum route

5. What do you do when you want a shower?
a. Wait till I get home.
b. Rig a salt water shower on deck
c. Check how much water is left
d. Just take one.

6. What do you do when you find water in the bilge?
a. Bail with a used Styrofoam cup
b. Bail with an old coffee can
c. Turn on the bilge pump
d. Call the engine control room

7. How do you communicate with the crew on your vessel.
a. What crew?
b. Yell
c. Yelling and hand signals
d. Yelling, hand signals, UHF handheld, P.A. System, memos and crew meetings

8. What do you have for entertainment?
a. There's nothing like simply messing around in boats.
b. A pile of magazines
c. A TV and some DVDs
d. There's some video games in the lounge, a movie locker and a library.

9. How do you get underway?
a. Push off
b. Crew forward pushes the bow out, then jumps aboard
c. Hold the spring, come ahead easy, let the stern swing out.....
d. All hand fore and aft, ring up Stand by, make the tugs fast, single up, tell the pilot your ready to go.

10. Finally, what do you do if you run aground?
a. Get out and wade.
b. Push off with a paddle or boat hook
c. Check the tide table, try backing off, rig a kedge anchor
d. Notify your license insurance company and hire a lawyer.

Ok, time to score:
All a: Might be too small to be a boat.
Mostly a: It's a boat.
Mostly b Still a boat.
Mostly c: If its a ship it's a small one.
Mostly d: It's a ship.
All d: It's a big ship.

Ok, was your vessel correctly rated?

Next week, Are you and your vessel a good match?

Anarchy at Sea

"The sea is a domain increasingly beyond government control,vast and wild where laws of nations mean little and secretive shipowners do as they please and where the resilient pathogens of piracy and terrorism flourish." - William Langewiesche

William Langewiesche is a former professional airplane pilot, author for Vanity Fair and formerly a correspondent for Atlantic Magazine. Mr Langewiesche is also author of the book The Outlaw Sea A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime. published in 2004

Mr Langewiesche has published Anarchy at Sea, all five stories are available on line , here, - don't go unless you have some time to read.

Anarchy at sea includes:

I. A SEA STORY - he tells the story of the Kristal, a molasses tanker which sank off Finistare the winter of 2001,

II. ILLUSION OF CONTROL - Shipping and terrorism

III. THE NEW PIRACY - The story of the taking of the Alondra Rainbow by pirates in 1999

IV. A 95,000-MILE PROBLEM - The U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security

V. LAW OF THE SEA - The retaking of the Alondra and the trial of the pirates in India

Normal Accidents

ValuJet 592 is the flight that went down in the Everglades in 1996, caused by a fire in the cargo compartment.

In William Langewiesche's article, The Lessons of ValuJet 592, he suggests three type of aircraft accidents. Most common, "procedural" caused by obvious mistakes such a taking off with ice on the wings. The second type is what he calls "engineered" such as the TWA Boeing that suffered an explosion in a near empty fuel tank. The third type, what Langewiesche calls a "system accident" what has also been called by Charles Perrow a "normal accident. The fire that brought down flight 592 was caused by oxygen tanks that ironically are intended to make flying safer. The chain of events that led to them being placed aboard the aircraft was the classic error chain.

There is an good explanation of a normal accident from NASA here (pdf) .
In a system accident the root cause is difficult to determine, there is more then one, the familiar the error chain/ Causes can be complex and interrelated. But...analysis of close calls and mishaps is an effective way to break error chains.

Small mishaps, and daily incidents are clues to possible problems. At the first drill a crewmember doesn't know where to muster. The new mate on watch can't operate the ARPA. A port state control inspector isn't satisfied with your passage plan. Each event should be analyzed, is your familiarization effective? Is you passage plan adequate? Your entire program should be under constant scrutiny for loopholes where an error can slip through.

Stand by to repel boarders

A former shipmate told me an interesting (sea?) story about a Greenpeace demonstration. The demonstration involved boarding a log ship in broad daylight and putting up a banner protesting the harvest of old growth timber.

The Greenpeace activist got aboard by distracting the crew. A RIB boat placed immersion suit equipped swimmers into the water ahead of the slow moving vessel and a few managed to climb on to the bulbous bow. The log ship crew responded by manning fire hoses forward and attempting to blast the swimmers back into the water.

While the crew was fully engaged on the bow, a second crew of activists, using grapple hooks, climbed aboard undetected on the stern.

Environmental politics aside, this would make an interesting and challenging security drill scenario. The standard primary and secondary response teams, if properly trained should be able to cope with this type of threat.

What are the principles of shipboard security in the event of an attack?

There are as follows:

1. Detect threats
2. Attempt to keep attackers off the vessel.
3. If attackers get aboard, manage and mitigate risks to the crew.

In the case of the log ship, the distraction forward caused a breakdown in ship security, unable to function at the lowest level, detecting threats - the activist with grapple hooks aft.

What is required in this case is the standard two or more team approach long used by ships to respond to fire and other emergencies. The primary team is used as the main response and the second team, in this case, should ensure that basic shipboard security is maintained.

To accomplish this, two things are needed. A good understanding on the part of the senior officers of the principles of ship security and emergency response. Secondly training to ensure the basics are understood by the entire crew.

The Forest and the Sea

Nothing like seeing familiar things in a new way. In his wonderful book "The Forest and the Sea, Marston Bates points out many startling similarities between the rain forest and a coral reef.

In a more humble way, I have a forest/sea connection as well. While at home I tend a small woodlot and am the member of a woodlot association. One of the concepts I learned is the stakeholder system, that is, the owner of the woodlot is not the only person who has a stake in the woodlot. The neighbors, the public in general, hikers, birdwatchers, ATVer, fisherman all have a stake as well.

It struck me one day that the stakeholder system is valid aboard ship as well. Aboard ship reducing risk, staying on schedule, on budget, keeping the crew sufficiently rested, is a constant balancing act. There is the shipowners, vessel operators, charters, cargo brokers, cargo owners. There are facility operators, pilots, agents, longshoreman. There also is the crew, the unions, the families of the crew, maintenance and regulatory requirements and so on.

In some cases theses interest coincide and sometimes they conflict. To sort it out there are instructions from the owners, the charter party agreement, union agreements as well as less formal guidelines and customs.

Granted, this insight is not as profound as Bates, nonetheless it is sometimes a useful concept when sorting out competing claims or explaining decisions.

40 second Boyd

Command and Control or Commander's Intent?

John Boyd, was the creator of the the concept of the OODA loop, (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). Boyd was known as 40 second Boyd because his willingness to bet 40 dollars he could outmaneuver all comers in a simulated dogfight with a F-15 fighter, in less then 40 seconds. According to Boyd's admirers, he never lost a bet.

According to Boyd, a better model then command and control is: leadership, appreciation and monitoring. Boyd believed that a top down command and control organization would have difficulty coping with a complex and changing environment. Instead, Boyd believed subordinates should have a through understanding of the commanders intent, and they should then be allowed freedom to direct their own activities within that intent. The commander must monitor the subordinate, but not without appreciation, a clear recognition of the value of the subordinate contributions. Today the military refers to this type of leadership as mission-command.

In practice, on a day to day basis, the leadership model that is most useful will vary with the circumstances and will likely be along a spectrum between pure command and control and Boyd's model of leadership. Providing crew with clear guidance and allowing them flexibility, to allow them to put their skills and experience to use, in order to achieve a safe and smooth running operation is the standard on any well run ship.

"We gaan!"

"We gaan," - "Lets go" - These were the words spoken by KLM pilot Capt. Van Zanten as he pushed the throttles of his Boeing 747 for takeoff at Tenerife Airport, March 27 1977, just moments before becoming the first pilot ever to fly one huge 747 into another, a Pan Am 747 taxing on the same runway, resulting in the deaths of five hundred and eighty-three people.

Because of missed radio calls and use of non-standard terminology, Capt. Van Zanten believed the runway was clear and that he had received permission to take off. In fact a Pan AM flight was taxiing down the same runway - unseen in dense fog. When the Pan Am flight called, as KLM was hurtling down the runway towards them -"We will report when clear" - aboard the KLM flight only the second officer questioned the captain's and first officer's belief that the runway was clear, on the cockpit recording he can be heard asking, "Is he not clear? "That Pan American?" But the captain, Van Zanten, believing the runway was clear, quickly cut him off with an "Oh yes" and continued his takeoff.


At the time Capt Van Zanten was considered KLM's top pilot. But today the tragic disaster at Tenerife is considered an example of an outdated "command and control" paradigm and the accident at Tenerife is used as an example of the need for Cockpit Resource Management - the close cousin of the maritime Bridge Resource Management. of course there were a number of other factor as well that contributed to the accident.

The full story of the disaster at Tenerife can be read at Salon's Ask the Pilot by Patrick Smith and is well worth the read.

The Role of the Pilot

I was following links at Bob Couttie's Maritime Accident Casebook site and stumbled on to this very interesting discussion regarding the role of the pilot aboard ship at Maritime Executive


One commenter noted that

"Navigation of a ship in United States pilotage waters is a shared responsibility between the pilot and the master/bridge crew"

The remarks made by Robert Force are particularly interesting"

“Generally, while exercising the functions of a pilot, a pilot is in sole control of the navigation of the ship, and the pilot's orders must be obeyed as, in effect, the orders of the master. While a pilot who is in charge of a vessel supersedes the master insofar as the navigation of the vessel is concerned, the master does not surrender the vessel to the pilot and the pilot is not the master. Thus, the master is still in command of the vessel, notwithstanding the presence of a pilot.] There are, however, occasions when the master may, and in fact must, interfere with, or even displace, the pilot."

The pilot is representing the interests of the state while the master is representing the interests of the ship owner and of course both the pilot and the master are at all times mindful of their own professional responsibilities. Each party has a stake in a successful outcome. It is the master's responsibly to ensure that he has provided the pilot with a competent bridge team and a seaworthy vessel.

I sometimes am struck by the fact that, as master, when I meet the pilot for the time, that a perfect stranger and I, after a perfunctory introduction, and hopeful an effective master/pilot exchange, are about to undertake, what we both hope will be a routine operation, but which, even in good conditions, always carries some degree of risk.

It is remarkable, and speaks to the high level of skill developed by most pilots that such operations are routinely carried out, in ports all over the world, successfully day after day (and night).

Error Chains and Swiss Cheese

Most mariners are familiar with the error chain. One study found that the number of causes (links) of an accident ranged from 7 to 58 with an average of 23. The thinking is, identify one link in the error chain, remove it, and the error chain is broken, thus, no incident.

How does one identify these links? After the incident, one can trace the chain, in retrospect, finding and removing one link seems obvious. In practice however, the error chain concept provides little guidance in finding and breaking the chain.

A more helpful model is the Swiss Cheese Model first proposed by British psychologist James T. Reason (nice name!).

From Wikipedia

"most accidents can be traced to one or more of four levels of failure: Organizational influences, unsafe supervision, preconditions for unsafe acts, and the unsafe acts themselves. In the Swiss Cheese model, an organization's defenses against failure are modeled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of Swiss cheese. The holes in the cheese slices represent individual weaknesses in individual parts of the system, and are continually varying in size and position in all slices. The system as a whole produces failures when all of the holes in each of the slices momentarily align, permitting (in Reason's words) "a trajectory of accident opportunity", so that a hazard passes through all of the holes in all of the defenses, leading to a failure"

This site has a nice graphic of the S.C. model.

The Swiss Cheese Model provide a positive method of reducing risk, rather then seeking to break some invisible chain, one simply adds layers, or increases the effectiveness of the existing layers (making the holes smaller). As an example, one could add a layer of crew training, or seek ways to improve the effectiveness of existing training, or use additional care during passage planning.

On a well run ship you can observe the Swiss Cheese Model in action Each near miss, representing a hole in one layer, is evaluated and if needed procedures are modified. Near misses, lessons learned, Bridge Resource Management, careful passage planning can all be seen as adding layers of cheese. Of course it may not be called that. Another name for the application of the Swiss Cheese model is - good seamanship.

Alaska Ranger Hearings

Hearings have begun regarding the F/V Alaska Ranger which sank 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor on March 23. Tragically 5 crew members lost their lives. A Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter based at St. Paul Island, the C.G. Cutter Monro and the sister to the Ranger, the Alaska Warrior rescued 42 of the 47 crew members. One crew member, Byron Carrillo, was lost when he fell from the rescue basket back into the sea.

SitNews site has some details of the hearings.

According to An Unofficial Coast Guard Blog the Alaska Ranger was nicknamed the "Alaska Danger" and was formerly a "mud boat" built to service oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Two Years Before the Mast

"A small island, situated about two leagues from the anchorage, called by us "Wood Island," and by the Spaniards "Isle de los Angelos," was covered with trees to the water's edge; and to this, two of our crew, who were Kennebec men and could handle an axe like a plaything, were sent every morning to cut wood, with two boys to pile it up for them. In about a week, they had cut enough to last us a year, and the third mate, with myself and three others, were sent over in a large, schooner-rigged, open launch, which we had hired of the mission, to take in the wood, and bring it to the ship."

- From Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.