There will invariably be no weighbridge, or weighing device available to tell of the shipper’s crime, and despite menacing creaking noises coming from the reach stacker in the terminal, or the noises of protest from the shiploader, this wretched box may then find its way high onto the stack aboard ship. And this, alas will be the straw that metaphorically breaks the camel’s back, collapsing the stow as the ships works in the seaway, and taking several dozen other boxes to a watery grave.

This may cause only anger and disappointment, but people who couldn’t care less about the weights they stuff into a container have already capsized feeder container ships, smashed up cranes, had forklifts standing on their forks and very likely subjected large ships to fatal structural stresses. The MSC Napoli’s loss was at least contributed to by a large number of overweight boxes, while that of the feeder Dongedyk which could have drowned her crew if her capsize had occurred in deeper water, was certainly caused by her chief officer not having a clue about the weight of their cargo.

It is going on all the time, as any containership Mate who has compared the draught with the tonnage of cargo declared will confirm. Terminals seem powerless to intervene, and everyone seems unwilling to be nasty to the shippers. So it is good that the IAPH has joined the World Shipping Council, ICS and BIMCO in calling on IMO to have the SOLAS Convention amended to require accurate and verified weights of containers. About time too.

It could be argued that shippers ought to be the guilty party that is brought to heel here and that shippers’ organisations, which spend inordinate amounts of time whining and protesting about carriers might be considered the missing guest at the feast. It is shippers that cause the damage, who risk people’s lives, and who fundamentally cheat over container weights. So let’s hear it from them. Weighing containers is not rocket science. They are doing it in the US, where there is less generosity towards cheats and it ought to be made universal.

One of the real scandals which has disfigured marine safety for several years has been the terrible loss of life and serious injury that has occurred with accidents involving lifeboats and launching mechanisms, mostly involving the on-load release hooks which seemed such a good idea at the time. It took far too long for the industry to agree the mandatory guidelines for the release and retrieval systems now found in MSC.1/Circ.1392; several years of fruitless arguing, during which time a lot more seafarers and others were killed and injured in needless accidents.

But at least there is now a requirement for all operators to test the equipment they have fitted to their ships, and to replace it where necessary, and the manufacturers have also had to comply with far more rigorous testing than hitherto. The manufacturers Schat-Harding helpfully point out that these rules apply to new boats from 1 July 2014, but there are also tests to be applied to existing hooks and if they fail to meet the set standards, they will have to be upgraded at the first drydocking after this date, but no later than 1 July 2019.

This major manufacturer has now completed testing its SeaCure lifeboat release and retrieval system, and also developed a Secondary Safety System for this hook. It seems likely that other reputable major manufacturers will be also ensuring that their equipment meets the new criteria.

But it is worth pointing out that there are literally hundreds of types of on load hooks in service, often supplied by shipyards, which is of course one of the problems, and which has contributed to this loss of life and injury among the people who ought to be able to depend on their LSA in extremis. There will be thousands of hooks which, although accepted by owners in good faith when they took delivery of their ships, will be potentially dangerous and require upgrading. There is also scope to kill and maim quite a lot of seafarers before the mandatory dates of 2014 and 2019.

Good shipowners will not be waiting for these “test and replace-by” dates but will be hurrying to ensure that their own equipment is thoroughly safe, just as soon as it is possible. Schat-Harding tells us that more than 100 owners have already re-hooked their lifeboats with their equipment. Good shipowners all!

A recent survey in New Zealand, where ships’ gear tends to be used extensively for non-containerised trades like forest product revealed a great deal of hazardous machinery, which is curious in a country where the wharfies take a fairly robust attitude to anything that is not to their liking. Just imagine the consternation in the charterer’s office when it is revealed that some ship that has steamed half way around the world to pick up a cargo, has had its cargo gear condemned. It’s not a lot of use and the ship will be offhire before you can say “Whakatipu”.

There was a revealing meeting in London this week on the occasion of the launch of a Lloyd’s Register and UK P&I Club guide to the survey and examination of ships’ lifting appliances, which takes in cargo gear, stores and engineroom cranes and even davits for lifesaving equipment. There is a sort of gap in oversight that has been perceived as this equipment is more often than not regarded as an “optional” class item, while flags states vary greatly in their treatment of this survey. You would think that bearing in mind the importance of much of this stuff, it would be treated more seriously than it is.

There is, as the UK Club’s Karl Lumbers points out, few instances of an incident involving this equipment that does not end up with deaths and injuries. He has a gruesome collection of pictures of cranes which have ended up in the hold, or on the wharf, along with their drivers and others dead and injured. He also offers a list of reasons for this happening, which ranges from neglect of maintenance to bad design.

The new guide is a pocket sized compendium of useful advice on what surveyors and others need to look at in this equipment. Considering how important it all is, it might be considered overdue, but if it induces a new awareness, it will have been well worth while.

Speaking at a manning and training conference, he administered a good kicking to the “bottom tier” of maritime employers for their substandard practices, and suggested that the authorities needed to be harassing them rather more.

Everyone knows the sort of ships and shipping companies he is talking about. These are ships run on the smell of an oily rag, rather than any proper maintenance, and crewed by seafarers who, quite frankly, are not burdened by too many employment choices.

Their conditions aboard ship will be dire, but the owner, if pressed about the matter will tend to shrug and suggest that the crew freely entered into their employment contract. The flags used will be those which feature largely in port state control problem areas, and are chosen because of their beguiling freedoms and cheap rates.

Better port state controls have banished these ships and shipping companies from many parts of the world, but they stray occasionally, risking a visit into the better parts of the world, and hoping that the PSC inspectors are busy the day they arrive. And they share the same sea as better quality shipping, and scare the living daylights out of people when their knowledge of the collision rules proves somewhat lacking.

Can we ever get rid of these ships and shipowners, because they clearly are not going to  improve? Probably not, just as long as there are such differences between rich and poor, the haves and have-nots, and the developed and developing worlds.

So we will always have cases like the ship that ran out of fuel in the English Channel, ships which are detained and then abandoned by people that cannot afford to put them right, and seafarers left to fend for themselves. More regulation probably won’t help, because the sort of people we are writing about can’t cope with what there is already, and regard rules as burdens to be evaded.

Some suggest that flag states, and PSC could be a lot more rigorous in their enforcement, although if that means even more inspectors stamping up the gangways of well-found ships, that would be self-defeating.

The ability to identify poor performers through AIS will at least help to facilitate discrimination, and that would be a good thing, focussing attention on the bottom feeders, and leaving the rest and the best alone.

It can present too-small crews with real problems, as was evidenced from a pilot’s recent comments about a Capesize which had a perfectly adequate number of hands – but only to tie up one end of the ship at a time.

Apparently they tied up the bow, then, as the ship was held alongside in the tide by four tugs, the crew sprinted nearly a quarter mile aft to start hurling the sternlines ashore. Speed over the ground was as important as seamanship on this lean-manned vessel, which, he pointed out, was by no means unique.

But accidents can happen on ships which are being run, as people used to say, “on the smell of an oily rag”. It might seem perfectly reasonable to turn-to all-hands to tie the ship up, if everyone is trained as a seaman.

But there have been fatal accidents and horrific injuries incurred when people whose main task aboard ship is something very different, start to get involved with mooring and unmooring, which is an operation always involving a certain amount of risk to those in the vicinity of moving, unguarded machinery, and ropes under strain.

There have been accidents where cooks or engineroom staff have been required to make up the numbers in a deck mooring gang, and have suffered death and fatal injuries as a result. It’s a warning to the operator that skills are more important than mere numbers.

As one has learned to expect during wintertime, there has been the usual surge in accidents involving ships being blown off their berth by gusts of wind. If they are lucky, there is a big bill for replacement rope and wire, if they are unlucky, there may be serious damage done, and to more than one ship. It is not that long ago that a runaway big containership wiped out a nearby tanker berth, wrecked oil pipelines and severely polluted the waters of a major port. All because of a parting rope.

Are there sufficient moorings between ship and shore? Are the arrangements for accepting moorings sufficient – to put it bluntly – are there enough bollards for the size and windage of the ships that might be expected to use the berth?

There have been criticisms of some ports’ parsimony in this respect, although the harbourmasters may well retort that they never realised the owner was going to double the size of the ship.

And indeed, is the ship designer providing the owner with safe and adequate mooring arrangements? There have been quite modern ships, where the mooring arrangements have been cramped, installed as if as an afterthought, and potentially risky to the life and limb of the crews trying to use them.

All of which is a preface to a useful new book produced by the Nautical Institute which is really designed to provide an up to date review of mooring and anchoring, with the latest thinking on the technology, and the principles and practice.

“Mooring and Anchoring Ships” is primarily a book for mariners, who probably need to know more than they are presently taught, but there is important messages in it for ship designers, and for those involved on the harbour side of mooring and unmooring.

There is a great deal of safety-related information, whether it is in the mitigation of risks to people in an inherently hazardous operation, or the optimum way of laying out a mooring deck.

Ian Clark, who is a mariner of many year’s experience has led this useful project and, as the author, is to be congratulated. A second volume, by Walter Vervloesem, focuses on inspection and maintenance of mooring and anchoring equipment. More details on www.nautinst.org

Experience has taught us that most casualties are caused by a human agency.

Therefore, when one reads that “shocking” deficiencies in lifeboat training and the use of a bewildering array of release hooks are putting the lives of seafarers at risk, I ask whether we should not have standardized equipment and, well, standardized training.

Also, when one reads of injury and loss of life, due to the lack of formal training requirements for work within enclosed spaces aboard tankers and chemical carriers, it does leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.

As to lifeboat drills, isn’t it annoying, to say the least, to read that: Richard Schifferli, the Paris MoU general secretary, has to say that “a drill can go wrong for a variety of reasons, but too often it is because crew assigned to a lifeboat are not familiar with that type of lifeboat release gear on board.”  Is this rocket science? Where’s the indignation?

On accidents in confined spaces: eleven senior master mariners point out, repeating the finding of the Marine Accident Investigators International Forum (MAIF) that, with 93 fatalities taking place in enclosed spaces aboard ship since 1997, its first area of  concern continues to be “lack of knowledge, training, and understanding of the dangers of entering enclosed spaces…”  Again, aren’t we ashamed?

I am reminded of the famous words of Inspector Renault, played by Claude Rains, in Casablanca: “I am shocked, shocked…”

Yes, we need better training, and rational conformity to a common design standard.  The training process begins at the cadet stage.  Or, at least, it should.  There must be meaningful drills, and not mere paper or certificate compliance.

Safety at sea, and particularly the protection of those who work in the merchant service, must in this Year of the Seafarer, be our number one priority.  Your comments on how we can improve formal training requirements and drills will be most welcome.

At our December 1 launch of this blog, we discussed how we could help the shipping industry become more actively involved, across a broader front, in the setting of higher standards.  Our aim is to recruit support from among charterers, P&I clubs, mortgage lenders, and other stakeholders, for a “quality conscious” agenda, based on white list criteria.

I expressed the opinion that if a more rigorous level of performance, including such hard-to-measure factors as crew quality, were to be achieved, it would require the active involvement of key players, other than shipowners.  I also suggested that port state control procedures could not do the job alone; that we needed to improve communication with banks, charterers, underwriters, and others, to get their support.

With the spread of social networking, and the availability of detailed quality databases, no major stakeholder could claim ignorance of a poor quality rating, or a lack of information.

What is of concern is: How to consult with “upstream” stakeholders, in a fragmented industry such as ours.

If all of this sounds vague, it is because no persons’ names have yet been attached to the sectors that I have mentioned.  This blog, among other things, is a means to reach out to the industry, both leaders and grass roots, and particularly to seafarers, in pursuit of a more inclusive role.  We need to hear from all industry sectors, on, specifically, what quality issues concern you the most.