The Costa Concordia grounding is a stark reminder that sea travel remains dangerous. A modern cruise ship sailing a routine route in beautiful weather ran
aground in a matter of minutes, leaving at least 15 people dead.

About 15 million people took a cruise last year, and they are asking tough questions. Are the massive
passenger vessels stable enough to withstand a grounding or collision? Are their international crews capable of
coordinating rapid evacuations of thousands of people? Who oversees the operations of these vessels?

To read the remainder of this articles please visit http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20120124_Cruise_disaster_could _have_larger_lessons.html

or the Baltimore Sun/The Philadelphia Inquirer, 24th Jan.

AS WE approach the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic this coming April, passengership safety remains an important issue.

Between 1990 and 2000, the cruise market increased by 60% and ship size grew to vessels capable of carrying well over 3,600 passengers. Naval architects have devoted attention to methods of achieving rapid and safe evacuation, particularly access to lifeboats located at various parts of the passengership’s superstructure. Chutes or slides are now available for passengers to enter lifeboats already in the water, either directly into the lifeboat, or by means of a transfer platform.
These systems are designed to be effective in unfavourable weather conditions, or when the ship has heeled over. It is, or should be, understood that passengers on board a cruiseship may not be nimble, and perhaps may be partly handicapped. This affects the design and stowage of the lifeboats.

The loss of Titanic in April 1912 began a revolution in passengership safety that has continued to the present time. Although an international conference was held in 1914, it was not until 1932 that an international convention for the safety of life at sea was agreed upon by major maritime nations. This convention has been reviewed repeatedly over the years, in the light of sometimes painful experience.

One of the biggest problems is philosophical: the great cruiseships of today are perceived by the public as large floating hotels or casinos. Significantly, modern cruiseship passengers are generally referred by liner companies as “guests”.
Nevertheless, a ship at sea, even one close to shore, is exposed to an array of hazards that cannot always be avoided. How a ship, including a large passengership, can survive such risk depends on a number of factors.

Most worrying about modern passenger vessels is the very large number of human beings on board, a factor that presents previously unprecedented logistical problems if anything goes wrong. Many observers have asked whether numbers of elderly or partly handicapped passengers can endure the stresses of a speedy emergency evacuation from a vessel that may be more than five stories high. In recent years, as passenger vessels have grown larger and larger, these issues have become more obvious.

Although a passengership casualty, when one occurs, is often referred to as “unprecedented”, the question of how to safely evacuate a ship carrying thousands of people is not new. Naval architects have raised concerns regarding the designs of passengerships repeatedly in recent years, even as computer simulations, modern materials and technology have improved the design process. To begin with, there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship, a lesson learned repeatedly over the centuries.
A continuing cause for concern is the effect of fire, or more likely loss of oxygen, within an enclosed environment. This problem of course applies in a sealed building as much as a ship. However, because of the common presence of “atriums” within many modern passenger vessels, the impact of fire or heat, and loss of oxygen, within a limited area could be dangerously enhanced, and with it, the risk of asphyxiation.

Giant cruiseships may have as many as 12 decks, and a large number of stairs, elevators and other exits, all of which, however well indicated, may be bewildering or at least unfamiliar to passengers. The design of the giant supership does not permit old-fashioned muster lifeboat drills, familiar to moviegoers of a certain age, in which passengers were sent to boat stations shortly after a voyage began. Today, such drills are often merely simulations, in which passengers are shown a video, or other form of demonstration.

The logistical problems of evacuating a giant cruiseship, carrying thousands of passengers and crew, are in urgent need of reassessment.

Among the unresolved or unpredictable variables is what happens if a significant number of lifeboats are submerged when a passengership develops a rapid and extreme list. Pictures of Costa Concordia with all of its starboard lifeboats under water illustrate that this could be a problem.

Just as in the case of Titanic, the question is not simply whether there are enough lifeboats or rafts, but whether passengers will have a reasonable amount of time to gain safe access to them. If a list develops quickly, or if weather is bad, the ship’s design must permit every possible means to safely evacuate passengers and crew.

A well-trained crew, specially trained to handle the evacuation of a large number of passengers and staff, is indispensable.

In two  months, the great, the good and the not so great or good will gather at the Connecticut Maritime Association’s annual three-day jamboree.

One of the perennial topics will be the image of shipping.

Although the economic challenges facing the industry are likely to overshadow most of our worries about our reputations, it might be useful to examine the degree of damage done by cases such as the sinking on Christmas day of Vinalines Queen , north-east of the Philippines. Just one crew member survived.

P&I clubs have campaigned to increase awareness of the need to test cargoes independently, and for safe loading of nickel and other ores. But several organisations failed even to comment on this latest tragic casualty, honourably excluding the dry bulk shipowners’ association Intercargo.

This gives a hint why we are not very effective in fighting our own corner.

In most of these dry bulk losses, three things have been noticeable: questionable or incorrect cargo documentation, no P&I survey and no third-party preshipment survey.

Also, there is usually an element of economic pressure behind the decision not to test cargoes through an independent party.

Under the circumstances, it is not too early to suspect that the loss of Vinalines Queen was caused by mishandling dangerous cargo. Industry failure to promptly regret the loss of life makes us all look uncaring.

A problem of this nature — one that has gone on for much too long — raises the suspicion that we, as an industry, lack the integrity generally expected of businesses in the 21st century.

We have all made mistakes in our lives, but very few people will have done anything so dreadful, with the damage control centre indicating that the ship is filling fast, there is a total power blackout, and there are 4200 people whose lives are now in deadly danger as a consequence of a man’s misjudgement.

Where are the equivalents? A general, whose error has condemned an entire regiment to destruction can at least blame the enemy for his own miscalculation. A doctor whose blundering scalpel has killed his patient has the blood of only that single person on his hands. Even the pilot of the biggest passenger aircraft who has misjudged his approach will, like those aboard, be dead and free from recriminations and condemnation.

Can we consider, just for a moment, what Captain Schettino must have been thinking as he realised the terrible consequences of his errors and the end of his career. And we expect somebody with that terrible burden to spring into action, reassure those aboard and ensure that the evacuation of the ship goes entirely to plan. There are just a few human beings who can perhaps imagine the reality of this ultimate horror. They, without exception, will be in command of gigantic cruise ships. They won’t be robots, either. But more than four thousand people got ashore from that sinking heeling ship that night. Somebody was doing something right.

There is a job to be done on the issue of cruise ship size, and above all, their height. You don’t have to own an over-active imagination to wonder about the stability of these things. Sure, passengers don’t weigh much (at least compared to iron ore) but there is some major reassurance to be done in this department; not easy as long as the cameras are focussed upon the Italian wreck, which facilitates an easy inspection of how much ship there is under the waterline, and above. Sure, the Titanic sank on an even keel, but where’s the progress? -worried potential passengers might ask. They need precise information and something more reassuring than damaged stability calculations which are quite unbelievably complicated or experts muttering about “cross flooding arrangements”.

They did a pretty good job, all things considered, getting what boats they did away from the listing ship, so somebody was doing what they had been trained to. But that famous phrase –“everyone panics in their own language” came to mind as the reports trickle in and the nightmare of evacuating a multi-national crowd, of every age and physical ability, needs a firm explanation. Can we do it – yes we can! But exactly how, professor? And 100 years on, aren’t there better systems than those represented by lifeboats. People aren’t stupid and possibly even remember ships which have lurched violently when experiencing a steering gear malfunction and thrown pianos around, and others which, despite all the duplication of systems, had to be towed back to port. They need a cleaner bill of health for cruising, or they will be holidaying elsewhere.

Finally, there needs to be a bit more insurance in the human element department. No point in having bridge resource management, if an individual goes off on a tangent and starts to drive as the mood takes him. Cultural change may need more than a few day’s simulator training.

But as containerships go, this is a tiddler compared to the giants now entering service on the main line routes. How do salvors, and everyone else from the emergency services to the average adjusters deal with 16,000teu on the loose, when fewer than 2000 can be such a problem? There were some very pessimistic views expressed last week at a Maritime London event when Holman Fenwick & Willan Partner Andrew Chamberlain pointed out that there were already 140 “mega” containerships rushing around and not a great deal of visible preparedness evident should (perhaps we should say when) one of them comes to grief.

He had worked on the MSC Napoli salvage among others, and notes that “the whole dynamics of salvage has changed completely”, salvors having to work in an atmosphere of intense government, environmental and public and press attention. The salvage industry, with only about five globally capable salvors in being, is facing challenges with its lack of resources and the need for serious investment in plant and people if they are to respond the salvage of giant ships.

Even with such monsters, the value is now in the cargo more than the ship, which brings its own problems in a case where there is such a plethora of cargo owners, the sheer logistic problems of such numbers, the vast numbers of agencies that will need to be part of the solution, and, of course, the sheer problems of removing cargo from a huge, damaged ship with containers seven high on deck. Such equipment that can be helpful in such a situation is not found in every port – in the case of the Rena it required a crane barge to be moved for nearly three weeks, to the wreck site.

Think of the problems of disposal of spoiled or hazardous cargo, the space needed to simply sort out the wreckage once it is ashore. On the Napoli, we heard just two containers cost £100,000 to find specialist disposal. On the Chitra wreck off India, the ship had to be scuttled at sea because of the presence aboard of hazardous chemicals that could not be safely removed. Think of these problems multiplied by seven or eight times, with a giant ship in dire straits.

The fact is that people don’t want to think about these realities. The term “in denial” has moved from the realms of psychology to marine operations. Maybe one of the 140 monsters will end up wrecked. Fingers crossed that it won’t be mine.

The useful British enthusiasts’ journal Ships Monthly notes in its latest edition that the 17,676gt fully laden vessel departed Seattle on 3 February 1987,  bound Pusan, and was never seen again. She was the first sizeable purpose-built containership to be lost in the open seas ,when she disappeared in terrible weather around ten days later somewhere off the Kurile Islands. Only a single container, some wreckage and one body from the eight year old ship, which had a complement of 23, were found by the searchers. The $26m loss to the insurers would be one of the largest of that year and the most substantial ever associated with container shipping up to that date.

The Hanjin Incheon loss was attributed to extreme weather, but raised some eyebrows as, while a tiddler in today’s terms, this was a sizeable “first generation” container vessel and a good deal bigger than the general cargo ships she and her cellular sisters replaced.

It is instructive to relate this loss to some of the other problems which have raised their exceedingly ugly heads in the years since her disappearance. Sure, weather was certainly a contributory factor, but might the phenomenon known these days as parametric rolling have seen the ship lose her positive stability in the fearsome storm, fall into a trough and be rolled over by the waves? It is tempting to speculate by applying modern knowledge to this old casualty.

And while the containers were normally stacked only three high on the foredeck of the accommodation aft vessel, one wonders whether the cavalier attitude to container weights that has been recently remarked upon was prevalent in 1987? She sailed from a US port, and it was the US Coast Guard which first blew the whistle on the huge disparities between declared weights and contents and the “real thing” in the 1990s, when a survey revealed that a very high proportion of containers were misdeclared.

Weights would matter a very great deal on a ship of such a size when computing her stability. They still do, but are we any nearer in persuading those stuffing containers that accuracy matters?

There continues to be a crying need for greater information, understanding and enforcement of regulations – as well as testing – of cargoes that may liquefy.  Nickel ore is one such.  Intercargo, the International Association of Dry Cargo Shipowners, has commendably been a leader in fighting for international action to protect the lives of seafarers, at risk when bulk cargo vessels, like the Supramax Vinalines Queen, suddenly disappear.

Over the years, many such losses involved vessels carrying direct reduced iron (DRI), a cargo prone to heating when wet, sometimes resulting in a disastrous explosion.  It took many years for international authorities to recognize the culpability of unscrupulous shippers and consignees – one of our industry’s little secrets.

It will be recalled that in December of 2010, three bulk carriers and their crews were lost, all as a result of cargo liquefaction.  The danger hasn’t gone away.

There is a need for stronger and clearer requirements particularly with respect to accurate information on the carriage of bulk cargoes.  The IMO has held meetings, most recently last September, of its Sub-Committee on Dangerous Goods, Solid Cargoes and Containers (DSC), with many participants, including Intercargo, The International Group of P&I Clubs, The International Union of Marine Insurers, as well as other industry associations, to take further action strengthening the requirements of the existing IMSBC Code.  A prepared schedule for nickel ore will be further reviewed this coming March, before – hopefully – its inclusion in the IMSBC Code at the forthcoming Dangerous Goods Sub-Committee in September.

The safety terminology of hazardous cargoes uses the term “Competent Authority”.  Usually, such an Authority is either a shipper at the port of loading, or receiver at the point of destination.  Rob Lomas, the Secretary General of Intercargo has called for  “…the reassurances of the Competent Authorities in…exporting countries that their procedures and processes have integrity and transparency so that this message is received and most importantly, trusted by the shipowners.  Competent Authorities are key to ensuring that seafarers’ lives are not put in danger”.

It is also clear that bulker losses like that of the Vinalines Queen are taking place within specific trades, and with similar destinations in the Far East.  It would be very helpful if the International Maritime Organization (IMO) could study these specific trades, with the objective of getting the word out on hazardous bulk cargoes.  Many of the ships that have been lost have crews and flag states that are not likely to have gotten the necessary information on the risks involved, and the measures that need to be taken, in handling dangerous or difficult cargoes.

The Vinalines Queen was built in 2005, and from all available information was in satisfactory condition.  Its loss is another tragedy that didn’t need to happen.

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.

SWANLAND was a small, roughly 2000 gt dry bulker, bound from Colwyn Bay to Cowes in the Isle of Wight;  with her cargo of limestone, she must have gone
down quickly, after, according to the survivors, having been struck by a massive wave. It was reported that, in a mayday received at 0200 hours, her
hull cracked.

Built in 1977, she was registered in the Cook Islands.

SWANLAND had a poor port state control record, according to Lloyd’s List, including a finding in the past year that her hatchcovers were not
sufficiently watertight; fire and safety equipment not properly maintained; and life rafts not properly fitted. It is reported that the ship previously
went aground off Yarmouth, while loaded with 2,700 tons of wheat. On that occasion, her crew of eight seem
to have been unharmed. It is also reported that in August 2010, SWANLAND’s engines failed; it was, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence casualty
reports, towed into Falmouth after nearly grounding off the Lizard peninsula.

Last week, SWANLAND was at sea in a heavy gale.

So six seafarers have been lost. We think,  and say, that such things matter a great deal; that substandardships, flag states and operators do exist; and with the most hostile economic conditions in a generation assailing the industry, badly maintained ships are reappearing — and will grow in number. The prevailing culture of government costcutting, in the beleaguered United States and Europe, is also a grim omen for the future of maritime safety.

When we fail to take effective measures against substandard shipping, we disgrace ourselves. No doubt the SWANLAND fell through more than a few
cracks; those cracks may be the familiar ones, perhaps including the ship’s classification society, flag state, and local port state control. There may
be others. Would a full, public — and consequential — inquiry be asking too much?

An ancient hymn invokes God’s protection for “those in peril on the sea”.

Which doesn’t exonerate us.