There is apprehension that the grim news from Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Athens could lead to a weakening, partition or breakup of the Eurozone, and perhaps the European Union itself.
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There are many definitions of a “good” ship operator. “Somebody who does what is right, without regulatory pressure or mandatory provisions” might be as good a definition as you can find.
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…
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You clearly neglect your cargo handling equipment at your peril, but it seems quite a lot of people do.
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As we all know the ISM Code was adopted by IMO in 1993. The Code was drafted as a self-contained document. However, its provisions were bought into force internationally when, at the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Conference in 1994, compliance with its provisions became mandatory under a new Chapter IX to the SOLAS Convention. The Code differs from other quality assurance systems in that it is mandatory; it has been amended over the years, and is generally incorporated in OPA ’90.
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If I was a Somali pirate chief, or perhaps the Business Development Director of one of those gruesome gangs causing mayhem in world shipping circles, as we are informed they are now well organised along such formal lines, I would have annotated my 2011 wall chart with some enthusiasm last week. The Volvo Ocean round the world race started in Alicante on Saturday with its six yachts, all professionally crewed, en route to Cape Town.
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It’s a fact that some ship types are endemically more vulnerable to disaster than others.
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“It will never work because there is no infrastructure!” I wonder how many times these words, or their 19th century equivalents, were spoken by sailing ship owners contemplating the move into mechanical propulsion.
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In the frenetic rush to get a big containership through a terminal, is there enough time to consider exactly what nasties might be in the boxes that are classified as dangerous deck cargo?
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Maritime history buffs may remember the story of the Marie Celeste, a sailing ship found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean, which seemingly had managed to sail for months without reaching land, and whose crew were mysteriously absent. To this day, her mystery remains the subject of speculation.
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The true state of the world economy was shown on August 1, with the release by JPMorgan of a series of indicators making up the global manufacturing purchasing managers’ indices (PMI).
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