A Nautical Miscellany

Piracy and the criminalisation of seafarers

I don't usually just repost other peoples blogs but I think this one from Lloyd's today is worth repeating. The officers in the blog are all victims but how they are perceived and how they are treated are vastly different.

Lloyd's List Comment

Where the chain of causation starts and how it bloody ends up

As so often happens an article in Mondays Lloyd's List caused me to ponder. The article was headlined, "Viking Islay master ‘failed in his duty of care' ". I quote directly from the article concerning the actions of some of the crew that lead to their deaths:

"The three men successively entered the vessel’s chain locker before collapsing due to depleted oxygen in the enclosed space. At issue is whether the crew members were made aware that the chain locker was a dangerous place to go, whether they were aware the chain locker had to be adequately vented before entry and why no tests were made of oxygen levels in the locker."

The stupid thing of course is that the crew were entering the locker merely to fasten the hanging chain to prevent it from knocking on the side of the locker and keeping some of the crew awake. 

The basis of the Crown's case was that the Master owed a duty of care to the crew to ensure they were not exposed to risk.The article doesn't mention a verdict so I assume that the case is ongoing.  Of course the Master does have a duty of care to the crew, as I recall it's crew, ship and then cargo. I won't offer an opinion on the Masters action or lack thereof, I'm sure that he's suffering in his own hell.

Undoubtedly there is a confined space entry protocol in the ship managers safety management system that was ignored. Was there a warning about oxidisation in the procedure? Was not the Master or the first two crewmen aware of oxidisation in  a chain locker (or with many cargoes)?

Sadly I was witness to a similar accident when I was at sea, though I was a supernumerary on the ship.In that incident and in this one what distresses me the most is that besides the Masters ignorance (in both incidents) there were at least 3 other people involved who either were ignorant or ignored the procedures and the dangers of entering a compartment that had been closed for some time.

One of the most powerful tools in improving safety on a ship is getting the crew to have a duty of care towards each other, it's way more effective than written procedures or a knowledgeable Master. Did anyone else know they were going to go into the chain locker? If so, did it not strike anyone that this was a danger?

We had an incident in Australia that illustrates the point very neatly. A sailor on a FSO had a pair of work boots that were basically a few scraps of leather held together by laces. It became a running joke amongst the crew about just how bad the boots were. It all came to grief eventually, one day the particular seafarer was transferring from a boat to the loading buoy to do some servicing and of course twisted his ankle. At the time we were desperately trying to improve our not very impressive LTI rate and while the injury was relatively minor it was a setback we could have done without.

We did get some value out of the incident though, it became an excellent object lesson in how safety on board is everyone's responsibility and unless everyone is involved the results can be painful or even tragic.

Did this guy talk with that European guy?

Recently, (ok a month ago but I've been busy) Lloyd's published an article titled, "Downturn leading to improved prospects for ship safety" The article quotes the International Union of Marine Insurance as having the view that, "the freight market crash is lifting some of the intense operational pressure exerted in recent years on the world fleet. " or in other words, when your ship is earning $100,000/day no one wants you to slow down to paint the anchor.

This is true, when things are rolling, drydocks get delayed and if repairs can safely be made on the run rather than stopping then that's what you do. What intrigues me of course is how directly at odds this is with our friend from the EMSA that I talked about in a blog some months ago where he opined that the first thing that would happen in a bad market is all the maintenance would stop and the four horseman of the Apocalypse would follow shortly thereafter.

The IUMI also attribute the improvement to the fact that a lot of old trash that should have gone to the breakers a long time ago has now finally shuffled off the mortal coil, bad for the shipowner but good for the crew and the rest of us.  Bad markets do tend to drive some of the less desirable owners out of the business (and some decent ones too unfortunately). This tendency tends to be exacerbated but the fact that when times are tough charterers will also tend to go to the better owners knowing they will be keeping their standards the same.  During both the Erika and the Prestige I saw that the quality companies did proportionally better (Get me a ship and make it a good one this time, someone may be watching!)

The president of IUMI stated that "there were strong signs that the safety culture at sea was taking root. But she warned: “Ship operators are being buffeted from all sides in the growing economic crisis. But to cut corners on maintenance or training can only have one result in the long term: more casualties, higher claims on insurers, and higher premium and deductible levels for shipowners.” I agree with all of this but I don't think it is the entire picture as the whole of operating a ship is not taken up only with the insurance.  Charterers, particularly for oil companies and definitely in the offshore have no tolerance for ship operations that take the lives of their crew for granted. The LTI or loss time injury rate used to be a somewhat novel concept in discussions betwixt charterers and owners but now it tends to be either a conversation starter or the beginning of a deathly silence, if you pardon the pun.

The real message that has to be gotten to the unenlightened is that a low LTI rate goes hand in hand with an efficient operation, and that's what really pleases charterers once they've landed the price they want.  I don't think I've ever seen, and I'd be interested if anyone could show me, an operation that had a really low LTI rate but wasn't an efficient operation.

Now I know it will all be ok

 A recent article in the Canadian Press [ there is a newly released application for the iPhone that delivers all the CP news ] says that, "Barely a day after the daring rescue of an American sea captain, cable TV's Spike announced a deal Monday to produce a show about U.S. Navy pirate hunters."

It turns out that the deal has been in the works for three months but has only recently and conveniently come to fruition. What's interesting to me, probably out of ignorance, is exactly how many US flag ships there will be to rescue? I don't think this is like the first Gulf war where owners re-flagged to the stars and bars in order to get protection, so what exactly are they going to film, U.S. cruisers and destroyers waiting around while flag of convenience ships get hijacked?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of ships getting rescued by anybody's Navy and it's a great thing that the Master of the Maersk ship was rescued so quickly. What would be even better to see would be a coordinated effort amongst the Navy's present to rescue all of the 228 crew (at last count)  that are still being held prisoner. The flags on their ships may not be US but my bet is that the ultimate ownership of a lot of them ends up in the G20. Would it be too much to ask to have the people that ultimately own the ships to apply pressure to the governments that have the Navy ships in the area to get on with it?

UPDATE: The Economist has posted a related article here.

"One Western naval officer says placing all the warships under a single command, perhaps of the UN, and adopting the same rules of engagement would help to make them more effective."

Do ya think?

My mom would be so proud

I had the opportunity to write an article for Canadian Sailings on an Arctic shipping related topic of my choice. After my experience in years past with the MV Arctic and in my work with OZ Minerals I chose to write on the problem of the employment of high ice class ships in the conventional shipping market. The full article called "Mostly Employed Elsewhere" can be read here. I'd be interested in any feedback.

Give me that old time bureacracy

 Recently I read an article on Lloyd's List online that began:

The economic downturn will lead to an increase in ship incidents and pollution, the new chairman of the European Maritime Safety Agency has predicted.

Maritime companies are now more likely to postpone maintenance and the installation of new equipment, postponements which will “jeopardise safety, security or the environment”.

Now far be it from me to differ at all with those in power but in my humble experience two shipowners are about as much alike as two snowflakes.  How individual companies react to the downturn is going to depend as much on their company culture as on the amount of the loss of their fortunes. Accidents happen, usually, but not exclusively, to the companies that cut back on their maintenance, that don't invest in the recruitment or training of their officers and crews or that look for the classification society that is most pliable.The good companies will find the money to keep their ships in decent nick, as they always do. The bad companies will pull back as far as they think they can without the whole thing falling over.

Well I'll Be Damned Department

Any mariner of a certain age will know the name of Brown, Son and Ferguson as publishers of nautical texts. On my way looking for something else I came across this website, http://www.skipper.co.uk/which is in fact the website for the company.

 I was a bit surprised that they continue to exist, though after 132 years I would imagine the have acquired a bit of savvy about what it takes to survive. It is not the best website I have ever seen but it's interesting to take a poke around and see what is still being published.

I notice that they still are publishing Nicholls Concise Guide, both volumes, though I wonder if the same deep knowledge of astronomy and spherical trigonometry is still required today when your mobile phone can give you a position many times more accurate than what you ever determined with your sextant! 

Alas, my chosen navigation text Munros is apparently not in print anymore. (You basically chose to go with one text or the other and stuck with them throughout your exams) Munros appealed to me for their quirkiness, every chapter began with a quote from Shakespeare for instance. The chapter on Azimuths and Amplitudes began "I am as constant as a northern star, of whose fixed and resting quality there is no equal in the firmament".  Curiously I can remember the quote but I would suspect I'm bloody hopeless at doing amplitudes.

A look to the way ahead...

Fearnleys had an interesting commentary posted on their website concerning the newbuilding order book for bulk carriers.  [If you have never gone to their website I can highly recommend it.  They post quite a bit of free material and market information.]

In part they said, "Despite the fact that almost no bulk carriers have been ordered since August, the “official" order book still numbers almost 3,000 vessels, or 267 mdwt. About 90% of these ships are scheduled for delivery during the coming 36 months. If all these ships were to be delivered, this would, in our opinion, become a major catastrophe for the dry bulk market and result in a structural oversupply situation similar to what we experienced in the 1980s."

That they will all be delivered is highly unlikely. As a friend of mine said, when shipowners are talking to the yards these days about their current new building orders, they are having a hard time looking  the yard guys in the eyes and have that furtive "wish I was anywhere but here" kind of look. The assertion in the article and one in which I see a lot of truth is that there are going to be massive cancellations as a result of the financial crash. In this Fearnley's sees the financial crash as a benefit, it being better to lose a deposit on a ship rather than build it and have no way to employ it.

The aspect of this that interests me the most is the inclination of shipowners generally to behave like lemmings. If memory serves, in the beginning years of this century when the markets first began to improve the only thing that saved the freight market from having the bottom dropped out of it when it first picked up is that when the bulk owners rushed to the yards to order new tonnage the tanker owners were already there. Since nobody could get a ship built the market actually stayed up for awhile.

In his book, "Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit," the great economist Frank Knight listed 11 different conditions that had to be met before perfect competition was established. Shipping meets most if not all of the conditions, one that is particularly applicable; "There must be perfect, continuous, costless intercommunication between all individual members of the society. Every potential buyer of a good constantly knows and chooses among the offers of all potential sellers, and conversely.

There is such a volume of information about ships and cargoes that in aggregate it's hard to say that owners can't see the demand, and charterers too. The question is, having this near perfect competition, when the rates have climbed up and up and up, to levels never seen before (remember the Cape size rates of only a few months ago) and the yards fill up till there isn't a slot left until sometime in the future well after the demise of fossil fuels, shouldn't we all be able to read the signs before the creative destruction of capitalism is brought down on our collective heads?

Completely unacceptable but absolutely bloody typical

About 150 years ago  I sailed with a guy who had a real name but we called him Sam The Eagle. Sam was the first mate and of advancing years at that stage. (How his age then and my age now would compare I don't want to think about.)  He was the first person I ever met who had gone to sea under sail. His description of what that life was like certainly kicked out of my mind any idea of romance under sail. The conditions were tough and the men were tougher. The fact that the sail trade was on its last gasp, the battle having been lost to steam many years ago, only exacerbated the desperateness of the situation. To say that corners were cut to save money, and at the risk of the average matelots life would be an understatement.

You would think or you wouldn't be surprised if I said that this was brought up frequently in the sense of, "you think it's tough now, you should have seen it then" but that wasn't the case with Sam The Eagle, being the kind of gentleman that he was. He would offer that things had improved from the days of sail till then but that this was only part of the journey and there still was a long way to go. Whenever a new mate would join the ship,  and in particular for the junior officers, he would tell them that he had read recently that going to sea was no longer as dangerous as coal mining. He would then pause for a second and deliver the zinger, it's now more bloody dangerous than coal mining.

This was at the beginning of the 80s, a shameful decade with regards to the safety of bulk carriers. For a certain period bulk carriers were disappearing at the rate of one a month, taking with them the crew. There wasn't a lot of attention paid in the shipping world to the problem, and a damn sight less outside.

The recent to do about piracy off the Horn of Africa brings back the thought of the cheapness of the  value of the life of ships crews from those times. Some of the hijackings have been dramatic enough to attract media attention, thank goodness.  For with media attention comes government attention, and that is why there is a trickle of destroyers on their way or in the area. However, just consider this; it each of the ships that is now being held hostage was a 747 in a major airport in a Western country, would it be a trickle, or would it be a flood?

Live Piracy Map at ICC-IMB

And as I was saying..

A recent article in Tradewinds states that for the first time there is an agreement between Shell and Marad to use US seafarers on Shell ships. In fact the first agreement between an oil major and Marad for this purpose period. It doesn't mention whether "seafarers" means the whole crew or just the officers but that will become apparent in time I suppose.  Kind of hard to see this as a gesture of generosity on Shell's part but more a sign o the times about the manning shortage and just how bad it has become.

Only a few years ago, the thought that an oil major and especially one with a big shipping interest would be trying to recruit American crews for a foreign flagged ship would only occurred to someone after the ingestion of a series of bottles of pop. Not from a quality standard (though I don't really have any basis to judge the quality of American seafarers) but from their reputation for high cost, scarcity and advanced age.  I remember reading a book called "Looking for a Ship" by a journalist named John MacPhee. The book was written in the early 90's and was about a trip on a Lykes box boat around the US coast. It was about the decline of the American merchant marine since WW2 and gave the impression that once the current crop of pensioners died off that it would all be over. No one counted on the Spanish Inquistion! Oops, I mean the demographic shift!