Saturday, 14 January 2012

Accident waiting to happen ???

This mornings news had the reports about the cruise liner, Costa Concordia, at the Island of Giglio, off the Tuscan coast, with a severe list to starboard (right hand side - just looked at the latest pic's I can find and the liner is shown on it's side, I don't know whether it's actually "turned turtle", a la "Poseidon Adventure" or not.......).

Now I've been present at a nautical incident in 1988 (during my time with the RN - and the incident I was involved in was a collision between 2 ships, caused by a mechanical breakdown). So I know just how fucking scary such events can be (the one the ship I was on wasn't as bad as the news reports of the Costa Concordia is showing).

It's fair to point out that I'd received some training about such problems as part of one of the training courses I attended was about saving a ship after battle damage/missile strike has occurred - it still doesn't really prepare you for the shock of the incident.

Anyway, for some time now, whenever one of the cruise lines shows the pictures of their "latest and greatest", both myself and my partner have wondered about the possibility of such an incident. Because these vessels always look like they're top heavy i.e. with more showing above the waterline that might be below it. Here's a link to the "Daily Mail's online article" about it. And yes, at least one of the pictures shows what we seem to think might be correct.

It's like looking at pictures of earlier vessels that have sunk (specifically, some pictures of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's flagship come to mind).

So is current cruise liner design more about the arrogance of "ship designers" thinking that technology will overcome both nature and "human error" ? Looks rather like that might be the case!

Doesn't matter how much the technological innovation of stabilisers, bow thrusters and other positioning and stability aids are fitted, if you put a fucking great hole in the ships side, especially below the water line, there's a likelihood of being problems.

I mean, damn, the ships master seems to have done pretty well in getting the damaged vessel close in to Italy, to enable the authorities to be able to do something to minimise casualties, but for fucks sake, you wouldn't want to sail a "skyscraper" would you. After all, I know that that's a shit analogy, but if you think on the depth of the footings/foundations of a high rise building when compared to what's above ground, you might think twice about whether it's such a good idea. Especially when it comes to the likelihood of something that could shake or know the damn building over (earthquakes etc), so why the fuck design a ship like this, when the damn sea's are infinitely more unstable than land, plus either lack of, or misuse of kit that "looks" into the water below the keel (echo sounding and similar equipment) can't guarantee that it's clear and safe for the vessel, then it's patently bloody obviously that it should only be going places where the depth of water is known as well as whether there's likely to be underwater obstacles.

But no, yet again, another fucking brilliant example of seamanship, shows that there's no guarantee of total safety.

Ha! And it's the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic (parallels will have been drawn.....) this year.

My partner doesn't like the idea of sea travel anyway, so shit like this reinforces her view........

I bet that all the planets "cruise line companies" will be looking to make sure that all their kit for checking safety and depth below their ships keels will be either double checked for function, or upgraded.....

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