Speaking Of Running Aground...

[Rick D]

... awful. Six lives lost. We'll know more as this unfolds:
http://news.yahoo.com/cruise-ship-aground-off-italy-4-000-passengers-235744825.html

 

[Rick D]

Photos

Wow. She was right on the rocks.

http://news.yahoo.com/italian-cruise-ship-4-000-board-runs-aground-035356831.html

 

[Rick D]

Odd Direction of Wreck.

There will be some interesting developments in this story. Oddly, she is facing SSE and she left Civitavecchia which is SE of her. She should have been going NW to Savona.

 

[joker460]

Captain has been arrested

http://www.ktvz.com/travelgetaways/30212867/detail.html

 

[pabraam]

Detained, not arrested.

 

[joker460]

Where do you see Detained?

"was arrested late Saturday and is being investigated for abandoning ship and manslaughter"

 

[Mike B1026]

On the TV news, they said detained and specified that he had not been arrested.

 

[Sail123]

Drudge report said arrested. First officer as well.

 

[Maine Sail]

How does a ship with hundreds if thousands of dollars in navigation equipment and a bridge deck salary expenditure approaching, or over, seven figures get 2.5 miles off course....??????? A friend who ran a sister ship tanker to the Exxon Valdez claims captains of these luxury cruise ships make close to 500k per year.. He made a handsome income him self and was able to retire at 49, so it must have been good.

I got to see & tour the bridge of the Constellation which is one of Celebrity cruise lines larger ships. There were MULTIPLE 22+ inch navigation monitors all within pain view. There is NO WAY to not see where you are, at any time, and with 4+ people up there....?????

I feel terribly sorry for the passengers and employees of this ship. It appears this accident was 100% preventable with any semblance of seamanship..

 

[FourPoints]

I dug up charts of the area to see what they were dealing with. The only thing out there is a couple of small islands well marked with tall lighthouses on them, in the middle of 70-150ft of water. In order to hit a shoal they had to come within a couple hundred feet of Giglio island! What person would navigate a 1000ft long cruise ship to be within a 200 ft of land??

My theory after looking at the charts and reading a bunch of the news reports and eye witness reports, jthe Capt (who was reported to be at the helm when this happened) was stearing towards a waypoint someone had put in directly on top of the channel marker (we have all done that before, just make sure to not hit the marker). Unfortunately for the Capt, this one happened to be the lighthouse on the corner of the island, and he wasn't paying enough attention (can anyone say lookout??) And didn't start the avoidance turn untill too late, when he found that in his variation of popular children's game now called "rock, paper, cruise ship", the rock still wins.

At this time he did demonstrated his firat sign of competency of the whole trip, and steered towards the mainland and ran the ship into the shallows so it didn't completely sink, giving people enough time to get off the ship safely. An act that surely saved countless lives.

 

[Rick D]

Another Update

...this one from The Los Angeles Times that contains some speculation on why the liner was where she was. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/wor...-cruise-liner-as-rescue-efforts-continue.html

 

[All U Get]

Paper charts still win.
All U Get

 

[Maine Sail]

Ship Or Rock Stronger

Rock eventually wins but rock gets moved....

 

[FourPoints]

Noticed the stabilization fin sticking out on port side, it was not damaged by the rocks. The only way the stern could have taken a hit that hard and the stabilizing fin be untouched, is if the wheel was hard to starboard with the stern swinging out to port to execute the turn. If the ship had continued for a minute longer on whatever heading it was on it would have cleared that rock, But without knowing exactly where it hit the rocks (I have a pretty good idea) and exactly what heading it was on (I suspect it could have been half way through a turn to starboard when it hit) it is really difficult to say if delaying the turn would have saved the ship, or put it in more danger.

If it was turning north when it hit, the Capt waited too long to start the turn and would have gone bow first if he didn't make it. On the other hand, if they had just finished the turn to the north (which was still late as they ended up too close to shore) and saw the rocks off port and turned hard to starboard to avoid them, then it was that turn that actually caused them to impact the rocks.

Either way it seems 100% human error, they hit the rocks by A) being an unsafe distance from shore, and B) by swinging the stern into them under a turn relatively hard to starboard while at high speed. From the information currently at hand, there is no excuse for this accident.

 

[MrBill_FLL]

the sliver lining in this was calm seas.

what's hard to fathom, is why they didn't call for everyone to go on deck.

 

[AtlanticAl]

I also thought it strange that the stabalizer was undamaged, but, it was calm seas, they may not have had the stabalizers on, which would mean, they were folded into the hull, they had just left port, and the stabalizers are in the closed position when a ship is in port, but, after they hit, as it started to roll around, due to the water swishing from one side to the other, they would deploy the stabalizers to try to help the problem.

This is not the big one though, my predictions are the big one will come in Antarctica, maybe two cruise liners coliding, and rescue being a week away. They were quite lucky to get as many people off this ship as they did, the herald of free enterprise that went down in the english chanel, and ended up in much the same position as this ship, with it laying on its side, and half of it out of the water, had a huge number of deaths, but it did go over much faster, minuetes.

 

[CaptJake]

Just heard on the local news that the Captain has been arrested and the First Officer was being "detained for questions", the rumour is that they put the ship that close so the head chef or waiter (conflicting stories), could wave to his family who was on shore.

 

[Freedom77]

Heard on the news today that they pulled closer inshore so that the head waiter's family could see them pass by. I've run aground before but OH BOY! Sad for loss of life. Sad end to a career. Sad end for a ship. I would bet they will have to cut her up for scrap.

 

[Rick D]

News Source With Ship's Track

This BBC story has a ship's track from their source and some commentary about chart scale that we've discussed on these boards numerous times. Wonder if the scale was too large?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16606405

 

[All U Get]

This BBC story has a ship's track from their source and some commentary about chart scale that we've discussed on these boards numerous times. Wonder if the scale was too large?

After the discussions on SBO I paid more attention to the scale on my chart plotter and found conflicting depths between scale as we cruised the Cape Cod area. Even my old paper charts were more reliable.
All U Get