The position of the rock is no longer in doubt, it having been neatly collected by the vessel. Good clearance job, Cap’n!
The BBC site has a video in which the Captain says that the ship was 300 meters from the island at a place (probably Le Scole Point) where rocks supposedly extend out 150 meters. So this may have been an uncharted rock, but it was located awfully close to some well charted ones, and a lot closer to the island than a sensible captain would take a massive ship.
The problem with “off course” here is do you mean off the course of the centreline between Italy and this island, or off the course the master intended to take? These concepts seem to be being conflated.
The former seems to be the standard route. There seems no doubt that the master did not intend to take that route as he was intending to go close to the island. There is nothing inherently wrong with intentionally going on a course that is closer to one shore than another. People seem to be confusing “deliberately taking a not absolutely standard central course through a strait” and “off course” which are not the same thing at all.
What I haven’t seen any clear evidence about is whether he was off the course that he intended to take. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that if he allowed 150m for error then that seems to me a little close, depending on weather, currents, what is propagated about chart accuracy and so on. It’s not inordinate. I suspect some (many) of you just don’t have much of a compass to tell you what is normal for this sort of thing. I know of ports where the UKC (under keel clearance) for ships with 4 or 5 times the deadweight of this ship is about 2-3m. There are plenty of channels which are used by much larger ships that are only about 200m wide.
Oh fer cryin’ out loud, tomndebb:
1/ The Italians have plenty of time for leaking extracts from the voice recordings from the black box (that will get you serious jail time in Australia, and probably the US, Italians aren’t concerned about the long term implications of this, apparently)
2/ The Italians have plenty of time for releasing excerpts from phone conversations, but
3/ They are so busy they can’t compare a GPS trace to a chart?
You are saying “they don’t even know where the ship was.” The black box has where the ship was to the metre at all times, as I have said. The vessel’s AIS was on. That means its position was being broadcast even to members of the public over the internet. The Italian coastguard would have the whole trace, even if they didn’t have the black box. The vessel’s course isn’t some arcane secret, and this isn’t 1742. I’ve seen the GPS track in a link on these very boards. Are you even paying attention?
I was aghast when the first article i read stated that the vessel did not conduct a lifeboat drill within hours of sailing. We are never safe from stupidity. In general, however, IMHO, cruise ship passengers are in no exceptional danger. Fire suppression design is comprehensive and inspections are routine. Security is maintained. Measures are taken to prevent spread of disease. The vessels are inherently stable (and in fact, have anti-roll stabilizers).
Having read the whole thread, i have a few miscellaneous observations:
- there is no theoretical upper limit to the height of a “rogue” wave. However, the probability of encountering one decreases with wave height. They don’t exist in the Mediterranean, and are extremely rare elsewhere.
- It is not correct to compare features of ships of entirely different purpose. Armor plate protects the bottoms of military vessels. RO/RO ferries are not cruise ships; they are mostly used in sheltered waters.
- One reason the US does not have much of a merchant marine is its strict regulations. Most ships are registered in Panama or Liberia, because their regulations are not stringent.
Which regulations? Certainly labour is cheaper if a ship is registered in Panama or Liberia and there are savings on tax.
Ships are built to international classification society standards which are worldwide. They are usually operated in accordance with the ISM Code which is again monitored by international organisations. What exact regulations are you thinking of?
Don’t ships registered with the US have to pay their crews a higher wages?
From the link at the BBC, it looks sort of like the course the master intended to take was basically straight into an island.
Are you suggesting that Pier Luigi Foschi is lying?
Was this a channel, with buoys or other aids to navigation?
If so, I’ve heard no mention of this in any report so far. If not, the standards for safe clearance would have to be meaningfully larger.
Please tell me you understand that the last part of the course shown is after the grounding where the master was trying to get into harbour? Please?
No. He may believe that and he may be right. It’s a matter of judgment. I wonder how close Pier would have thought was OK the day before this happened.
No, look at the scale on the chart at the BBC Link
He took the ship over 5 km off course to cruise near to the island of Giglo. After he hit the rock 300 m off the island, he then turned the ship 180 degrees to put it into shallow water. Do you see the little hook at the end of the route on the chart? THAT is the last part of the course, after the grounding.
The man is toast, even if he had not been a sniveling coward who left his ship with passengers still trying to escape, and refused to go back on board even when ordered to do so by the Captain in charge.
I guess the master could bring forward evidence that sailing off course close to islands is standard procedure for the company.
However it certainly is a matter of judgement. The question is, whose judgement?
Course change was
Unapproved
Unauthorised
Unknown to the company
Whose judgement put the ship in it’s location where it hit a rock?
The master’s judgement.
He took the ship on a route 5km different to last time, intending to pass by Giglo.
That isn’t actually the same as “basically straight into” an island. It’s a subtle distinction, I know.
It sounds like De Falco was making an unsuccessful attempt to shame Schettino into growing a spine.
Obviously. Nobody is arguing with you here. The only point I made was that it seems that the chart may have been inaccurate. If that is right, then had the chart been accurate, the ship wouldn’t have hit the bricks. I intend to ask my mariner colleagues about whether they think 150m off the appropriate depth line off a closely charted shore in apparently deep water in calm conditions with good visibility in daylight is unduly risky. I don’t know for sure what answer I’ll get but I don’t think it is as obvious as you think.
Tell that to the 11 to 30 people who have now died because some hot shot “Master” wanted to treat his 10,000 ton ship, with a length of 950 feet and a draft of over 24 feet, like a harbor cruise boat.
Did you actually look at the route he took? He was four miles away from his projected course. Certainly it was his decision–a fairly stupid one given the size of his ship.
As to the Italian government knowing the ship’s position after the fact, I only noted that they did not know where it hit the rock. If you think that every subsurface rock has a well marked GPS location, you are welcome to that belief, but since the ship did not report its location the moment it struck, the after-the-fact monitors of the location are still going to have to do some research to identify which rock he hit.
You’re still not getting it. What does “projected” mean? How do you know what course he intended?
As to the Italian government and the rock, do you want to think about your last post some more? Seriously?
I know that the cruise line–the people who pay him to serve their customers in a safe manner–expected him to keep their ship safe which implies staying in normal channels. That would be the projected course. That he appears to have been reckless makes him reckless; being the Master makes him more responsible for stupid choices.
I have no idea what you want me to think about the Italian government. Until the black box is examined, we do not know where the rock was struck, but we do know it was outside the usual shipping lanes.
(We also have further evidence that Schettino is an idiot, taking a ship with a 24 foot draft into an area with a bottom of only about the same depth, pretty much guaranteeing that his ship would capsize when staying further out would have kept it upright, allowing all the lifeboats to be launched. And he had to have known the depth of Giglio Porto, because that is clearly charted.)
9:30 p.m. GMT at that latitude at this time of year is not “daylight” by several hours.
I have to say, there is a lot of prejudgement going around, and I get where you’re coming from Princhester. Indeed:[
](Costa Concordia: Search suspended after ship shifts - BBC News)Here’s the chart from that article showing that the ship did the same thing back in August without incident, though the usual route is not so close to the island.
Sure, the calls are fairly damning in one aspect of the case, but the cause of the accident - I’ll wait to hear the results of the investigation.
tomndebb, you are bootstrapping here. How stupid the course was depends on where he intended to go, and what the depth was there, and how far away from obstacles that was. Which are the very issues I’m not sure about.
I think I’m talking to a brick wall here. Do you know about black boxes on ships? They are called VDC’s. Voyage data recorders. They are just a hard drive, really. We know the authorities have it. We know they have accessed it. What exact part of this are you having trouble understanding? Do you realise they have the course or not? Yes or no? If not, why not?
If they have the data off the VDC, they have the course line. They just take that data, and apply it to an electronic chart, or plot the positions on a paper chart if they are feeling all last century. Do you understand you can plot known GPS points on a chart? Yes or no? If not, why do you think not?
Then they look at whether the course line at around the relevant time does or does not pass over any charted depths or projections of less than 24 feet. They don’t have to know where the rock was struck. All they have to do is look at the course line over a passage of a couple of km and see if there is anything shown to hit. Do you know about depth lines on charts, and the way charts indicate isolated hazards? Do you understand that they can be seen on the chart and compared to a course taken line? What do you need explained further to you about this process?
If I had the GPS positions and the relevant chart this exercise would take me minutes.
I am honestly, seriously struggling to understand what it is that you think is so hard about this. If you can give me specific answers as to why you think any of what I’ve just outlined isn’t possible, let me know and maybe I can understand or explain some more.
OK, didn’t realise how late it was.
And thanks **jjimm **for that reference. Yes, even Lloyd’s list has access to data about the vessel’s course from this time and from four months ago but you (tomndebb) think the Italian government can’t work out how to plot this on a chart (or something) and that the company had no clue. Maybe. Maybe not.
Like me, I suspect that the editor of Lloyd’s List has seen masters thrown to the wolves and character assassinated after something like this a few too many times to be sure that he deserves it.