[BITList] To sleep or not to sleep

[HUGH]

Mike,

Sleep down below is nowhere considered in the (excellent) article, but it matters.  On more than one occasion at sea, I reached the plates and functioned for a few moments on automatic pilot.  This followed my being shaken awake by an alien mouthing gibberish until I got up and stood looking in a mirror and not knowing what I was looking at.  All of which was my own fault, turning in at 2.00 am when on the 4-8.  And I've fallen asleep down below, despite the noise.  The rhythm of an engine can be a soporific, as I found when I suddenly jerked awake one morning early while sat on the ER stool, not immediately knowing what had wakened me.  The engines is what, or the lack of them - both were fading to a halt through lack of fuel.  Nothing to do with my involuntary nap, all to do with the carelessness of the fiver on the previous watch.  Thirty minutes later we were away again, and it was as quick as that because we were on the spot and not legitimately asleep up top as we might have been nowadays. I didn't need any alarm to wake me. That was the only time I ever fell asleep in an ER, ashore or afloat.  On another vessel, another company, I was sound asleep on my daybed, that being the most comfortable bed in rough conditions.  Also, I was in my boiler suit for reasons now forgotten.  Almost no sound from the ER could reach my cabin, and yet when I jerked wide awake it was because that small amount wasn't there.

The most likely place to fall asleep in below is a control room, if not through tiredness then through boredom, and I can't think on what parameters suddenly changing on a screen might wake me.  Of course, some klaxon or siren would surely wake me, though in the second case above no klaxons sounded, nor could have sounded, due to a total lack of power of any kind bar human muscle and brain and torch batteries.  We were back on track within an hour.

Bridge or engine room, the greatest danger lies in insulating the operator from the operated and from the environment.  On one of the bulk carriers Scotts of Greenock built for an Indian company, the Engineer Super (he went by the name Batterycharger in Scotts, and he was a big man in all ways) locked the control room door for the first 6 months of the ship's life and required the ER staff to operate it all manually, as god intended.

Hugh.





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