[BITList] Fwd: Lloyd's List: Send to Colleague

[Michael Feltham]

Sorry about the listers not being able to read the previous copy

Mike
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Begin forwarded message:

From: enquiries at lloydslist.com
Date: 19 January 2009 07:36:26 GMT
To: mj.feltham at madasafish.com
Subject: Lloyd's List: Send to Colleague


The below article was sent to you from Mike Feltham (mj.feltham at madasafish.com 
) with the following message: I thought you might be interested in the  
article below.

Weighing conduct against consequences
Monday 19 January 2009

SOME years ago, I was delighted to spend some time in the company of  
the master of what was then the world’s largest ship, indeed the  
world’s biggest mechanically propelled moving artefact. He was a  
dignified and unfailingly polite Indian officer, who seemed unstressed  
by the magnitude of his regular trade in this gigantic monster between  
Sea Island in the Gulf and the Texas Loop with half a million tonnes  
of crude in his tanks.

But I can remember at the time wondering how he ever slept at night,  
with the awesome responsibility on his head. He seemed to imply that  
he had reached this extraordinary position in a series of incremental  
steps, aboard suezmax and very large crude carrier tonnage and that  
anyway scale was mostly in the mind. He seemed to think that good team  
work and training were the keys to staying out of trouble. If you were  
a worrier in that job, you probably would not be long for this world.

I am delighted to report that he safely and efficiently completed this  
final role before his eventual retirement, but I wonder what he has  
been thinking about the curious decision from the European Court of  
Human Rights, which seems to imply that the conduct of a person  
involved in a marine accident is less important than its consequences.

Readers will be aware of this miserable conclusion, (which seems only  
to confirm that seafarers have few human rights) when the Strasbourg  
court ruled against the former master of the tanker Prestige,  
Apostolos Mangouras, who would like the court to have confirmed that  
the Spanish government was unreasonable to have held him in prison  
after he was helicoptered ashore from the ship he had tried so hard to  
save. Then it placed a €3m ($4m) price upon his bail, before releasing  
him from his disgraceful 83-day confinement.

The London P&I Club’s Stephen Roberts (it was the London which put up  
this astonishing sum on decent and humanitarian grounds) has expressed  
his club’s disappointment about the European court’s decision,  
suggesting that bail requirements will now be influenced by political  
considerations, and that the amount of oil spilt or damage done will  
be the criterion, rather than the degree of personal fault of the  
individual. I just couldn’t help thinking of that old ultra large  
crude carrier master, sitting on 550,000 tonnes of crude trundling  
around the ocean. If, because of no fault of his own, that little lot  
had come unstuck, this decision would have condemned him to hell in a  
handcart. He would have been treated by modern mores as no better than  
a mass murderer.

 From here, of course, it was but a short flight of the mind to South  
Korea, and the awful case of Capt Jasprit Chawla and his chief  
officer, who were judged culpable by the authorities for the pollution  
after their VLCC Hebei Spirit had been clouted by the Samsung crane  
barge. They at least, after a month inside, were released against a  
more modest bail, although the final outcome will be determined by the  
Supreme Court.

There have been numerous injustices perpetrated over the years against  
the hapless officers involved in marine accidents, which go back  
decades and perhaps even centuries, but there has never been a case in  
which so many people, from every conceivable part of the maritime  
industry, have so been united in their condemnation of the treatment  
of the master and mate of this damaged tanker.

International and industry organisations, individual owners,  
regulators, maritime authorities, seafarer organisations, indeed  
senior government ministers, have been involved in the pleas and  
appeals for a just conclusion. There have been demonstrations in  
India, Korea and elsewhere, and indeed there was one planned for this  
week outside the Korean Embassy in London, which was postponed in view  
of the release on bail of the two officers. I never thought for a  
minute that I would ever attend such an event as a demonstrator, but  
it remains marked in my diary as a reminder.

The huge amount of pressure that has been generated over this  
unfortunate case is a result of the widespread perception that their  
treatment has been grossly unfair. Even after no fewer than three  
accident investigations (two of which distributed the blame between  
the tug masters and the tanker officers) the whole maritime world has  
remained unconvinced that the verdict was even remotely just. The  
Koreans distributed translated copies of their Maritime Safety  
Tribunal report at a meeting they held in London at the International  
Maritime Organization, but even this failed to convince professional  
opinions of people who operate big ships for a living, that they were  
not, in so many areas, completely wrong.

The wonderful wisdom of hindsight regrettably glares out of this  
report, which many will suggest is ridiculously biased in its  
treatment of those aboard the tanker. There are for instance, less  
than effectively veiled allusions to the position Capt Chawla chose  
for his anchorage, in company with three other large ships and with  
the approbation of the watchers in the local vessel traffic services  
tower. He had, it has been pointed out, anchored in such a position on  
earlier visits.

There was unfounded criticism of the anchor watch on the tanker,  
despite the fact they had no reason to anticipate that the tow was  
experiencing any difficulties. Indeed, it was the tanker which, after  
failing to raise the tugs on the VHF, alerted the VTS to the fact that  
things were not what they should have been. And let’s face it, if the  
tow master was having such difficulties controlling his yawing charge,  
he had the option of anchoring it safely clear of all obstructions,  
rather than pressing on.

It was suggested that the big ship should have weighed its anchor and  
moved out of the way, which was plainly ridiculous, as this would have  
meant moving up towards the tow and Capt Chawla clearly did right when  
he paid out more cable and ran astern to give more room.

It is the sheer absence of seamanship and common sense that  
regrettably emerges from this report. There seems to be the most basic  
failure to realise that the reason for the collision, was not Hebei  
Spirit’s failure to go astern like a speedboat, dragging its anchor  
out of the ground, but the fact that the towrope to one of the tugs  
broke at a crucial moment. The investigators, it might be thought,  
should have made more of this when it was revealed that the tow was  
moving clear at this juncture (so there was no need for the tugmaster  
to cram on more revs) and the fact that the broken towrope was a 12- 
year-old steel hawser, which was being ‘recycled’ as such after a long  
life as a working wire on the crane itself.

Poor Capt Chawla was castigated for not instantly pumping oil at its  
maximum capacity into other spaces from the three damaged wing tanks,  
which is nonsense on stilts, as there was very little room available  
and it was only topping off space that could have been slowly and  
cautiously filled. The ballast spaces on this ship were carefully  
segregated as per the ship’s design and regulations. He was criticised  
for “wasting time” sounding and ullaging the tanks, which was patently  
ridiculous, as he needed to discover the extent of the damage before  
he started to move oil or ballast around. He was criticised for his  
use of inert gas, perhaps the silliest thing of all, with 12,000  
tonnes of steel barge bumping down his side like a tin opener with a  
gigantic crane swinging around and carrying away, masts, satcom domes,  
and deck furniture, with showers of sparks and huge friction.

Capt Chawla has a British master’s certificate and would have been  
brought up on frightful true stories about catastrophes that occurred  
when tanker cargoes ignited after a collision. He would have read  
about the instant incineration of some 80 souls aboard the British  
cargo liner Royston Grange, after the ship collided with the tanker  
Tein Chee in the River Plate. He would have recalled the worst ever  
peacetime disaster in the Philippines, when the ferry Dona Paz  
collided with the tanker Vector and left 4,375 people dead. As an  
experienced tankerman, he knew about the need for inert gas to  
minimise the risk of such an inferno. It was common sense and  
seamanship, and this is what he had been trained to do. He was  
criticised for not taking immediate measures to staunch the outflow of  
oil, which was ridiculous when it was considered that the crane barge  
was bumping down the side of his ship for a whole 25 minutes, when the  
whole lot could have gone up in smoke. In fact this whole litany of  
complaints lacks any sort of credibility whatsoever, according to the  
best professional advice.

None of which minimises the seriousness of the accident, which perhaps  
brings us back to Strasbourg and the European Court of Human Rights’  
failure to concede that poor Capt Mangouras had any such human rights.  
One is led inexorably to the conclusion that the Korean judges and  
indeed casualty investigators were led down the same road to conclude  
that consequences were more important than causation, and the conduct  
of Capt Chawla and Syam Chetan was of less consequence than all that  
oil on the beautiful coast of Korea. Which, if it was true, should  
make every tanker master in the world fear greatly for his liberty.

Sign up to the FREE Lloyd's List Daily News Bulletin at http://www.lloydslist.com/bulletin

Articles remain the copyright of Informa UK Limited

Please note that incorrectly addressed emails are returned to a  
Lloyd's List bulletin board and that copies may be taken for  
administrative purposes


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090119/ab65ea66/attachment-0001.shtml