[BITList] Fwd: Lloyd's List: Send to Colleague
Michael Feltham
mj.feltham at madasafish.com
Mon Jan 19 10:34:19 GMT 2009
Sorry about the listers not being able to read the previous copy
Mike
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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.
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