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Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding
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by unofficialsquaw.com | May 18, 2007 at 06:35 pm
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From gCaptain.com; A common misconception of the public is that the Exxon Valdez
grounding was the direct result of an intoxicated Captain. Those of us
in the industry know this to be far from the truth. The truth behind
that incident lies in a long accident chain with the most important
link centered on Third Mate Gregory T. Cousins.
The Third Mate of a vessel is the most junior officer who’s
experience can range from just having graduated from a four year
maritime academy to a senior officer who takes the lower position to
gain experience on a new or interesting ship. For this reason the
captain will often put the Third Mate on the 8pm-12am navigational
watch so that he is awake in the event of trouble. They are also put on
this watch because it is the least prone to the effects of sleep
depravation.
A spokesman for the NTSB in separate statements said:
“The third mate, who was navigating, and the helmsman, who was
steering, were the only people on the bridge at the time of the
accident.
It’s our understanding that they realized that they were not going
to be able to successfully navigate that 90 degree turn so they
attempted to make a correction and weren’t able to make a correction
successfully. So that’s when they struck Rocky Island,” Seattle Times
Compare this to the NTSB report of the Exxon Valdex:
“The third mate’s failure to turn the vessel at the proper time and with sufficient
rudder probably was the result of his excessive workload and fatigued condition,
which caused him to lose awareness of the location of Bligh Reef.”
More on the story including the full comparison at gCaptain.com.
Have more info? Email it to: tips (at) gcaptain.com
John Konrad is a USCG licensed Master Mariner of Unlimited Tonnage currently working as Chief Mate aboard a 865′ ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Since graduating from SUNY Maritime College he has sailed in 4 of the worlds oceans and reports from his ship via satellite.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 19:17 on May 18th, 2007
You raise a very good point. There have been numerous studies recently that document fatigue as a major problem in the maritime industry. One of the major solutions to this problem is to increase the size of ship's crews, but this is a solution crewing agencies and managment companies don't want to hear. There was a time not too long ago where each ship carried 2-4 Third Mates and sometimes more than one second mate. Now it is very common to only have one officer of each rank.
But as a Second mate, who has sailed Third Mate for 6 years now, I have a major problem blaming this all on fatigue or inexpirence. The bottom line is that no mattter how tired or "green" you may be, if you're having a problem or even think you're having a problem your job is to call the Captain and start to take action. In the industry, the sentiment is "if you're thinking about calling the Captain, you problally should have called him/her already". And on the same note, most captains will tell you they'd rather you'd call every hour to ask what time it is, than not call when it really matters. If that Third Mate realized he couldn't make his 90 degree turn, the Captain should have been called.
The rest of your story on gcaptain.com nails it! great follow up!!!