Today, Juneau District Court Judge Keith Levy sentenced American West Steamboat Company, LLC for violating a Alaskan state criminal law that makes polluting state waters illegal.  The charge arose out of the May 2007 grounding of the Empress of the North.

Judge Levy ordered the company to pay a $200,000 fine and serve 18 months of probation, with the condition that it not violate any more laws, including any environmental laws and regulations, and abide by its Safety Management System and Fleet Instructions.  Judge Levy suspended $150,000 of the fine.  The remaining $50,000 will be deposited into the state’s General Fund and credited to the Oil and Hazardous Substance Release Prevention and Mitigation Account.  The legislature created the Mitigation Account to provide funds to investigate, contain, and clean up spills of oil and other hazardous substances and to protect human health and the environment. [Continue Reading →]

The preliminary report on the Empress Of The North grounding and subsequent abandonment (no fatalities) was released by the NTSB today. The BBC reports;

Marino Cattiotti was put in charge for four hours because another navigator was ill, the National Transportation Safety Board report said.

More than 200 people were evacuated when the Empress of the North hit a rock 25 miles (40km) from Juneau.

The report called the designation of Mr Cattiotti as navigator “imprudent”.

Hull ripped

Mr Cattiotti was fresh out of a maritime academy, the National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report said.

It was his first voyage on the ship.

The report said instructors believed that “placing a recent graduate of the school with no watch experience outside of a training environment, on watch, at night, in pilotage waters, in an unfamiliar vessel, without any additional preparation and/or supervision, was imprudent”.

Mr Cattiotti had said he had not taken part in any drills or had any training on the Empress of the North.

Not that this is a surprise to gCaptain readers as we reported such in gCaptain’s 16th ever post, “Alaska Cruise Ship – New Mate, Wrong Turn” and also HERE back in May. What’s surprising is we have received insider knowledge that the Coast Guard had asked the young mate to voluntarily hand over his license and “find a new profession”. While this is standard operating procedure following an incident it is worrisome in cases like this. We are, however, happy to report that the young mate made the right choice in not handing over his license and is looking (or has found) a new job. No word on the Captain’s state of employment though.

Chronicle photo by Michael Macor

After visits from California powerbrokers Arnold Schwarzenegger and Diane Feinstein yesterday the head of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen, joined the inspection team.

Here news of his visit courtesy of the San Diego Tribune;

“They talk about the fog of war. I think we had the fog of navigation going on this day,”

Allen said he himself didn’t learn the full extent of the spill until around 9 p.m. the night it happened last Wednesday, around the same time as most everybody else.

“We know that a good deal of marine accidents and casualties are human error,” he said. Coast Guard officials investigating the incident said Saturday that they had ruled out mechanical error.

“You don’t turn 900-foot vessels on a dime and given the visibility at the time I think it would be difficult to assess whether or not the bridge itself was visible,” he said, adding that would be part of the investigation, along with the vessel’s speed, communications among the crew and other issues.

So what happened that day? Who knows… we do not expect an official investigation to be completed anytime soon (think the normal 6+ months!). We are, however, willing to write down a few questions we hope some intrepid reporters with access to Admiral Allen do ask.

Questions for investigators;

We have reviewed a few big incidents in the short life of gCaptain including the grounding of the Pasha Bulker on an Australian Beach and the grounding of the Alaska Cruise ship “Empress of the North” in waters close to Juenu Alaska. In both of those situations a breakdown in communications took place.

What is the level of English competency of the captain and mate on watch?

Did the assist tug notify the pilot of the problem?

Did the master, mate (Jr. officer), anchor watch, or helmsman notice the error?

Were any problems or concerns relayed to the pilot during the pre-voyage master-pilot conference or was critical information left out of the exchange?

The bridge of a merchant ship is full of electronic aids to navigation. These devices can help investigators determine the cause of an incident IF they are looked at in a timely fashion.

What does the course recorder, a device that records heading directly from the gyro compass, say and does it collaborate the pilot’s timeline of events?

Did the Cosco Busan have an ECDIS (an electronic chart display) or did it rely solely on paper plotting? If the answer is no, what was the interval between fixes? Was all the equipment properly set-up? Was parallel indexing used?

In the AIS plots (if they are determined accurate) we see strong use of right rudder at the time it should have been apparent they missed the turn.

Could the pilot have completed a 360 degree turn away from the bridge and make a second attempt at the correct angle?

In conclusion, investigators should shy away from providing quick answers despite media protests and avoid singling out an individual in this incident. An incident might occur because the helmsmen failed to take a required training course a year back or due to a improperly installed antenna 6 years back or a policy decision 15 years previous. Most likely it was caused by all of the above and 100 additional errors that combine to form what marine incident investigators call an error chain. Remove one error in the chain and the allusion would not have occurred.

First a note… I am publishing this short clip ahead of my next article because of its importance!

While preparing our upcoming “questions for investigators” article on the Cosco Busan incident we were asked by more than one party a question along this line; with communications failure being a leading cause of incidents and the crew of the Cosco Busan being Chinese of limited english skills (they required translators during the investigation) why do incidents of this type not happen more often?

The answer is Bridge Team Management.

Ok… so what is BRM? Simply because it’s an increase focus of incident investigation and watchkeeping.

Revisiting a previous post I state:

• Bridge Team (or resource) Management (called BRM in the industry) is a process to use all of your available resources during critical operations. It came from the airline industry which found an alarming number of accidents happened despite prior warning from the equipment or crew…. mostly by captains with military backgrounds and a “I can do this” attitude who did not fully use critical information from either the equipment or junior personnel.Boiled down it’s a class all officers must take in both teamwork and processing the large amounts of data (lookout reports, radar, radio comms, gps charting, weather information….) that pours into the bridge.
• Here’s a more official answer:The Bridge Team Management course introduces the concept of a navigation team to ship masters and watch officers and frames their decision making process toward establishing watch conditions during the course of the voyage. Bridge Team Management techniques will emphasize decision making based upon conditions related to workload and potential threat to the vessel. The intent of the program is to define the individual task and responsibilities of the various team members while developing a situational awareness to prevent individual errors.

In stating the importance of this post I am looking at the media reaction to the incident. In reporting disasters the public is often not satisfied until a single individual is blamed…. quickly. This was the case in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Tampa Skyway Bridge Disaster and even in the early reports on the Empress of the North grounding where fault was placed on the Jr. Officer on watch who was only weeks out of the Maritime Academy. In the Empress of the North incident gCaptain broke from traditional media and laid the blame on management techniques rather than the “green” officer and we are happy to report he was recently clear of all charges (as was Capt. Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez).

It is clear to us the Cosco Busan allided with the Bay Bridge because of a breakdown in Bridge Team Management. For example while VTS contacted the ship questing its course did the mate on watch, captain, helmsman or assist tug captain also voice concern? Was the equipment operational and set up properly? As the primary fault for the Exxon Valdez incident was not with Captain Hazelwood (he was cleared of charges and his license was reinstated) John Cota, Pilot aboard the Cosco Busan is not solely at fault for this incident.

The team failed the Cosco Busan not the ship’s Chinese Captain or American Pilot alone. Lets just hope the court of public opinion does not convict either person before the long and thorough investigation is completed. Otherwise they might stand the fate of Captain Hazelwood, cleared of charges and fully licensed to pilot a ship but unable to find a company willing to hire him.

________

Asking yourself how a ship 131 wide could have such trouble in a channel 737 metres wide? Read a more unbelievable story HERE then watch the amazing slideshow HERE.

UPDATE: Bob Couttie of the Maritime Accident Casebook has a very interesting article along similar lines. You can find it HERE.

UPDATE 2:
Criminal probe opened in Bay oil spill

The entire crew of the cargo ship that sideswiped a bridge, causing San Francisco Bay’s worst oil spill in nearly two decades, has been detained as part of a criminal investigation, a Coast Guard official said Sunday.

Capt. William Uberti said he notified the U.S. attorney’s office on Saturday about issues involving management and communication among members of the bridge crew: the helmsman, the watch officer, the ship’s master and the pilot.

The Alaska Cruise Ship Empress of the North must move south to continue repairs to the hull. The AP tells us:

The cruise ship Empress of the North must head south for repairs to the damage done when it hit a charted rock near Juneau earlier this month.

Its Southeast Alaska cruises already have been canceled through June 23.

The Ketchikan shipyard, where the sternwheeler has been in dry dock for the past week, has another obligation and cannot complete the work.

Spokeswoman Ann Marie Ricard did not have information on the extent of repairs or whether they will be made in British Columbia, Oregon or Washington state.

Read More of the story HERE and gCaptain’s previous “Empress of the North” posts HERE.

Flickr is becoming a strong player in the Web 2.0 world. From breathtaking pro-quality pictures (we use it for our homepage’s photo-of-the-day) to citizen journalism if you are looking for photos it’s the place to visit.

Case in point dixieinaz’s photo set titled “Empress of the North Rescue, 2007“. Click on each photo to find a detailed description of the events as they took place. Together they form a play-by-play photo diary of the incident.

For all the flickr photos of the incident visit the Empress of the North tag page.

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.

I’m going to keep this posting short before my contempt for HR departments shows (too late, I know). The Seattlest points us to brand new job vacancies at Majestic Line:

Third Mate Wanted

Captain Wanted

Yes these are mostly likely for positions aboard the “Empress of the North” cruise ship that hit a rock near Juneau Alaska last week. All I can say is that if the 3rd mate is reading this shoot us a message – tips [at] gcaptain.com – we’d be happy to help in your job search.

For the full scoop read the Seattlest story:

Wanted: Captain, Third Mate. Paddlewheel exp a plus.

Our previous articles on this story: LINK

Sources close to gCaptain tell us the cruise ship that hit a rock near Juneau Alaska last week was being navigated by a young third mate on his first job out of California Maritime Academy and his second day on that job.

I would like to say that I had a similar experience my second day as a third mate. Heading south just out of San Francisco I was on my first watch when the radar began flashing with the multiple targets of a fishing fleet heading out to sea. One such target persisted and if it had not been for the fact we were a steam ship with a very loud whistle the captain of the fishing boat would have never woken from his slumber (in his cabin!) and diverted his course.

Why had the captain of the “Empress of the North” put the new mate on 8-12 watch? Why had he not been woken up for the turn? With such important cargo aboard why did the company not hire someone with more experience? My bet is the salary offered was not enough to attract a more experienced mate.

So what will happen? Hopefully the company will have to answer these tough questions in front of the NTSB. I’m equally hopefully the young mate will not be discouraged from continuing his career at sea because now he has something he was lacking last week…. experience.

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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. But this post is not about the Exxon valdez it’s about an incident that happened while a third mate was navigating the Empress Of The North near the town of Juneau Alaska.

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.

During a press confrence for meda covering the Empress Of The North incident, 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.”
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This is actually the 4th grounding of the vessel “Empress of the Sea”. By reviewing the USCG incident reports along with some google powered research we were able to find at least three groundings in addition to today’s incident.

March 24th, 2006: Multnomah County sheriff’s Lt. Mike Schults’s eyewitness reoprt stated “Wind and choppy water may have sent the vessel off course.” The result was a firm grounding on a sand bar at the edge of the Columbia River near Portland, OR. Reported by the AP

Nov 27th 2003: During the evening on a voyage up the Columbia River the vessel developed steering problems and ran aground 80 miles NW of Portland. Two crew and a passenger suffered minor injuries.

Oct. 24, 2003, while transiting a lock on the Snake River the vessel grounded with no reported injuries.

2007 has been a particularly bad year for the ship after 23 passengers took ill and the ship subsequently failed its CDC health inspection. That incident is still under investigation.

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