Watch: Can Books Still Teach Us How To Avoid Disasters At Sea?

In the wake of the Ever Given mega-ship grounding in the Suez Canal last month countless people have asked us what lessons will be learned from this to prevent maritime disasters in the future.

Historically authors of maritime disaster books, men like Captain Felix Riesenberg, provided the answers. Men like Riesenberg were asked to testify at marine hearings, consulted when new laws were written by organizations like the IMO, were given honorary positions at maritime academies, and were paid by shipping companies to improve operations.

Today, despite the fact that disaster stories remain international bestselling books and are the basis of blockbuster movies, the majority of mariners and shoreside industry workers do not read them. gCaptain works with a lot of well-known authors and few, if any, have even been invited to visit the IMO or to speak at shipping companies like Maersk.

In this video gCaptain’s founder and author of Fire On the Horizon, The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster, Captain John Konrad, looks at some of the most important maritime books of all time and answers the question: Can books still teach us how to prevent disasters at sea?